Astro in savage

[Codek]

I think you should read the conversation from the start. I was commenting about bole and CU making so that the affected targets would not take more than 10% or 20% max hp in damage. If that happens, rng or not those things would be horribly broken.
Also just FYI Adlo costs more than 1k mp at 60. With current gear, if it does not crit it is an extremely mp inefficient heal. And SCH crit rate atm is horrendously low. That "secondary effect" is pretty damn important.

I still don't get it, why is it OK for a lucky 5K Crit Adlo + Deployment tactics (~30% max health AOE shield) to cheese Ultimates, but a spreaded Bole (buffed to 20% AOE Shield) is shunned upon?

Both have luck involved. One is a big hit to MP, the other takes 1+ minute of setting up in advance.

Scratch that, I just re-read everything and realized the suggestion was for 10-20% Damage received, and not mitigated...lol, nvm.

[Ghishlain]

• 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.

Hi, thanks for dropping by, Grukumah =p

Here's some of my thoughts regarding AST in its current incarnation.

I won't comment about the card system as I know that's an incredible PITA to balance as an AST's buffs are directly dependent on RNG, player skill (both the AST and their party), and the AST's familiarity with other classes/jobs. I do like the idea of Ewer / Spire being Royal Roaded to Expand as Expand has the greatest potential increase to a party's power and both Ewer / Spire are situational compared to the other four cards in the deck.

In terms of healing potency, I feel the goal is to give AST more emergency heals as the potency values of the existing cures feel right. So, here are two ideas to consider to help that: (I apologize in advance if these ideas were mentioned somewhere else on these forums)

• Synastry

  Adjust to make it so that it will always affect the target, even if the AST in question is healing a target that has the Synastry buff. This will directly translate into increased HPS that isn't so situational to "two tank fights" like P2 Bismark and A1 Oppressor. If you wish to make this buff more readily available for use, you can also adjust the cool down to be 1 minute and reduce the potency to be 25% to suit the same potency per uptime. While this does in theory make it more potent than Divine Seal, it doesn't take into account AoE heals and HoT ticks, so I figure that's fair.

• Celestial Opposition

  I feel like if you made this ability grant a 15-20 second buff to AST that allows their Aspected spells to take into account BOTH sects, it may fix a lot of complaints about both the ability and the help increase HPS from the AST. It'd probably need some tweaking but I feel it's a good start and I feel fits the theme of AST and sects better.

[Dortharl]

I think the main issue should be that of the three healers in this game two are optimal and one sub optimal, not matter how you spin it, that is not balanced. Excuses about hybrid support are irrelevant as their is no support role in this game, there are 3 roles tank, healer and dps. Each healer should be equally effective at their role, they should be diverse in their methodology but equal in effect. Whatever buffs they provide are secondary not irrelevant but secondary, a lot of the discussion seems to discount that the other healer classes also provide buff whether it be passive or active, I think SE has seriously missed the mark with how it chooses to balance classes in this game.

They seem to have balanced AST with the fact the player will have a lvl 50 in mind, as if it's meant to be an alt class rather than something you would consider using to replace your primary job.

[Troile]

Hi, thanks for dropping by, Grukumah =p

Here's some of my thoughts regarding AST in its current incarnation.

I won't comment about the card system as I know that's an incredible PITA to balance as an AST's buffs are directly dependent on RNG, player skill (both the AST and their party), and the AST's familiarity with other classes/jobs. I do like the idea of Ewer / Spire being Royal Roaded to Expand as Expand has the greatest potential increase to a party's power and both Ewer / Spire are situational compared to the other four cards in the deck.

In terms of healing potency, I feel the goal is to give AST more emergency heals as the potency values of the existing cures feel right. So, here are two ideas to consider to help that: (I apologize in advance if these ideas were mentioned somewhere else on these forums)

• Synastry

  Adjust to make it so that it will always affect the target, even if the AST in question is healing a target that has the Synastry buff. This will directly translate into increased HPS that isn't so situational to "two tank fights" like P2 Bismark and A1 Oppressor. If you wish to make this buff more readily available for use, you can also adjust the cool down to be 1 minute and reduce the potency to be 25% to suit the same potency per uptime. While this does in theory make it more potent than Divine Seal, it doesn't take into account AoE heals and HoT ticks, so I figure that's fair.

• Celestial Opposition

  I feel like if you made this ability grant a 15-20 second buff to AST that allows their Aspected spells to take into account BOTH sects, it may fix a lot of complaints about both the ability and the help increase HPS from the AST. It'd probably need some tweaking but I feel it's a good start and I feel fits the theme of AST and sects better.

I have to say I like the idea of Celestial Opposition. Makes me wonder why we didn't have a cooldown from the start that allows both sects to be used at once. Though allowing the switching of sects in combat would grant a similar effect on a more consistent basis. Even if it would require two casts as opposed to the same cast. Nice suggestions.

