Astro in savage

[Grekumah]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback!

We'd like to share the dev. team's thoughts and approach in regards to the current balance of astrologians.

• Astrologian's healing potency and cards effects

  Astrologian's healing potency and card effects were set with a party's total offensive and defensive capabilities in mind, as they can increase various effects of other party members using their cards.
  
  The development team is observing player progression in raids and dungeons to ensure the game balance is set up appropriately for each piece of content. If they feel it needs further adjustments, they'll consider making adjustments based on player data and feedback.
  

• Future feedback

  The development team is constantly observing in-game data, but they're also using the feedback received on the forums when making future adjustments. Comments regarding how astrologians feel when healing throughout the various areas of content is very useful, so please continue to send us specific requests on each action's effect when battling through the different instances.

[RichardButte]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the update!

I feel like the recent changes were a step in the right direction, but overall I feel like ASTs healing potency is still just too weak. I can feel the difference even when healing dungeons on my SCH vs. AST: if the group is good and doesn't get hit, either will do fine. If the group is bad and gets hit by extra damage, the AST suffers while the SCH manages just fine in identical ilev.

Consider the following ideas:

-A switch like Diurnal and Noct that cannot be disabled in combat that will weaken the heals while boosting the card buff potency, allowing an AST to choose between the "reliable" or "risky but rewarding" playstyles before combat begins.

-An ability like Shuffle that, instead of drawing another card, sacrifices the drawn card to boost AST's healing potency for a duration or uses the card as a castable heal instead of a buff

-A shorter cool down on Luminerfous Aeither or more potency on its regen. The Ewer card should be a bonus to use on the party, not a necessity for AST to try to fix its mana issues.

AST isn't too far off from where it needs to be, but they just pale in comparison to what SCH and WHM bring to the table as healers.

[LycorisSelunis]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback!

I just want to say that you guys are awesome for taking your time with this. It is far better to take in as much feedback and other info as possible to avoid being too heavy-handed with changes, or changing the wrong things. I truly feel that when more AST changes come, they will be done right.

[Altanas]

...
[*]Astrologian's healing potency and cards effects

Given that AST is basically a SWTOR "Sawbones"/smuggler-healer which in turn is some form of WoW healer....

1. There should be more synergy between criticals and MP recover or cooldown times

Aspected Benefic in Diurnal should have a good chance for "tics" to crit. When a tic crits then the cooldown on Essential Dignity should reduce by 1 second.

Therefore, having Aspected Benefic up on lots of party members at one time for 18 seconds each, you might reduce the cooldown on Essnetial Dignity an awful lot.

I will mention at this point that in the SWTOR equivalent of Astrologian, its Aspected Benefic can be stacked twice on each party member, has exactly the same potency, has exactly the same duration time, and has exactly the same recast time. ...

2. As a quick healer there should be emphasis on MP management with reward.

Quick consistent healing rather than burst healing, using steady levels of MP rather than spikes of MP. If MP is over 50% then MP refreshes at a better percentage. If you go under 50% MP, refresh is slower and more painful and thus you start to rely on the MP refreshing abilities.


3. There needs to be more synergy between healing and cards.

Use of heals should have a decent percentage to proc a buff or a charge. That buff should then allow the use of "Draw" with no cooldown whatsoever.

[Elim]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi, Grekumah. I just wanted to make sure you saw this thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ring-A1-Savage.

It mirrors most of my thoughts on AST, as someone who also went into A1 savage. While capable of clearing it, AST simply lacks synergy with SCH and WHM. And AST's (RNG) cards do not make up for it's low DPS...

I realize that the devs do not take healer DPS into consideration, but the playerbase (that raids) does.

[Leiloni]

I realize that the devs do not take healer DPS into consideration, but the playerbase (that raids) does.

If you've read the quote where they say that then you've already read the rest of it where they basically say they don't care. They don't design raids to only be done by the 1% that go in undergeared and need healer dps. They design it for a higher gear level where healer dps doesn't matter, so that a larger portion of the playerbase can actually go in and complete the content without feeling like they need to do more than what their class was designed for.

Because, you know, they're in this to make money so making the most amount of players feel like content is within their reach is important. If you expect them to change the way classes and raids are designed just for those world first/first week clear groups, then Wildstar's failure would like to say hello.

I'm not saying you can just go and change people's expectations, but they balance the game with certain ideas in mind so if you're playing in a different manner than intended, you're going to have to expect different results.

[RichardButte]

If you've read the quote where they say that then you've already read the rest of it where they basically say they don't care. They don't design raids to only be done by the 1% that go in undergeared and need healer dps. They design it for a higher gear level where healer dps doesn't matter, so that a larger portion of the playerbase can actually go in and complete the content without feeling like they need to do more than what their class was designed for. I'm not saying you can just go and change people's expectations, but they balance the game with certain ideas in mind so if you're playing in a different manner than intended, you're going to have to expect different results.

This seems a bit suspect to me, mainly because healer DPS only gets better as a group gets more geared and for them to outright IGNORE its existence is just bizarre.

If healers are able to DPS now when everyone has worse gear (weaker heals, lower HP, etc.), they should only be able to do even MORE DPS when players are geared to the point where the content will feel almost trivial...

The question you should ask are they healing properly and are they using their free heal everytime they need a big heal to save on MP also are they using synastry to help cure multiple people saving mp.

So you're going with the "they don't know how to play the class" argument, eh?

[Leiloni]

This seems a bit suspect to me, mainly because healer DPS only gets better as a group gets more geared and for them to outright IGNORE its existence is just bizarre.

If healers are able to DPS now when everyone has worse gear (weaker heals, lower HP, etc.), they should only be able to do even MORE DPS when players are geared to the point where the content will feel almost trivial...

Yes but their point was in that quote was to say that once your whole group has enough gear, healer dps is not needed to clear. So sure your healers will have more dps, but so will your tanks and dps. They don't care if healers dps to make it go faster, but they're not making it required to clear, simply because that would severely limit the amount of players that can clear the content (and then you'd have a Wildstar style situation on your hands). That's a big difference.

Realistically no game balances anything around the 1%, because you want to make games and most of the content accessible.

[RichardButte]

Yes but their point was in that quote was to say that once your whole group has enough gear, healer dps is not needed to clear. So sure your healers will have more dps, but so will your tanks and dps. They don't care if healers dps to make it go faster, but they're not making it required to clear, simply because that would severely limit the amount of players that can clear the content (and then you'd have a Wildstar style situation on your hands). That's a big difference.

Well, yeah, but that would imply that the content should be doubly easier once everyone is geared, right?

Eh, it is what it is, but it's not relevant to the discussion since we're still not seeing significant DPS increases from ASTs anyway (certainly not enough to justify their weaker heals).

[Leiloni]

Well, yeah, but that would imply that the content should be doubly easier once everyone is geared, right?

Eh, it is what it is, but it's not relevant to the discussion since we're still not seeing significant DPS increases from ASTs anyway (certainly not enough to justify their weaker heals).

Well you have to remember though that the people completing Savage now, that can only clear it with healer dps, are doing it undergeared. They should otherwise not be in there. When you have better gear - the point at which the average player decides to go in and try Savage - then it'll be a different experience. Yes it'll be easier than it is now, but that's by design.