Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[Zoralink]

So far, I like AST a lot, but as some people have brought up, there's a few discrepencies:

Nocturnal stance. While I see where people are coming from with regards to thinking it's weak in terms of pure potency, I think a bigger issue with it at the moment is because of its weak potency it offers very, very little in regards to opportunity cost. Using aspected benefic in noct stance gives you a brief instant shield, yes, but that shield is typically eaten up by a single auto attack shortly thereafter, before your GCD has even worn off. This is in contrast to scholar, where throwing an adloquium out will buy you plenty of time, especially if it crits.

What I'd like to see for Nocturnal Stance is a passive buff along the lines of "Moonlit serenity" or some such, that stacks up every two seconds, up to 5 stacks. Each stack grants your subsequent aspected shield an additional 10 potency per stack. At maximum stacks, aspected benefic would actually be slightly stronger than a non-crit adlo (And a crit adlo would be more powerful than aspected benefic) and it would give AST the niche of having a stronger AoE shield (190 potency) than scholar which is already predominately single target based. (Though that has changed some in the expansion) it would discourage spamming your aspected benefic (Which you shouldn't do anyway) and encourage more smart usage of it. It would also give noct sect a decent "power" button to use, as that's currently a big thing lacking for AST, and it would appear they want Noct to be more of a heavy hitting healer. Just a thought, something that would give Nocturnal a buff without just straight buffing it.

I also think they need to make Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation change their effect for Noct's shields slightly, instead of increasing their duration (Which is a straight benefit for diurnal regens), increasing their potency by a certain amount. (50 potency for Celestial Opposition, 100 for Time Dilation? Not sure.) Also Collective Unconscious. The fact that we have to channel it. What are you doing SE. If they want the same feel, allow us to perform actions during it, but we must stay within the bubble for it to remain.

The inability to use Spread out of combat also drives me up a wall. I see no reason for it, other than to make it inconvenient to try to set up effective combos before a boss pull. I would love to be able to do an expanded royal road with spear to maximize its effectiveness, but it's impossible to consistently set up. That's fine mid combat, it's a part of the class, but the fact of that matter is that your very first card draw is going to make far too much of a difference. Drawing a spear, balance, or arrow bumps up everyone's efficiency during their opening burst to the nth degree, while drawing bole, ewer, or spire is almost entirely worthless. It's not a good feeling.

This is all speaking in the hypothetical, and don't get me wrong, I don't think AST (And particularly Noct sect) is necessarily bad right now, but I do think it needs a minor buff and more synergy with its own cooldowns.

[Sully]

Monk main reporting in! After playing around with Scholar near the end of ARR, I was pretty excited to get my hands on Astro - tossing cards around and star magic? Who doesn't wanna do that? . After playing around with it (mid 30s atm) I haven't been disappointed at all though the job definitely feels pretty barebones at the moment. The biggest sticking points for me are the length of the cooldown on Draw, Lightspeed, MP cost.

To me Astro feels like it's supposed to be a high speed heal/buff job - the "machine gun" support in a way - but Draws' cooldown feels a little too long to weave between all the healing. Maybe shorten it to 20sec?

[Sully]

Lightspeed really needs the most work. A 25% hit to potency for "instant" heals is a bit much especially when Astro isn't the stronger healer in most situations and you still have to wait on the GCD. This ties right in with spell cost. It seems pretty counterintuitive to have the cost of the spells where they are if you're supposed to toss em out at high speeds, which is very noticeable when you have to heal a bunch of people at once or if someone takes multiple big hits in a row.

Right now Astro plays fine as is, but it really needs a "tuneup" to truely show its stuff

[EA9Sol]

From what I've played so far I love Astrolgain and won't mind learning to heal with it. <3 It's just too much fun! XD

[Shikiseki]

So far, only 2 major things that could make AST be viable without changing much: MP regeneration and faster Drawing.

Faster drawing would allow a lot more buffs to offset the poor RNG. Around 15s should be sufficient, since royal road has 15s too. Also, I thought spread and shuffle should be at 15s as well - that way you're even less in the mercy of RNG in tight situations.

MP regeneration should have been the best out of the 3 healers due to its more frequent healing required, I'm really baffled that it's worse than a WHM now! (with WHM getting new MP regen). Higher MP regeneration would probably offset the weaker healing and put the job in a competitive place with quantity over quality.

AST should be the fastest healer out of the 3, there's no need to increase any potencies, just make the class faster and mp efficient!

To the other AST spells: I really love Synastry and Time Dilation so far. Although I have mixed feelings about Collective Unconscious, that would require some work. Same as Lightspeed - it should AT LEAST restore MP. I haven't got the level 60 spell yet but it does sound extremely underwhelming - a seperate "stop" status would have made it a lot more interesting as well as extending ALL buffs for 5s would have made it a worthy level 60 spell imo - other jobs get quite broken attacks too, so why was this one left out that badly? Were they afraid of making them too OP?

[Warlyx]

a bit fustrating having balance on royal road and only popping TP and MP reduction back to back.......grrrr

[jars]

Haste only affects your cast times...you're thinking of skill/spellspeed, which is not the stat that Diurnal modifies. Hence, your earlier comment about the throughput being as equivalent as Nocturnal's throughput was also inaccurate. Please research carefully before spreading misinformation.

that's good to know, but even at 790 potency dirunal aspect is an efficient and useful skill for softening damage on a tank while nocturne not efficient or as effective at burst healing as benefic II.

[Shamirah]

Totally agree with you Shikiseki. I dunno maybe give us a mana recup whenever we use a card ?

About collective Unconscious : a little tip : you can cast it, and if you get hit by a tornado or like the Ravana limit break => it won't stop the cast of the spell. It's still weaker than its counterpart but that's still something nice to know.

[VitalSuit]

Totally agree with you Shikiseki. I dunno maybe give us a mana recup whenever we use a card ?

About collective Unconscious : a little tip : you can cast it, and if you get hit by a tornado or like the Ravana limit break => it won't stop the cast of the spell. It's still weaker than its counterpart but that's still something nice to know.

That's the point, it's supposed to act like asylum or sacred soil but you are the medium in which it's cast.

EDIT:

Oh now I get what you mean, like if you're hit by a knockback it won't interrupt it.

[Fufufighter]

Sharing my experience - I am lv 55 AST now (I was SCH on ARR).

So far, I feel that AST healing is fine
... when party does not take extra damage from avoidable mechanic. (it's still do-able)
... when the tank does not pull more than he can handle. (I try to spread Bole to counter this case)

I love the concept of buffing people.
I have spent most of my time looking at the draw cooldown. >_<
I just wish that its CD would be lower to 20/15 second as I prefer buffing people - to do the dps than do it myself,

Also, shuffle should prevent you from drawing the same card. 30 sec draw CD is already long and it's not cool when spear keep appearing even after I used up RR and shuffle.

I will update once I had a chance on primal extreme.