Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[RichardButte]

Arrow is attack speed +10%. It does not affect ability cooldowns. It affects spell/weaponskill casting times and cooldown speed and auto attack speed. The Spear card affects Ability cooldowns (Dignity, Light Speed, L. Aether, etc.) and the Spear card's -20% cooldown effect only takes effect if you use the ability under the Spear buff. If you activate L. Aether before applying the Spear Card onto yourself, your cooldown will not be lowered.

...Which should definitely be changed to lower the cooldown of abilities already on cooldown as well.

Otherwise, you'll likely never use it on anyone except yourself and even then it'll be situational (or it always gets RRed...).

[Kerrigen]

Something that needs to be taken into account is that future raid content will have to be balanced with all 3 healer combinations in mind... Which does not work in AST's favor by any stretch of the imagination.

If Alex/savage is tuned around AST's throughput, it's just going to be much easier to clear with WHM/SCH anyway (which in turn creates opportunities for healer DPS), so I don't see people bothering with AST when the other combination will be safer and possibly/probably more overall DPS.

If it's tuned around WHM's throughput + SCH's mitigation tools and their new toys... Welp.

[RoseM]

Every healer has its own area of specialization. In the case of AST, it is better than SCH at healbombing and better than WHM at shielding (and possibly DPSing due to its two not-accuracy-bound DoTs). It also brings, albeit potentially, very useful buffs that can make or break an encounter if used at the right time.

1. Was this a joke? I can design a class that's better than PLD at DPSing, and better than BLM at tanking, will u bring that class to your raid group? lol

2. Useful buff, I'm really not so sure about that, but I'm too tired to argue... Your arguement was just "LOL"

[GideonHighmourn]

1. Was this a joke? I can design a class that's better than PLD at DPSing, and better than BLM at tanking, will u bring that class to your raid group? lol

2. Useful buff, I'm really not so sure about that, but I'm too tired to argue... Your arguement was just "LOL"

Id' say "better" than SCH at healbombing is a stretch, as well. With Emergency Tactics and Indomitability, SCH's capacity for AoE'ing has been boosted greatly. Granted, it's not spammable, but it's not often that spamming AoE's is needed.

[AlphaFox]

Yeah, I dunno why I typed arrow, but I was referring to spear. However that is good to know that it needs to be before the ability is used, I was under the assumption it just speed up until the card was over. Thanks. So in this case then, using the Enhanced Spear would be better if i plan to use it right after then.

[RichardButte]

2. Useful buff, I'm really not so sure about that, but I'm too tired to argue... Your arguement was just "LOL"

Oh, they're definitely useful (some of them, anyway, as there's a good chance Spear will be 100% worthless when you draw it, except to RR it). That's not in question.

But useful enough to justify the weaker healing potential of the AST? Certainly not.

We either need all of the card abilities (draw, shuffle, etc.) to have lower cooldowns, or the buffs themselves need to be far more potent than they are to offset the RNG involved. Even if you DID draw a Balance card every single time, it's really not worth bringing an AST over a more reliable, consistent healer.

[Cynfael]

Because you can get the tank up faster. Cast a Benefic and then instant cast Benefic II after that for a bigger burst. It's faster than trying to cast it manually. You do it to get him out of the danger zone.

It can be convenient if it works out like this, but so far I'm not a fan of this Enhanced Benefic II trait. All it does is have the potential to throw off my heal timing if I forget that I have a proc when I go to use Benefic II.

[Zoralink]

It can be convenient if it works out like this, but so far I'm not a fan of this Enhanced Benefic II trait. All it does is have the potential to throw off my heal timing if I forget that I have a proc when I go to use Benefic II.

Yeah, about the only way I've really been using it so far is to fish for a proc before cleric stancing, throwing out my DoTs/gravity/whatever, then pop out for an essential dignity + benefic II proc to top up the tank from 15% health. Other than that, it's just... awkward. AST on the whole just seems to be a whole lot of ideas they wanted (High mobility, high cast speed healer) that they were afraid to actually commit to. (Lightspeed, inability to swap sects in combat at all, slightly tacked on feeling to each sect with the mediocre 5% haste and 5% potency increase) Seriously, the 5% bonuses for each sect just scream to me "We removed sect swapping for fear of it being overpowered but didn't know how else to fix it in time."

[Krixus]

Everyone keeps saying intelligent raid leaders won't even consider ast, when my fc (just server first both primals ex) won't even consider whm anymore. Why bring whm when you can have two of the jobs that can support buff the pt? When you guys are no longer wearing shitty gear you will see astro heals plenty enough to belong in progression. I used to main whm and never had to rely on divine seal, why would I now?

[DreamWeaver]

I would think any intelligent raid leader would allow flexibility rather than "you must play XXX job or get lost" , maybe your raid leader ain't that intelligent too!!