Astrologian "BUFFS"

[Vlady]

Astro contributes with buffs that are strong if you can take the time to master it. You have to watch the other people for when they usr thier buffs to stack yours with it. True it's a bitch to find a raid team ti coordinate with you on that level but when you see a dps top 2100 dps during that period is pure gold.

[Cynfael]

Astro contributes with buffs that are strong if you can take the time to master it. You have to watch the other people for when they usr thier buffs to stack yours with it. True it's a bitch to find a raid team ti coordinate with you on that level but when you see a dps top 2100 dps during that period is pure gold.

It's fine if you want to keep touting AST as a great Job despite all evidence to the contrary, but let's at least try to be a little bit real about numbers.

Please explain to the class how your Balance card is super-powering DPS to push 2100. Openers, AoE bursts, and Ravana EX vuln phases do not count....

[NovaLevossida]

It's fine if you want to keep touting AST as a great Job despite all evidence to the contrary, but let's at least try to be a little bit real about numbers.

Please explain to the class how your Balance card is super-powering DPS to push 2100. Openers, AoE bursts, and Ravana EX vuln phases do not count....

Yeah, I can't see hitting that without something like AoE bursts, but then again you don't need an AST to do ridiculous damage as a SMN hitting every button you have available to you either.

[Ahlah]

To make the awful card system slightly more tolerable:

• Change Draw recast to 15 sec
• Extend all cards effect to 30 sec
• Can only have one kind of card out at any given time - e.g. no double balance
• Royal Road (Ewer) - instantly restore 10% of own MP and MP of all nearby members
• Roryal Road (Spire) - instantly restore 10% of own TP and TP of all nearby members

Personally I will like AST to have more specialised role depending on the party needs:

Diurnal sect ('helaer stance")
Can only draw Ewer, Bole and Spear cards
20% chance Luminiferous aether recast will be reset when a card is drawn
Change Spear effect to healing potency +20%

Nocturnal sect ('buffer stance")
Can only draw Balance, Arrow and Spire cards
20% chance Time dilation recast will be reset when a card is drawn

AST will have decent healing power when needed and sacrifice some healing ability to buff the party in less healing intensive activities (e.g. dungeon)

[VitalSuit]

To make the awful card system slightly more tolerable:

• Change Draw recast to 15 sec
• Extend all cards effect to 30 sec
• Can only have one kind of card out at any given time - e.g. no double balance
• Royal Road (Ewer) - instantly restore 10% of own MP and MP of all nearby members
• Royal Road (Spire) - instantly restore 10% of own TP and TP of all nearby members

Glad you're not part of the balance team because that would make AST op.

15 sec draw time with a 33% chance to draw spire or ewer (depending on sect) and royal roading it would instantly restore 10% mp or 10% tp? That's stupid and would give you less of a reason to bring a bard or machinist.

[Ahlah]

15 sec draw time with a 33% chance to draw spire or ewer (depending on sect) and royal roading it would instantly restore 10% mp or 10% tp? That's stupid and would give you less of a reason to bring a bard or machinist.

With my current gear, 10% MP isn't even sufficient to cover the cost for one Aspected Helios. Statistically speaking that's 1 free spell every 45 secs. The probability of back to back Ewer or Spire is only 10%, not counting delay due to overlapping Royal Road recast and the time taken to position yourself in order to land the effect on nearby players. In high end raid fight the chances of you being able to do so on both tanks and backline jobs are nearly non existent.

In buffer stance, ASTs already give up sufficient healing power to justify potential free 10% TP. again not only the AST will struggle to place aoe on all dps, he/she also risk getting hit by aoe attack.

I don't see how that can make AST OP.

[Vlady]

Glad you're not part of the balance team because that would make AST op.

15 sec draw time with a 33% chance to draw spire or ewer (depending on sect) and royal roading it would instantly restore 10% mp or 10% tp? That's stupid and would give you less of a reason to bring a bard or machinist.

Yeah. Frustrates me that SE gives us a challenging job then people either downplay it as weak and those who do play it well are dragging other people down. Then we have the people who make astro the super saiyan of healers. No matter what you do you cannot win with people. Astrologian healing and buffing strength is fine. Those should not be touched and I know SE will look at numbers over whining.

[Cupcakesu]

Astrologian buffing strength is fine. Those should not be touched.

I can only laugh at this statement. The only time I actually felt like my cards were doing anything impactful was when I had a 15% Balance on a Summoner during 4-man content extended with Time Dilation. Otherwise our buffs are negligible, as even a 5% boost for 15s in 8-man parties seems unimportant and unlikely. Ewer can be nice as well but most of the time I'm using it on myself, which defeats the purpose of the system.

I've been browsing the Healer Roles forum for weeks now, eagerly going through every AST thread, and you are literally one of maybe three people that seem to think AST is acceptable right now. Yes, they've cleared A1S, but afterward most parties dropped it because it wasn't worth the extra effort and they realized its shortcomings.

I desperately want Astrologian to work because I enjoy it more than SCH or WHM, but every time I play it I just feel like I'm gimping my potential.

[Cynfael]

Yeah. Frustrates me that SE gives us a challenging job then people either downplay it as weak and those who do play it well are dragging other people down. Then we have the people who make astro the super saiyan of healers. No matter what you do you cannot win with people. Astrologian healing and buffing strength is fine. Those should not be touched and I know SE will look at numbers over whining.

While I actually agree with some of what you said there, SE will likely be continuing to buff/tweak AST if they look at numbers, because numbers don't seem to make a great case for AST being competitive.

Like I said before, it's not that the Job is challenging, it's that the tools range mostly from basic to subpar. Giving one job an inherent handicap may elevate the skill floor for playing it decently, but it doesn't necessarily provide any distinct advantage for playing it well when compared to playing another healer at the same skill level.

[Miiu]

Yeah. Frustrates me that SE gives us a challenging job then people either downplay it as weak and those who do play it well are dragging other people down. Then we have the people who make astro the super saiyan of healers. No matter what you do you cannot win with people. Astrologian healing and buffing strength is fine. Those should not be touched and I know SE will look at numbers over whining.

Yep like SE looked at the numbers before the Warrior rework in ARR and said they are fine.
To be honest Vlady the more you post the more I think you are out of touch with the whole game or you're just completely oblivious to what people are actually complaining about.
Sometimes just looking at the numbers doesn't do any good. You have to look at the how the community is playing your game. If you introduce a class that doesn't fit the current playstyle even though on paper it should do fine(which in this case doesn't). You can only do 2 things. Rework/Change the class to fit the current playstyle/meta or change the meta. But that isn't possible anymore since the new abilties WHM and SCH got only reinforced the current META.

We all here agree that AST isn't broken, which is shown by the people who cleared Savage Floor 1 and 2 with an AST in team. But even those AST players are saying that something isn't right.
You can have the opinion that AST are like you said the "super saiyan" of healers all you want but as of right now AST is not on par with the other two healers in no way shape or form.