On the other hand.....I feel like the Diurnal and Nocturnal bonuses wouldn't be compatible in the same spell. For instance, the shield effect lends itself to spamming. Ie: Cast aspected for shield - enemy hits tank - tank loses shield - recast aspected. If you were to spam a spell with both the regen and the shield, you would be wasting the previous spell's regen ticks.

Still a nice idea though, but it may be better to keep the bonuses separate by allowing the switching of stances in combat.

Perhaps one way to deal with that using your CO suggestion is to tweak how the regen is applied with each cast. For instance instead of just overwriting the current regen, it extends it for a few seconds with each cast up to a limit. For example:

First cast applies regen for 18 seconds. You cast it the second time with with 5 seconds left, it applies a regen effect for 23 seconds. You cast it again with 20 seconds left, but it only extends it to 30 seconds (the max cap). Of course this would only apply when under the buff effect of Celestial Opposition. When not under the buff effect, recasting a diurnal aspected benefic would simply overwrite the regen like normal.

[Kaelri]

Any Savage1 cleared ASTs that can offer some insight for me?

Just had an attempt on Faust with a pick up group and while our DPS was sitting solid, we wiped twice after the tank died when I ran out of mana.

Our PLD was solo tanking it and i asked him to pop hallowed ground at around 6-7 stacks (i believe 7), he didn't and he died as I'd ran out of mana. I asked him why didn't pop his immunity and he simply said "Hallowed only at 8 stacks", is this typical of a solo tank method?

I feel we would have killed Faust if he'd popped immunity sooner, I tried my absolute best to heal. I love this job and my faith in it is severely shaken after this experience, if anyone can offer insight I'd appreciate it~ thanks.

[Eisenhower]

With A1S cleared and working on A2S as a WHM, I'm amazed at players doing this as Astrologian. It's obviously possible to clear the content that way, but I imagine the overall stress is higher. So far I've only run AST in EX primals and normal Alexander.

As I've understood it the highest possible iL at the moment of this writing is 186. Assuming that the fight is tuned for 190-200 it's a possible, but strenuous task to tackle the content right now. Unless all players in the party are performing exceptionally well the healers need to help out in order to meet the DPS check. Perhaps even with that exceptional performance, healers will need to help with DPS. That's how we did it at least. Our SCH was in Cleric Stance quite a bit whilst I healed solo for various parts.

As a WHM pushing out that kind of healing across the group wasn't too hard (much due to DS and/or PoM), but mana-intensive. Between the Gunnery Pods, Hydrothermic Missiles and tank-busters there's a lot of damage to take care of. If someone falls it would eat up a large chunk of mana or even more importantly - a large chunk of the much needed DPS.

I'm a firm believer that Astrologians shouldn't be able to flat-out match a WHM in pure healing, or a SCH in shields and mitigation. That is the identity of of the WHM or the SCH. Encroaching on that identity would invalidate the usefulness of the job in question (i.e. why even have X?). The Astrologian must have its own identity. At the same time, the Astrologian must be able to reach the same end result (not necessarily through healing or mitigation) with the available tools without a too significant difference in cost or effort.

This brings me to the cards and the utility toolkit of the Astrologian. My impression is that they're not strong enough or reliable enough in empowering the group to replace whatever you'd lose from not bringing a SCH or WHM in progression content. How big a part gear and number scaling play in this I don't dare comment on.

• Lightspeed is now again useful for healing. The Lightspeed Trait however is basically useless as the ability would practically never be used to deal damage. In a DPS situation trading 25% resource cost for 25% damage dealt is nonsensical.
• Luminiferous Aether is a good ability to have, but since it's the only reliable source of mana management there needs to be some other way (trait, proc, combo effect etc.) to manage mana.
• Synastry is walking the line. For the size of the cooldown, the effect appears to be too weak. If Synastry worked on AoE healing, or copied the spell effect or had a longer duration I'd agree more with a long cooldown.
• Collective Unconscious has very limited use despite the potency-buff in Diurnal. For both sects the crux of the matter is the fact that the Astrologian cannot act or move whilst channeling. For Nocturnal there's the additional trouble of placing the Astrologian in danger if the mitigation shield is needed for other party members but not the Astrologian herself. Conceptually I like the idea of CU simply affecting all party members with a massive range. Balance and number-wise I have no idea how you'd balance it.
• Celestial Opposition feels like a mess of an ability. In a raid environment the biggest use is the buff elongation since most enemies will be immune to stun. But the stun effect is probably the reason his ability has a high cooldown. If the ability is meant for killing things more efficiently, why's the valuable buff elongation bundled with it and gated behind such a hefty cooldown?

As for the cards, they are conceptually very cool (reading the random future and guiding allies with buffs). But in progression I believe reliable and reproducible methods are much preferred. Right now the cards feel too weak to offset the price in healing power and mitigation the Astrologian had to pay for the deck. If the cards are made too strong, they'd just trivialise certain content. If the cooldown is too long, they'd lose even more reliability and it really doesn't feel like the game's framework can support a more complex card system. Whatever solution crops up, I'm curious.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Any Savage1 cleared ASTs that can offer some insight for me?

