Astrologian buffs confirmed

[Rahaya]

snip

My apologies to Cynfael if I caused any offense. My irritation at having conceded points ignored bubbled over. 'Dogpiling' was not in response to him personally, but in general. Don't post before morning coffee folks. And no, I will not stop responding.

AST as a healer needs to be fixed, full stop. It currently has very lackluster cooldowns and is not as well rounded as it should be. I have said this. I do not claim to 'beat' RNG, but rather work with it. Trial runs with the AST aiming for an effect for each boss such as Aoe Balance, with two - three minutes between bosses I have discovered that I am mostly able to provide a consistent result. It's how I speed up doing my roulettes currently.

There are two parts to the card system. The card themselves, and the manipulating of them. The first part needs minor, if any changes and apparently I have argued that poorly. The second part, the RNG and the use of cooldowns such as Shuffle and Spread could use help. Shuffle shouldn't draw the same card and can stand to have a shorter cooldown. Spread is very good, but really needs to have the 'in combat' restriction removed. I feel that a lot of the suggestions for balance in this thread go too far in the other direction. Reason being, the cards shouldn't be 'making up' for lackluster healing because they really can't. Cards to compete with songs as well as boost raid damage with reliability would mean the AST would essentially boot the BRDs and MCH out of the raid composition. I highly doubt SE would allow that, and it still doesn't answer that dead dps = 0 dps. To get the full use of Spear currently, communication is needed. That seems less of a problem to me with a raid group as that communication should already be happening, and while it doesn't do *nothing* tossing it on a random, it isn't being utilized to its fullest.

The suggestions seem to run in the vein of 'fix the CDs' (yes, they do need fixing), 'mana management' (which may go with the first as the WHM Tetragammaton and Assize are CDs that offer healing for no mana cost of help get mana back as examples), reduce card RNG (more reliable effects) and then buff the cards themselves. My argument is the card effects for at least 3/6 are equivalent to existing abilities. Balance, Arrow, Bole. Making them more reliable would be nice, but a card can also be drawn every thirty seconds. The CD for Rampart, for example, is 90 seconds. A belief is that Enhanced Royal Road is barely worth it, since you are burning another card to get the effect. Making it 'worth it' for burning the card, and increased reliability on drawing the card in the first place...basically gives AST Rampart every 60 seconds minimum. I don't think, currently, that the other two healers have something like that in their individual toolkits save for a crit Adlo, and *that* is RNG based.

That is the reason why I kept reiterating the cards short cooldown. That has been missed. In order to rework the card system so that we can draw X card right when we want to, I think it would be too unbalanced to keep the thirty second draw, minute Royal Road. The proposed refresh changes to Spire and Ewer would have to still be pretty insignificant. Goad has three minutes and for the BRD and MCH, they lose to use theirs. They also have to wait for MP return to use it again, with the opportunity cost of Foes/Hypercharge as well. The AST using a RR 1 minute TP card would cost them very little.

Either we end up with 6 buttons per card to press for the reliability of the buffs to compete, or...there really is no or. Apparently, the RNG alone is too much regardless. Boosting the cards, to remove the 'sting' of RNG, well, how much of a boost do the cards need? It sounds like they need to be monstrous, because reliable will always win out. And if its reliable, aren't the cards as is enough? I think SE should focus it's attention more on fixing the stances and doing more with the Sects and shoring up the healing. The cards would end up more like the fairy for SCH. Instead of 2/3 buffs locked to a particular summon (and costly to change out), it has 6 base buffs thirty seconds to a minute between usage. The cards are cool, but they are a gimmick. The AST's core concept is filling in the space next to a WHM or a SCH, and it should do that better. Not the cards.

Is this said better?