Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[Seryl199]

3.3 Conclusion is AST is definitely not a DPS booster. In fact I found the Most useful card for AST was probably Bole, then Ewer.

You've got more relevant experience than I, but I would never classify AST as a sustained buffer. Though their buff contribution over the course of a battle is relevant, it's their application of buffs in response to mechanics that is most important. Got some adds that need to be burned now? A BLM with Raging Strikes, Foe's Requiem, and Enhanced Balance will make short work of that. Raid wide AoE? Expanded Bole. If you're going to compare to Selene, why not bring both? You'll get a sustained buff during AST's downtime, and a more bursty buff for handling mechanics, which allows DPS to get back on the boss faster.

I absolutely agree, though, that AST's inability to recover from mistakes is very prominent. You reach maximum throughput very quickly due to lack of relevant CD's, and if the encounter's damage exceeds that, it's a fast wipe, no questions.

[RichardButte]

Spear Card works fine. Problem is not everybody in your party is even going to know what spear does for them. In order for the spear card to work you essentially have to inform your party that it is up, and then they can use any ability and it will shorten the timer. Its a matter of communication and others understanding why I just used the card in the first place. What it does not do is reset the time if said ability is already on cool down.

Even with communication, it's still the WORST card to draw.

I mean, say you're about to blow a cooldown: do you wait for a spear? Do you waste your precious spread on a spear? Is anyone else going to hold off on blowing a cooldown in the hopes that the AST might draw a spear?

The biggest problem I see with AST is that it seems to be WAY too much micromanagement for far too little payoff. Sure, you can spread this, shuffle that, blow cooldowns to extend buffs on a single target because it's not going to reach all of the party members who have the buff on them anyway, but in the end, all the extra time you spend doing all of this still doesn't bring you within the range of usefulness of a WHM or SCH.

[Lastelli]

@Seryl the point is you cannot rely on your deck. Sure it's all nice if you say you can use an expanded bole + disable + collective unconscious or whatever to mitigate party wide attacks, but you cannot be sure that you'll have bole available when you need it because of rng, even if you factor in Spread. This means that every new mechanic must be manageable even without cards so you can just use a SCH and benefit from the higher healing throughput for all the duration of the encounter without having to rely on rng. Also I'd be playing in Nocturnal since the other healer in my party is a WHM and Nocturnal is very bad atm. It gives weaker shields than a SCH's while being very MP consuming. Not good at all.

[Seryl199]

@Seryl the point is you cannot rely on your deck. Sure it's all nice if you say you can use an expanded bole + disable + collective unconscious or whatever to mitigate party wide attacks, but you cannot be sure that you'll have bole available when you need it because of rng, even if you factor in Spread. This means that every new mechanic must be manageable even without cards so you can just use a SCH and benefit from the higher healing throughput for all the duration of the encounter without having to rely on rng. Also I'd be playing in Nocturnal since the other healer in my party is a WHM and Nocturnal is very bad atm. It gives weaker shields than a SCH's while being very MP consuming. Not good at all.

I'm fully aware of that. This thread of full of things that WHM can do and things that SCH can do. I know that, been playing them since 2.0. I'm here to discuss what AST can do. AST has a chance of providing powerful buffs that can help the party overpower a mechanic that the party may just be able to overcome. If you're looking for AST to SCH or WHM, you're going to be disappointed, every time. Now, if you want to discuss that RNG is too difficult for AST to manage, or that an encounter is too taxing for AST to heal without additionally taxing the other healer, I'm game.

Nocturnal Sect, for example. I'd rather be in Diurnal any day, but if spike damage is really high, there needs to be a healer to mitigate. AST can do that reasonably well, but they lose out on HoT's which really cuts down their efficiency, causing, like you said, AST to use more MP or the other healer picking up the slack.

I'm fine with most of the Draw mechanic, although Shuffle could be a lower CD if only to combat getting shafted on RNG and drawing the same card. Others have suggested that Shuffling a card should remove it from the pool of possible draws, that sounds more reasonable for a 90 second CD.

[Nague]

you have math and a ravana ex healer telling you that AST buffs are negligible and yet you speak of "powerdful buffs".

AST buffs are weak and random. Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

a ravana ex healer

Is this even a relevant qualification? Ravana EX is quite easy.

Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

So Bole + Nocturnal Collective Unconcious is weak? Seems to me it gives more mitigation than what a SCH would be able to do.

[Lastelli]

cut-

I'm just trying to compare AST to other healers to see the good/bad points of these 3 jobs since I have to choose quickly which one to pick for Alexander Hard. As of now I believe that the weak buffs are not enough to compensate for the weaker heals/shields and rng of the AST. After Lv 50 you get...time dilation and celestial opposition. Thinking about the utility these 2 skills give compared to the likes of indomitability and deployment/emergency tactics. Uncounscious is strictly worse than Soil, I think we can all agree on that. So what is it that an AST can do better then a WHM or a SCH given that it's worse than both at their respective "specializations" I wonder? This is an honest question. Do you think that cards are enough? My answer would be no, but maybe I'm not using them at their full potential, dunno.
As for shuffle, that's the solution I was thinking about as well.

[Lastelli]

So Bole + Nocturnal Collective Unconcious is weak? Seems to me it gives more mitigation than what a SCH would be able to do.

Sadly not. Expanding halves the potency of a buff, so you have 5% damage reduction for bole + 10% for Uncounscious if your talking about party wide damage mitigation. SCH has 10% soil + stronger succor shield (or what about adlo + deployment tactics? should be a great combo but I haven't tried it yet) and virus which I think is better than disable, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not even going to consider covenant. And I'm really missing E4E. If something similar to t13's gigaflare is waiting for us in alexander hard I'm afraid AST will have a tough time.

[Krixus]

you have math and a ravana ex healer telling you that AST buffs are negligible and yet you speak of "powerdful buffs".

AST buffs are weak and random. Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

Lol from the way you state that post it makes it sound like rav ex is hard. And he did the fight on astro.... Soooo why do we need whms if ast/sch can handle things?

[AlexanderThorolund]

That satisfying feeling in a random duty when you land a Balance card on a DPS seconds before they limit break and kill the boss.