Just had an attempt on Faust with a pick up group and while our DPS was sitting solid, we wiped twice after the tank died when I ran out of mana.

Our PLD was solo tanking it and i asked him to pop hallowed ground at around 6-7 stacks (i believe 7), he didn't and he died as I'd ran out of mana. I asked him why didn't pop his immunity and he simply said "Hallowed only at 8 stacks", is this typical of a solo tank method?

I feel we would have killed Faust if he'd popped immunity sooner, I tried my absolute best to heal. I love this job and my faith in it is severely shaken after this experience, if anyone can offer insight I'd appreciate it~ thanks.

Hallowed is useless against Faust after increased pressure happens. It will breach HG and kill the tank regardless. It is basically a hard enrage. Most of the times my static killed Faust was with one or two tanks dead. SCH\AST composition.

As AST, if you can I would suggest to solo heal until Faust gets to 4 stacks to allow the SCH to go full dps. By the end both healers are going to be OOM and tanks will be dying, but it can be done.

[Kietsu]

Lightspeed is now again useful for healing. The Lightspeed Trait however is basically useless as the ability would practically never be used to deal damage. In a DPS situation trading 25% resource cost for 25% damage dealt is nonsensical.

...wow, we actually have a Lightspeed trait.

How incredibly worthless!

[Ghishlain]

I have to say I like the idea of Celestial Opposition. Makes me wonder why we didn't have a cooldown from the start that allows both sects to be used at once. Though allowing the switching of sects in combat would grant a similar effect on a more consistent basis. Even if it would require two casts as opposed to the same cast. Nice suggestions.

On the other hand.....I feel like the Diurnal and Nocturnal bonuses wouldn't be compatible in the same spell. For instance, the shield effect lends itself to spamming. Ie: Cast aspected for shield - enemy hits tank - tank loses shield - recast aspected. If you were to spam a spell with both the regen and the shield, you would be wasting the previous spell's regen ticks.

Still a nice idea though, but it may be better to keep the bonuses separate by allowing the switching of stances in combat.

Perhaps one way to deal with that using your CO suggestion is to tweak how the regen is applied with each cast. For instance instead of just overwriting the current regen, it extends it for a few seconds with each cast up to a limit. For example:

First cast applies regen for 18 seconds. You cast it the second time with with 5 seconds left, it applies a regen effect for 23 seconds. You cast it again with 20 seconds left, but it only extends it to 30 seconds (the max cap). Of course this would only apply when under the buff effect of Celestial Opposition. When not under the buff effect, recasting a diurnal aspected benefic would simply overwrite the regen like normal.

I do like that suggestion for the Regen aspect, and they already have some code for that in the form of Blood of the Dragon and Endochain. So, I can see that working well.

In the end, I hope for a stance switch more than anything else. I would've been absolutely stoked for AST if it kept the stance changing aspect that Yoshi-P initially commented on back at its inception. Ah well.

If anything, even if you're just overriding the Regen all the time, at least it's "something" and not nothing.

[Leiloni]

The comment in question from Yoshi-P was with respect that they tune fights for specific ilvls and only take into account tank and DPS damage for that particular ilvl.

If you make the assumption that the baseline for A1S is i190 and the maximum ilvl achievable at this time is i186-i188, then yes, healer's will need to DPS to make up for the deficit that is unachievable due to lower than baseline ilvl.

Once your group hits that i190 mark, then Faust should be achievable without the addition of healer DPS.

[Edit] Just coming back to this a bit more after some more thought.

This means to me that, no, I do not think the dev's are going against their design philosophy. However, with that being said we don't know how tuned it is for that ilvl either. For example, it's now theoretically possible to get DPS from 0 to 1300 depending on your skill and job. If S-E tuned it for a higher end of the skill level spectrum, the obviously the overall DPS check would be increased to suit.

i.e.
If the "average" DPS can do on average 800 DPS, then damage check for DPS for the "average" would be tuned to 3,200.
If the "skilled" DPS can do on average 1,200 DPS, then the damage check for DPS for the "skilled" would be to 4,800.

In some respects, it feels like they tuned the actual DPS for Savage to be higher than average, thus we see the many people hitting the brick wall known as Faust at the current ilvl.

Not quite. I think the most likely scenario is that currently people are going in below the intended minimum gear levels. Especially if you consider that they released Alex Normal first which gives i190 gear and then the same patch that gave us Alex Savage introduced i200 gear, they're likely designing Savage for an average ilevel of i190 or higher. Most games introduce content in this same way. Game designers intend for people to complete all of the content before moving on to the next step. So that means taking your time to gear out in the previously available sets - i190 and i200 - before clearing Savage. We know they're aware people go in before that, and that's how it goes in every game, but that's how most games design progression.

What he really said in terms of dps was "For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS". So they're not requiring the absolute best dps if they're cutting that number by 10-15%. Assuming proper gear, they're allowing for a bit of a margin of error already. Better players will do it easier and faster with the way it's designed, allowing others to just eek by.