Astro in savage

[Ghishlain]

I was starting to wonder this, myself. I didn't jump into the AST train on day one after playing around with it for a bit, but I was almost certain their stances were always mutually exclusive once you were in combat. Heard him saying this a lot around the forums as being the "answer" for AST's issues. Guess it really was just more non-sense. I remember people speculating that you could Sect-Dance, as that was the impression many people had, but it was never an actuality, as far as I recall.

I've heard people say that in development you could stance dance and it was a very last minute change before the class was released to prevent that.

I can't find it ATM but one of the initial interviews with Yoshi-P mentioned that AST would be able to "change their stance with a long cooldown" or something to that effect . This is probably where most of the information regarding "stance change would be cool!" comes from. Whether it's a last minute decision or not to change it, we'll never know.

Here are a couple of tidbits from random sources here or there.

Famitsu PAXEast translated interview (source 1)

Astrologists can switch between a heal stance or a barrier stance. It's actually a bit too strong so there'll be restrictions on how often you can switch stances, a delay of some kind. Spells remain the same, their affects just change dependong on stance so it's not like you'll need to juggle 2x more skills than other classes.

Famitsu PAXEast translated interview (source 2)

Tell us a bit more about the two styles of astrologian.

Y: The best way to put it simply is that you'll be able to switch between stances of a pure healer type and a barrier type. One way to think of it is that the healer type would be kind of like white mage, while the shield type would be closer to scholar. However, it would be too strong if you could switch frequently during combat, so there will be restrictions on how often you can change.

Official Translated Live Letter XXI

There are two stances, Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect, which you can switch between. One of them is simply a healing stance much like white mage, while the other uses barriers much like scholar.

Depending on which stance you are in the effects of each ability and spell will largely vary, so first it would be best to get used to one stance and then try and master the next.

So, there was a lot of implied comments about being able to Sect dance.