Things I'm starting to hate on AST

[GideonHighmourn]

Astrologian puts out basically as much as a white mage without the cooldowns so to say that the astro cannot output enough healing to cover the scholar additional dps is not entirely true.

You literally stated the problem why AST's healing can't match that of WHM's, and then said it's not true that AST's healing can't match WHM's? That's a real contradiction you've made there.

AST cannot match WHM's healing, because they lack the healing cool downs to do so. They also lack a faerie, which means that they cant contribute to a WHM (solo) healing the way a SCH can while DPS'ing.

[Spoekes]

Elaborate where card buffs are strong instead of repeating the phrase.

Noone said WHM or Astro can't push DPS, but they are more GCD-occupied doing so and willburn through mana as opposed to SCH that basically equals out on mana usage / income while DPSing.

[Vlady]

You literally stated the problem why AST's healing can't match that of WHM's, and then said it's not true that AST's healing can't match WHM's? That's a real contradiction you've made there.

AST cannot match WHM's healing, because they lack the healing cool downs to do so. They also lack a faerie, which means that they cant contribute to a WHM (solo) healing the way a SCH can while DPS'ing.

And you are saying that astros cannot match white mage because they should not be able too. I never said that astro should be able to match white mage in pure healing if you count the cooldowns. But an astro with cooldowns can easily keep up a raid in all content which is what matters. Astro's bring buffs over white mages which is by design.

If you want to quote me that is fine but please do not put words in your mouth just because you do not agree with me.

[GideonHighmourn]

If you want to quote me that is fine but please do not put words in your mouth just because you do not agree with me.

My post had nothing to do with making AST equal to WHM, rather I was just pointing out a flaw in your statement. There were no words placed into your mouth that you didn't say yourself.

Again, no one is advocating that AST become the same as WHM or SCH. Please, if you're going to quote me, don't put words in my mouth because you can't understand the point of a post.

Nocturnal actually provides stronger single target heals potency wise then white mage is capable of

That's fairly misleading. Benefic is actually 1 potency lower than Cure, and Benefic II is only 1 potency higher than Cure II. Not really enough to make NoctAST "stronger" single target healers than WHM's are, especially considering they lack things like Divine Seal and Regen which will far outpace the 1 potency difference in Cure II vs Benefic II.

You're the one who brought up healing as AST vs WHM at this point (and tried to claim they were equal, which they aren't, by a long shot), when you failed at trying to prove AST can magically add hundreds of DPS through card buffs.

[SovereignAegis]

tl;dr: Make AST cards better. This is the core mechanic of the class taking up numerous skills of their job... make them better.

Full:

I need to agree with this.

I have leveled AST at the same time as I leveled whm. However it is GLARINGLY OBVIOUS already that dungeon queues on average take 4-5 minutes longer on AST.
From what I have gathered, when I leveled WHM I could easily heal off almost anything and just spam stone to great effect. On the opposing end of things AST's HoT spell is heavily front loaded however at the cost to an even shorter duration than regen and lower healing potency overall causing the AST to have to leave cleric stance more often. This is further obvious when WHM can supplement their regen with asylum (A skill I hold as very useful) and AST lacks that same capability.

The cards feel nice when PERFECTLY executed. Like I mean the doubled duration / doubled potency arrow cards on the highest DPS. Anything less feels terrible.

Spear? Why even bother? Unless you are in a pre-planned group this card feels nearly useless. Maybe I just haven't explored into it much but at present all I can see it being useful for is pre-planned events (RNG though, gets in the way of this outright!) or for reduction in other ast abilities like celestial opposition. (Actually while we're on that WHY would we want to even do that?!?!?! CE without a card out is just a basic stun... something WHM gets to spam on Holy!)

I find Spire to be almost irritating to draw. Balance is nice but is it really THAT nice? It doesn't feel to me like it's doing much more than the Scholar's guaranteed Selene buff. (Actually if we very seriously compare SCH's Selene buff to a spread arrow buff... that took the AST a lot of luck AND planning and cooldowns just to get 15s of a marginally better buff out there?! It is CLEARLY inefficient in comparison!)

