Astro in savage

[RichardButte]

Uh, Richard, no offense, but I think you need to stop talking about math ^^;

Forgive me father, for I have sinned: i was tired and forgot to divide by two (I'll flog myself later in penance, don't you worry).

That totally justifies telling me that I "need to stop talking about math", which is then totally not offensive because it was prefaced with "no offense".

Never mind the fact that I was wrong in my favor, meaning my argument was actually stronger than I stated, so it's not like I was trying to mislead anyone.

Besides, if I stopped talking about math, who would you be smarmy and condescending to?

Overall, the more I think about it, the happier I am with how the card system is. It needs a few minor tweaks - my gut instinct tells me increasing Balance and Arrow by 2% would be nice,or reducing Draw to a 20-25s CD would be great too.

The more I think about it, the more astonished I am that you can revel in the math of this discussion like a, no offense, pig rolling in filth, yet somehow still completely miss the point of it...

We're talking about the fact that the buffs do not compensate for the AST's overall craptacular healing and terribad mana management. No amount of card micromanaging is going to change that fact.

Either the cards make a HUGE impact on ending the fight more quickly or the AST needs to have its healing potencies dramatically increased.

And you think a 2% increase on Bole and Balance is going to fix anything? Or these generally crap buffs arriving 5-10 seconds faster?

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt (which is clearly more than you do for me...) and assume that in part two you follow it up with "...and some serious buffs to emergency healing potency and mana regen."

[Ghishlain]

Forgive me father, for I have sinned: i was tired and forgot to divide by two.

That totally justifies telling me that I "need to stop talking about math", which is then totally not offensive because it was prefaced with "no offense".

Never mind the fact that I was wrong in my favor, meaning my argument was actually stronger than I stated, so it's not like I was trying to mislead anyone.

Besides, if I stopped talking about math, who would you be smarmy and condescending to?

Consider how badly you use math to try to justify your position, yes, you should stop talking about math. Considering you're trying to argue balance, you're continued mishandling of math does nothing more than undermine your own position as an advocate for AST balance. I was trying to be nice and not try to make you look like a complete fool but hey, if you want to be salty, let's play.

1.5% for each of 8 people, which is a cumulative increase of 12%. If we want to call it 1.5%, we can, we just have to then divide AST's 1.5% by 8 to get the actual number since we're only casting that buff on one person instead of 8.

The 10% chance at boosting DPS for 15 seconds comes at the cost of a 1 in 6 chance to get that ability, which averages out to a 1.67% DPS boost on one player per minute. It would have to be closer to a 40-60% DPS increase for 15 seconds to actually be worth anything

Your first error with your math is you have no understanding about how to balance the power of a card with the probability of the effect you're trying to garner. When you tried to equate 8 people doing 1.5% additional damage is the same as one person getting a 12% increase on a single player, you showed how heavy handed your balance suggestions actually are. As every player in the game has a different DPS potential due to their job, skill, and equipment, giving an extreme single target boost would be devastating to game balance.

Let's consider your example of boosting Balance and Arrow to 40-60%. Now, let's consider this A1S parse for Faust - the DPS check wall and make an assumption that we're gonna RR every first card for the bonus effect. Since we have Shuffle up every minute, you'll be guaranteed to get Arrow or Balance 55.5% [ 1/3 + ( 1/3 * 2/3) = 55.5%] of the time. We will also assume Arrow / Balance gives the same boost despite the job in question just for easy math (since everyone's baseline is Fey Wind 1.5% haste increase = 1.5% DPS increase).

Group DPS = 8,020
SMN DPS (highest) = 1,581.66

Extend Balance / Arrow = 20-30% increase in DPS 55.5% of the time = 11.1% - 16.7% increase = SMN DPS being increased by 175.56-264.14. A 2.2% to 3.3% increase in total raid DPS.
Enhanced Balance / Arrow = 15%-22.5% increase in DPS 55.5% of the time 8.3% - 12.5% = SMN DPS being increased by 131.28 - 197.71. A 1.6% to 2.5% increase in total raid DPS.
Expand Balance / Arrow = 10-15% increase in raid DPS 55% of the time = 5.6% to 8.3% increase to total raid DPS

So, right there alone, getting the WORST card combination is still a minimum of a 1.6% raid DPS increase. Then consider that drawing Balance in your initial draw is equal to drawing Extend. This means you have a 50% chance to get Extend (Balance/Arrow/Spear), 16.7% chance to get Enhance (Bole), and 33.3% chance to get Expand (Ewer/Spire). If you do the weighted averages.

With a 40% Balance/Arrow - 2.2%*0.50 + 1.6%*0.167 + 5.6%*0.333 = 1.10% + 0.27% + 1.86% = 3.23% average increase to raid damage
With a 60% Balance/Arrow - 3.3%*0.50 + 2.5%*0.167 + 8.3%*0.333 = 1.65% + 0.42% + 2.76% = 4.83% average increase to raid damage

So, at this point, why would I bother playing any other healer if double AST, with the buffs you're suggesting, and just have them alternate when they Royal Road and buff?

people would cry OP because they don't understand how statistics work...

