Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[Ayer2015]

Edit: Everyone jumped on that correction, guess I'll butt out. I have a hard time putting Spire to use outside of AoE's or battles that last several minutes.

yay for confusing card names..... ya, the TP buff usually just gets RR by me.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Currently, if you use an ability with a cooldown on it while under the effects of Spear, the cooldown is 20% less.

Thus, if you want to actually get any use out of it, you need to use Spear on the target and THEN the target has to blow cooldowns. In order to get any use out of the spear, you'd have to be waiting on blowing cooldowns for it right now, which just ain't gonna happen in the course of battle.

However, they've acknowledged that this is a bug and that Spear is also supposed to reduce cooldowns that are already cooling down.

Ok, so currently if I use Lumin Aether to regen MP and there's 60 seconds left before I can use it again, and throw a Spear on myself, it does nothing for that skill?

But, once the bug is fixed, it would then speed up the remaining 60 seconds?

[RichardButte]

Ok, so currently if I use Lumin Aether to regen MP and there's 60 seconds left before I can use it again, and throw a Spear on myself, it does nothing for that skill?

But, once the bug is fixed, it would then speed up the remaining 60 seconds?

Exactly.

If you use Spear BEFORE you use LA, you'd get the benefit, but it does nothing if you use Spear after having already cast LA.

But once the bug is fixed, it'll reduce the cooldown of the ability even IF you've already used it and it's on cooldown, making it one of the best buffs in the game, really.

[Seryl199]

Can't wait to drop Spear on the party during a burn phase to help restore all those CD's, or pop an Enhanced Spear on a tapped out PLD to give him some buffs back. It's the way I imagined Spear would be in the first place. Exciting!

[RichardButte]

Can't wait to drop Spear on the party during a burn phase to help restore all those CD's, or pop an Enhanced Spear on a tapped out PLD to give him some buffs back. It's the way I imagined Spear would be in the first place. Exciting!

Now, if they could just make Spire and Ewer restore 20% of MP/TP over 20 seconds instead of reduce, there'd be no card I'd be unhappy to draw...

[NorthernLadMSP]

That would solve a lot of AST problems if using Ewer on yourself would regain MP.

[Lastelli]

Now, if they could just make Spire and Ewer restore 20% of MP/TP over 20 seconds instead of reduce, there'd be no card I'd be unhappy to draw...

Aye, that would solve the problems with cards. Ewer and Spire are a little useless right now.

Also am I wrong or the party bonus for AST is piety no matter which stance you're using? This basically means that pairing with a SCH slightly lowers both healers' healing capacity. I wonder if it's possible to change the bonus depending on your stance...

edit: I just learnt about celestial opposition food bug. Good God, why? lol

[RichardButte]

I wonder if it's possible to change the bonus depending on your stance...

It should be.

And the main issue I have with Spire/Ewer is that they're very specific as to their usefulness. Both are completely useless when:

1. The person is dodging AoEs and won't be using any skills.

2. The person is out of MP/TP already.

There's a 17% of an AST being able to help restore TP/MP so I don't feel like this infringes on BRD/MCH very much (especially since this is only one target, or nerfed hardcore if it's spread to AoE).

This way, if they're full but using TP/MP, we restore it for 20 sec as it's being used, but if they're NOT using TP/MP but have some missing, we can restore that, too.

Really, just making the cards less situational is a huge buff for AST...

It would also help if we could see the TP of our party members. I usually just toss it on the tank and call it a day.

Yeah, just reported it as a bug here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...38#post3084738

Hopefully, they'll get on it.

And it just got moved into "Accepted Bugs". Woot!

[Leiloni]

It should be.

And the main issue I have with Spire/Ewer is that they're very specific as to their usefulness. Both are completely useless when:

1. The person is dodging AoEs and won't be using any skills.

2. The person is out of MP/TP already.

There's a 17% of an AST being able to help restore TP/MP so I don't feel like this infringes on BRD/MCH very much (especially since this is only one target, or nerfed hardcore if it's spread to AoE).

This way, if they're full but using TP/MP, we restore it for 20 sec as it's being used, but if they're NOT using TP/MP but have some missing, we can restore that, too.

Really, just making the cards less situational is a huge buff for AST...

It would also help if we could see the TP of our party members. I usually just toss it on the tank and call it a day.



And it just got moved into "Accepted Bugs". Woot!

We definitely need to be able to see the TP of our party members. It's very strange to design a game where both can be used for the primary resource pool, but only one shows in groups.

As for the TP/MP cards in general, they're really not all that useless. Pop them before/right at the start of a healing or dps intensive portion of a boss fight, or when the tank pulls a large pack of mobs, and that reduction becomes very useful.

Everyone here is complaining that AST has mana issues and they want us to use less of it, however Ewer does just that (I've also seen complaints on Reddit that large pulls use up all the TP of DPS, so again, the buff would be great for them as well). Beyond that, healers are really the only classes that need it, aside from the occasional usage on PLD/DRK apparently, and everyone here keeps complaining that WHM/SCH have better MP regen capabilities, so it logically follows then that you should just use it on yourself every time you get it.

As for the TP, there's a useful thread on Reddit where the OP gathered the preferred cards of various classes (submitted by players of those classes) that I've found quite useful to reference. Some dps classes do apparently find the TP card helpful.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...d_preferences/

I'm not saying people should never RR Ewer/Spire because obviously double duration is very useful, but there are definitely situations where actually using the buff is a good idea (or Spreading a Ewer for when you know a healing intensive portion of a fight is coming up, etc. as an example.) I see a lot of people saying they use Spear to reduce the CD of Luminiferous Aether which is a great idea, but embracing the RNG aspect of the class, you're not always going to get the card you want, so you need to make the best use of the ones you do, so saving and using Ewer is another way to accomplish the same thing.

Edit: And while I'm thinking along those lines, I think the best AST's are going to be the ones who know how to actually make the best use of everything they have. You simply cannot sit there and try to setup the perfect buff combo because it's not going to happen. Even in some of the class quests they mention that you can't control the cards you're dealt, simply what you do with them. If you aren't getting Bole as much as you want but you're getting Ewer, that can accomplish the same thing. Instead of having to heal the tank less, you can spam heal him more for less MP. Or if you really want Balance but you keep getting Spire, maybe RR it and see what you get next and think about using it - a less than ideal buff is better than no buff at all. One thing this class can is really focused on is the ability to keep up buffs pretty consistently, so we really need to do our best to make sure we're doing that. Otherwise, why bring an AST if all you're doing the entire dungeon run is sitting there cancelling/holding on to things to use at the most ideal moment? They can bring other classes for the occasional buff and more reliable emergency healing or healer dps.

[chumsy]

Exactly.

If you use Spear BEFORE you use LA, you'd get the benefit, but it does nothing if you use Spear after having already cast LA.

But once the bug is fixed, it'll reduce the cooldown of the ability even IF you've already used it and it's on cooldown, making it one of the best buffs in the game, really.

so it would work like this? lets say there's 100 sec CD on an ability, spear reduces 20%, therefore we get 80 sec left. Now lets say its cast mid way, when the ability has 80/100 sec left, it should therefore reduce the 80sec by 20% = 64sec?