Now don't get me wrong, I love AST and seriously find the playstyle interesting... but at present the card system feels trivialized and leaves me sitting here asking myself why even bother with it? AST's heals are clearly lower than WHM. AST's damage migration is poor at best because WHM can cross class virus and e4e which are two essential damage mitigation tools and overall I just feel like AST trades in SO MUCH for what...? For what? Card system that is heavily based in RNG and non-guarantees that are ALSO weak in effect? It isn't really worth it.

It's like they watered down WHM and watered down scholar and put it into AST. That's the only way I can describe it, it obviously has WAY more direct healing power than Scholar but way less tools to migate damage like dome, e4e, virus, etc. It feels like a slap to the face after playing SCH and WHM to go to AST and have most of these damage control abilities stolen from us.

[VanEinstein]

The reason the current healing meta is what it currently is because some groups are sticking to the quota. Astrologian puts out basically as much as a white mage without the cooldowns so to say that the astro cannot output enough healing to cover the scholar additional dps is not entirely true. They provide their utility around card buffs which are quite strong in the hands of a skilled player who can coordinate with other people. And from my own personal parse against a (lol dummy) I was easily pushing 800 dps as well.

It's true that some players would prefer to stick to the quota as you say, and that *will* occasionally come about because some players would rather follow someone else's lead than formulate their own method. However, that does not mean that you can claim this to be the case for everyone. There is a solid reasoning behind the meta, and it works.


No matter how much you claim to put out as much healing as a White Mage, you simply aren't capable of it. Yes, your potencies aren't far off, but as an AST you have no means by which to push your healing forward in times of need or to take additional weight off your SCH partner. Divine Seal being available every 60 seconds atop the already higher base potencies is not something to sneeze at. While Asylum may not be the most potent of abilities, it is still providing additional healing at crucial moments that AST simply has no method of producing. Similarly, Assize is no joke (unless you enjoy calling it by another name, as I do). It's additional instant healing, at no cost.
I don't even need to go into your own dps, because you'd need to come out of Cleric stance far more frequently than a SCH paired with a WHM would. A scholar can only maintain Cleric stance for so long because of the presence of that fairy coupled with the top-tier healing capability of the WHM. You're also ignoring the fact that RNG is unreliable. You may enter Savage one of these times and find that you only ever pull the same two far from ideal cards repeatedly. Hell, I have. In such cases Astrologians support becomes a terrible joke. If you're coming up roses all the time on your draws, then I envy your good fortune.

[Vlady]

Until you actually get out there and do the parses then you will see instead of magically downloading the power of astro buffs. You can computate the range off p possible cards being pulled but when dozens of parses over the course of a month adds the average of buffing my family in dungeons it shows a different light.

[Cupcakesu]

Until you actually get out there and do the parses then you will see instead of magically downloading the power of astro buffs. You can computate the range off p possible cards being pulled but when dozens of parses over the course of a month adds the average of buffing my family in dungeons it shows a different light.

No one cares about the average you've obtained from parsing over a month. You are, hopefully, not doing the same fight for a month. What matters is the average DPS you've contributed through cards over the course of a fight, which can literally be 0 if luck hates you enough. The numbers you've expressed in the past and supposedly parsed are also numerically impossible so that doesn't help your case.

[Yurimi]

Until you actually get out there and do the parses then you will see instead of magically downloading the power of astro buffs. You can computate the range off p possible cards being pulled but when dozens of parses over the course of a month adds the average of buffing my family in dungeons it shows a different light.

then post some of these parses and show us, show us how you are adding 400dps to drg or how your adding 150+ dps to your brother friend or whatevers machinist to the whole run, lots of people have posted concrete evidence, some of us have actually taken the job into all content that isnt just 4 man pushover dungeons and provided our testimonial ,all we have gotten from you is exagerations and meaningless drivel that leads a majority of people to think you are either completely and utterly ignorant or your just a really bad troll. Take it into savage finish A1 then tell us you feel that the job is worth a HEALER slot where HEALING is your main priority. Provide evidence to back your claims instead of hyperbole.

[Spoekes]

Did you ever realise that someones numbers in a given fight will change from try to try?

Mechanics, perfomance etc. is what you see in your parser differences.
This has a tenfold bigger impact on DPS.

You might give balance to one particular DPS in a fight, but depending on mechnics he leaves with less DPS than the try before where you didn't buff them.