^ Which leads to the irony of this statement.

The more I think about it, the more astonished I am that you can revel in the math of this discussion like a, no offense, pig rolling in filth, yet somehow still completely miss the point of it...

We're talking about the fact that the buffs do not compensate for the AST's overall craptacular healing and terribad mana management. No amount of card micromanaging is going to change that fact.

Either the cards make a HUGE impact on ending the fight more quickly or the AST needs to have its healing potencies dramatically increased

I haven't missed the point. I just take issue with your attempts to make the card system "better" when it doesn't need the dramatic buffs that you continually suggest.

To me, AST will never be viable in any progression content because they lack the proper tools to heal efficiently. Buffs of any nature won't do you any good if your tanks and DPS are lying flat on the ground, and no amount of "buffs to cards" will fix that. Your buffs to cards will make AST the defacto healer to go to in farm content, but do nothing for low ilvl progression content. There will be an inflection point in player skill, gear, and job composition that will put an AST over a SCH or WHM in progression content, but that point will be a very narrow range.

That's why I made a few suggestions to Synastry and Celestial Opposition a few pages back to help with an ASTs output. Just to add to that, I'd like to see Enhanced Benefic be adjusted for which sect you're in. Having Diurnal Sect Benefic proc should make the spell become oGCD and having Nocturnal Sect Benefic proc should either make the spell cheaper in MP or heal for a higher %, perhaps in the range of 20-30%.

First thing first - balance the baseline healing toolkit so it's perfectly viable to take any healer to any content. Then make tweaks to the unique features of their kit. Afterwards, let the player's decide which healer they want to take based on their skill, gear, comfort level, and job composition.

[TyloRime]

Most of us wishing to main Astrologian in progression content would agree the Job needs more help than its been given... We're "on the same side" so to speak, so perhaps we could contribute to the feedback discussion witgout being downright rude and hateful towards each other, considering we all want the same end result: a viable end-game healer.

[Kietsu]

(A long and intelligent post goes here)

The problem with the cards, and the current meta as it stands, is that the amount of damage you add to the party's total DPS is almost always less than it would be if:
A) You were a Scholar.
B) You were a White Mage, thus allowing your Scholar to spend more time dealing damage.

[Elleia]

In my opinion, the main issue with AST is that it lacks the healing ability and buffs to enable the same amount of DPS that a SCH/WHM combo can bring.

Using savage Faust as an example, I typically pull ~200 DPS on my WHM before switching over to healing while our SCH does between 600-750 (an all time high for him). I don't believe there is any combination of cards that would increase DPS by 800 overall, even if rng is being good to you.

With a SCH/AST combo, the AST has a much harder time solo healing than a WHM, and in most cases, the SCH cannot afford to dps as much. I have yet to try WHM/AST, as my healing partner only has his SCH leveled. I would assume this would allow the AST to directly dps a bit more, but even then I doubt the dps would match up.

I do love my AST and yes, it is capable of healing all content. Unfortunately at the moment, it doesn't bring much to the table when compared to the other healers.

[Ghishlain]

I'm not a math wiz, but I'm going to try to follow the logic of this sentence and equation. Draw is on a 30 second cooldown and Shuffle on a 60. So you can draw a card 3 times a minute. 2 of the 6 cards are the ones we would want. This means we have 1/3 chance to get something useful on one Draw and 2/3 chances on another draw (1/3 on second Draw, then another 1/3 after you Shuffle the one you don't want). I still can't seem to figure out what the first 1/3rd refers to in that equation? I know it's Friday afternoon and I'm tired so maybe I'm way off base, so Ghishlain can you explain it? I'm curious the thought process.

I'm no statistician, so anyone with more knowledge in field can correct my logic if I'm mistaken. If I recall my math properly, here's the logic.

The first 1/3 is the chance of you drawing the desired card (Arrow / Balance). This is a 33.3% probability

The second half of the equation is 1/3 * 2/3. This is the math to indicate the probability of drawing Arrow / Balance again if you had the opportunity to re roll your chances. You have a 2/3 chance to require a re-roll, and in that re-roll you have a 1/3 chance to get the card you want - hence the 1/3 * 2/3 = 2/9 or 22.2% chance.

You combine the two probabilities together to ascertain the probability of acquiring an Arrow / Balance card in two attempts, which is 55.5%.

With the assumption that I intend to RR my first card (regardless of the situation), my second draw will always be at the one minute after I potentially used a shuffle two draws ago, so I will always have shuffle up at the same time I'm drawing the card I want to use my RR effect on.

[Kira_Yoshikage]

I'm no statistician, so anyone with more knowledge in field can correct my logic if I'm mistaken. If I recall my math properly, here's the logic.

The first 1/3 is the chance of you drawing the desired card (Arrow / Balance). This is a 33.3% probability
...

