With all these astrologian complain threads

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Does anyone else notice a trend here? Remember Scholar all the way back with 2.0? This is pretty much an iteration of Scholar's time of infancy. A lot of people complaining about the class, till a bunch of famous endgame raiders were utilising the class in a way that it became a new meta and suddenly became incredibly popular.

So rather than opening up a text book, flip to the page you need and claim "you don't get it" like some student, thoroughly test and trial the class. Astrologian can go into many directions, just find the right one suitable for you.

[Elendia]

Hmm... I think it's a bit different here since AST is effectively a WHM/SCH combo with time magic and card support. What the community is worrying about is the direct comparison value as the job is lacking reliable, useful CDs in dire situations. Many of their spells are in some way inferior to their counterparts on top of that. The Scholar was a very different approach at its time, so theorycrafting was all over the place, but the AST is easier to analyze due to this jack of all trades theme.

Personally I'm very happy with the job. I can see its flaws, but the card mechanics and space/time magic are too good to not make it my current main class. Let's hope Square introduces some buffs in the near future.

[Seryl199]

I'm excited to continue working with AST. Item levels will continue to go up, easing the perceived gap between AST and other healers, while also increasing the base stats of other players that we'll be buffing. It's too soon to consider AST under or over powered without having the relevant raid content beside it to see how it performs. Though I've yet to reach 60 on it, I continue to find it immensely enjoyable, and have a lot of fun finding different interactions between different classes.

AST is in a curious position where it's trying to break into the WHM/SCH combo, and people worry that it's powerful enough to replace one or the other. I'm inclined to think this is by design, because if AST could drop in and replace either, what's to stop AST from doing everything? And yet, we don't know what situations we're going to see in Alexander. Though I'm sure raids will be doable with most healer compositions, it's exciting to think that the ideal composition will vary from battle to battle. Maybe SCH/AST here, WHM/SCH elsewhere, there's room for experimentation now, and that's a good thing.

[DeadRiser]

I hit a slump at the Vault with MP management. But now that I realized I was slightly undergeared, things are so much better.

This job is amazing, my friends love the buff and keep saying how awesome it will be to have AST in a raid group. I think it has a lot to do with people expecting it to be played JUST like white mage or JUST like scholar and it doesn't.

[Ghishlain]

I agree and I've been reserving too many comments about the job as a whole until I got a chance to play it entirely in end game scenarios.

From a theorycraft standpoint - it has the same baseline healing output as a WHM and SCH, they just lack the ability to significantly boost those numbers. Lack of MP regeneration skills is partially made up for having cheaper baseline cures.

To me, AST feels like a highly technical class that isn't quite as straight forward as SCH is. It rewards situational awareness and appropriate use of their toolkit - being able to make the current decisions with the cards you draw will be important. Yes, the cards have an RNG aspect to it but there's enough control to at least make use of every single draw you get.

[Ethos]

In 2.0 most of the Scholar related issues were with controlling the pets(stances did not work properly, slow response activating abilities, could not macro pet abilities ect.) not with the job itself and this was fixed over several patches after the community voiced their concerns. These were not specific ability or job design related issues and were easy to fix.

[NorthernLadMSP]

I think that another part of the complaints stems from a lot of people who main SCH. SCH is easy as hell to play, in fact the easiest healer in the game. You could be a bad player and still do alright with SCH because of the virtually unlimited MP and free fairy heals. WHM was the more difficult of the two to excel at. They have more MP management and aggro issues to deal with. Now, WHM is the middle of the road in terms of play difficulty. Then AST comes out, and it's definitely, IMO, the most challenging to play. I think people were expecting another cake walk healer like SCH and thus they are disappointed.

[Dayala]

AST is a great job, needs tweaking to make it more reliable with the cards. They used the card as a selling point and made it a gimmick instead. That's what people are complaining about and there's more negative repercussions to our spells / abilities than the other healers.

I'm looking to switch to AST for raiding, still learning the job and frankly, it's amazing and the potential is there.

[Ayrie]

Yes... Now if only I could macro embrace to every action to keep my throughput up.... I'd be okay. That's what we're saying?

AST is okay for everything, I think. It is not as broken as 2.0 warrior, but there are some ugly marks on it. MP management is going to be the first problem, especially now that whm has 2 MP income abilities. Gear scaling is going to actually highlight that more since it is based on base MP.

Output for tank busters and burst shouldn't be an issue since 4 mans won't be as bad and 8 mans allow you to work as a team.

AST actually has great preventative tank busting negation with light speed, stone skin, and nocturnal sect. Pop selected benefect, then light speed to stone skin, follow up with disable if necessary, and finish up with stoneskin after the move. Light speed should be falling off for Dignity + Aspected Benefec. If you have a saved Bole, even better.

I think AST is largely going to be restricted by Lumineferous Aether.

[fanservice]

Does anyone else notice a trend here? Remember Scholar all the way back with 2.0? This is pretty much an iteration of Scholar's time of infancy. A lot of people complaining about the class, till a bunch of famous endgame raiders were utilising the class in a way that it became a new meta and suddenly became incredibly popular.

So rather than opening up a text book, flip to the page you need and claim "you don't get it" like some student, thoroughly test and trial the class. Astrologian can go into many directions, just find the right one suitable for you.

SCH needed fixes back in 2.0, and they got them. Remember when the fairy was barely controllable, and was the bulk of SCH AOE healing power when titan hardmode was the gatekeeper to coil? Yeah... please don't make it sound like SCH was perfectly fine and everyone was doing it wrong.

As for AST, they are noticeably weaker in the heal department, and it's very easy to see it; A SCH can easily catch up between lustrates or adloquium crits if/when shit happens. An AST can barely afford to lose a GCD when essential dignity is down.

Their card buffs are nice, but lengthy CDs, and subject to RNG when it's the one unique thing AST has over the other two jobs, and according to some posters, SCH dps can outdo the odd arrow/balance buffs here and there anyway, which is sad. Again, this is compounded by the fact SCH has lustrate, possible adloquium crits, the fairy, and at least 3 set-and-forget DOTs that can be spread via bane that they can afford to abuse cleric stance alot more. This was especially true when lustrate was still a fixed heal that ignored cleric stance penalty...

There's no denying ASTs are the weakest of the 3 healers.