Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[PixelFashion]

I'm level 55 AST. I'm missing a crappy force field, a buff extender, and a 4 second stun. Nothing game changing to me to where I'd rescind my thoughts about raid healing with AST when reaching 60.

I tried solo healing T9 for the funsies (we 7 manned with no level sync so everyone was in OP gear + echo buff). No matter which stance I used, AST fell short. I can heal the tank just fine, but as soon as raid wide damage happens, I have nothing. Aspected Helios' distance is WAY TOO SMALL. I basically have to individual cure every freakin' person in the party who wasn't in my range. Except now I have to waste more MP and a few extra GCDs when the tank could really use them. AST has 0 passive healing abilities aside from diurnal sect's nerfed regen nor do they have any potency boosting abilities for those heavy damage moments. Megaflare + Rage of Bahamut without echo and with level sync? GG. At least we can disable Gigaflare.

[Aphel]

Yeah we really lack tools for emergencies. I think SE wants the AST's playstyle to involve time, i.e. extending the time of buffs, 'stopping time'. It's a cool concept but it's not really feasible when your party's taking a truckload of damage, which is basically most primals and raids.

If only they made Celestial Opposition literally stop time for like 5 secs, freeze everyone + enemies except yourself. I would love that.

Ahhh here we go, people are finally discussing the best party compositions now: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...omposition-3.0

[PixelFashion]

If only they made Celestial Opposition literally stop time for like 5 secs, freeze everyone + enemies except yourself. I would love that.

THIS is what would be the game changer for AST's "OH CRAP" moment. Or if they removed the 25% nerf to your insta-cast CD. If they did this, AST would be a lot better. At least I can triple Helios or something to get the party topped off. It would have to be on a moderately short cool down, though. Being like 300 seconds or some BS wouldn't be enough. Some raids do massive raid wide dmg every 2 mins or so.

[AlexanderThorolund]

I wish you could use cards on people you see on the field. I'm seeing a lot of new green seedling players who would appreciate a Bole or Balance being thrown their way.

[Khagan]

Why is our "big" area of effect damage reduction/regen (Collective Unconscious) channeled while it's the opposite for the other healers? It's completely useless when majority of the fights requires movement and tanks receiving spike damage

Why is our other "big" cooldown (Lightspeed) skill killing my party because of the 25% potency reduction? Shouldn't it be the opposite?

Why can't we use Shuffle out of combat?

The RNG on cards is way out of hand, I can draw Arrow/Spear for an entire fight completely killing the class. The expanded effect has a very short range for some reason, why?

Why does our AOE heals have shorter range than the other healers?

Why are some of the cards and enhancements to the cards like Arrow/Spear completely useless?

Why do Astrologian's have active skills that the other healing classes have as passives? Very lazy choice of design

Why can't we use Time Dilation on ourselves?

[Khagan]

Continued

We've got two Sects, everyone is using Diurnal Sect because Nocturnal Sect is not even an option if you don't want to kill your party

Gravity is totally useless as it doesn't apply any effect like Holy does, instead we got ANOTHER skill for that with the exact same effect for some reason with a sky-high cooldown. Why not integrate Stella into Gravity?

Aspected Helios area of effect regen and initial heal has a mind-blowing low potency, it's often not even worth considering using over Helios

Why did Square Enix decide on not having a beta? It's clearly obvious what happens when you don't have one.

As a returning player it's disappointing coming back and wanting to play a new class and find it inferior in every aspect compared to the other healers.

[Normalizer]

We've got two Sects, everyone is using Diurnal Sect because Nocturnal Sect is not even an option if you don't want to kill your party

This I would like to disagree. I don't know why a lot of people think Diur Sect better, the Noct Sect brings your potency nearer to WHM, and the best thing in Noct Sect the instant "Adlo"-like aspected benefic (that is a 500 potency instant cure you have ). You can heal why dodging and it's much better than in Diur Sect. You should give Noct Sect a try Aspected Helios is the one i find most useless right now, in both sect, probably only use it when I have to heal in Diur sect, I use Helios all of the time.

Beside, Lightspeed is not really complete garbage, use it while you have to move a lot and need to heal/esuna ppl. Sure it lower your potency, but if you can heal for a bit while moving, it better than not healing at all! Many of the boss fight right now require a lot of movement, and using lightspeed at the right moment may save you from a wipe.

[Aphel]

I agree that Collective Unconscious is bad.

I think they don't want Spread to be used out of combat because the raid will be sitting there the entire day waiting for AST to draw the ideal cards before a pull. They want us to decide right in the middle of combat.

It's a lazy design that we can't use Time Dilation on ourselves, mainly because that will affect Luminous Aether and increasing our MP regen by twice 15sec + 15sec. All they have to do is make Luminous unaffected by Dilation.

Noct Sect is quite alright, you just got to start healing like a Scholar, i.e. before damage occurs. Time Dilation benefits Diurnal Sect a lot more due to extended regen so I myself prefer using that.

Well that's what I think anyway. If I remember correctly, I've read somewhere the Devs intended ASTs to have lower DPS than other healers. I'm fine with that but to throw in weaker heals and our biggest, shiniest level 60 crap skill just makes us incomplete. Among all the new jobs, I feel that ASTs need the most balancing followed by MCH.

[kupokage]

Maybe it's not how Astro plays, maybe it's how others play with them. Tanks and DPS may only have experiences with them once every few hours for 30 minutes at a time. Been playing one since early access and I'm still trying to figure them out even at level 59. What can they do and what can't they do? Even when main'ing as an i130 SCH pre 3.0, Tanks don't seem notice when I burn through 6 stacks of aether to keep the party upright during mass pulls and then wonder what happened during the next when we wipe. That same tank may expect the same from Astros. That DRG just got an extended attack buff via cards, does he know now's the time to burn through his CDs to fully utilize it? How about some cross training and create a thread in the Tank and DPS forums linking them to this one. "Hey, guys. This giant globe thing? You may want to stay inside. Thanks."

[loreleidiangelo]

What Astrologian's healing really lacks, in my opinion, is a tool for situations with a huge amount of incoming DPS. White Mage gets Divine Seal, while Scholar gets Fey Illumination. The best we get for that situation is planning ahead and having a Bole + appropriate Royal Road handy.

This is an objective observation about AST healing that I can get behind, rather than "heals are weak, potencies suck, AST heals are bad", etc etc. Our base healing potencies are fine, it's the lack of a proper "oh shit" button that wrecks us. Simply removing the nerf on Lightspeed, or giving us our own 30% spell-based HP restoration boost ability that WHM/SCHs already get to counteract it would go a long way towards letting us be able to carry bads in the DF.

On a side note, I've had no problem healing anything as AST so far, but I admit, I doubt I'd have a problem healing them as any job, really. (I wish the forums would update my character already...I'm a level 58 AST, not a level 52 one. >__> Yes, I've done the terrible horrific rumored AST-killing dungeon known as the Vault with no issue, natch. Nocturnal Sect FTW.) While the job needs buffs, and a better "oh shit" tool than Lightspeed, I'm not seeing the "weak heals" that people are really describing. I play solely in Nocturnal Sect though, unless I'm paired in an 8-man with a SCH.