This is a little overcomplicated. All you need to do is calculate the probability of not getting a card you want and inverting that to get the probability of the card you want showing up. Basically, 1 - (2/3)*(2/3) = 0.55555555555555 = 55.5%. It's also quite easy to calculate the chances of drawing the card you want if shuffle can't redraw a card: 1 - (4/6)*(3/6) = 2/3 = 66.6666666666% for getting either arrow or balance and 1 - (5/6) * (4/6) = 44.4444444444444% to draw a specific card using shuffle.

[Leiloni]

I'm no statistician, so anyone with more knowledge in field can correct my logic if I'm mistaken. If I recall my math properly, here's the logic.


The first 1/3 is the chance of you drawing the desired card (Arrow / Balance). This is a 33.3% probability

The second half of the equation is 1/3 * 2/3. This is the math to indicate the probability of drawing Arrow / Balance again if you had the opportunity to re roll your chances. You have a 2/3 chance to require a re-roll, and in that re-roll you have a 1/3 chance to get the card you want - hence the 1/3 * 2/3 = 2/9 or 22.2% chance.

You combine the two probabilities together to ascertain the probability of acquiring an Arrow / Balance card in two attempts, which is 55.5%.

With the assumption that I intend to RR my first card (regardless of the situation), my second draw will always be at the one minute after I potentially used a shuffle two draws ago, so I will always have shuffle up at the same time I'm drawing the card I want to use my RR effect on.

Thank you for the explanation!

Also, where did my post go?

[Lastelli]

snip

I confess I got a little lost in your argument with RichardButte. However, I feel like a 1.6% dps increase at the very least is a decent enough compensation for the current weaknesses of AST. Remember that using AST basically means that your co-healer cannot dps optimally (and you cannot dps as well because mana issues and weak healing) and this is a huge problem. The numbers you showed would still not be enough to replace a SCH's missing dps. Double AST isn't possible because you would lack healing power, the party would just die.
Also

Expand Balance / Arrow = 10-15% increase in raid DPS 55% of the time = 5.6% to 8.3% increase to total raid DPS

should be divided by 2 (the effectiveness of cards is halved when expanding). It would still trivialize very short (30 seconds or less) dps checks, yes, but in the long run it should be ok.
I believe that a more interesting case to analyze is the current contribution of AST to the raid dps. Again, assuming you will RR the first card and use shuffle on the 2nd draw, the probability of having an expanded arrow/balance should be 1/3*(1/3+1/3)=22.2% (actually a little higher because of spread, but let's keep things easy). The probability of having extended/enhanced arrow/balance are the same. Assuming balance=arrow for dps increase (I'm not very comfortable with this assumption, but still...), this basically means that this will provide an expected raid dps increase of 22.2%*5%/3+22.2%*15%/(6*2)+22.2%*10%/(6*2)=0.37%+0.28%+0.19%=0.85%.
I assumed that CO is used on the expanded version, time dilation on the enhanced version and some other assumptions about the contribution of the "best" dps player. Also I'm assuming constant dps (no "burn phases"). Let's multiply this by 4 (i.e. let's assume arrow/balance are 40%). We get 3.4% expected (avg) dps increase (similar to what you did). This is just to say that the idea of doubling or even tripling the effectiveness of cards is still not enough. Even more, an avg 5% dps increase (that is what you computed as the avg for a 60% arrow/balance and I think you're very close) is hardly better than a SCH that can full dps (mind you, the SCH is doing 5% of the raid dps in the parse you posted, and SCH+WHM is 7%) because it's an expected (uncertain) value, which is always "worse" than the same certain value unless the party really loves risk. Let me make this extreme example: 60% balance, expanded (30% raid dps increase) for 20 seconds every minute (CO on 60secs cooldown) and you draw perfect cards=10% total raid dps increase in the best case scenario. If healers can't dps because healing is harder with AST, this isn't much better than having WHM/SCH and healers can dps: according to this parse, it means 8130 raid dps with AST's buffs versus 8020 raid dps with SCH/WHM. Doesn't look too OP, right? As Zholi put it

Their (cards') power needs to be boosted so much that most people's initial reaction will be that the developers have gone overboard.

So...yeah I can't see an easy solution. Statistically speaking, a 50% effect of cards should be about right to make it on par with SCH/WHM if (big if) we believe that healers cannot dps when there's an AST in the party. However, this would make all short dps checks really easy to handle. But there's more: in a very lucky try (AST drawing very good cards) a party could meet dps checks too soon and the more hardcore parties might be able to clear the content in a few days, depending on their luck. This is why I think AST should be revamped. As you said, if they simply perform some fine tuning on the current skills I believe (hopefully I'm wrong) that AST will never be a viabe healer for raid progression...a pity. On the other hand, if they make AST statistically on par with the other healers, there will always be a chance that a lucky party will clear the content too soon, making AST mandatory for raiders aiming to world and server first clears.
Right now however cards are not enough even to compensate for AST's weaker dps.