The positive Astrologian thread!

[Ariel_Valmont]

Lustrate is comparable to Essential Dignity and Tetra.

I can agree with that, and All three jobs have 1 spell that is nothing like the other Benediction, Dissipation, and Synestry. The last group of abilities I lumped together cause I was wanting to play the game instead of talk about it. The main point of me putting all of them in one post was to point out that AST does have an amount of emergency buttons comparable to the other jobs (yes I am aware a couple could probably be tweaked, I am fairly certain SE is as well) One of the reasons I initially made this post is so that there would be a record of what people enjoyed about this job, which seemed to be lacking from the other posts. If people don't speak up about what they enjoy, it is possible it will get changed in a way the people who enjoy it don't agree with, because a bunch of talking heads are on the AST sucks bandwagon. (generalization, I am aware some people voicing concerns are in a good position to talk about them) And apologies about getting carried away with a post and your quote, just letting the thoughts flow after I agreed with that statement.

[Ariel_Valmont]

If you're an AST and trying to setup a potent Enhanced Balance + Time Dilation for a DRG that's about to burst cycle and then end up drawing a Ewer and then shuffling into a Spire, then what do you do?

Do you already have the enhanced royal road up or are you working for that? Do you already have Balance up on the spread, or are you looking for that? Are we in a 4 or 8 man raid, there is quite a few ways this could pan out, and it cant really be answered with the amount of info presented to us. And while our buffs are tied to rng, we really don't have bad buffs.

[VanEinstein]

First of all, haste doesn't affect every DPS job the same; some jobs do most damage with DoTs and Off-GCD spells, none of which are affected by haste. On top of that, the buff is not continuous and spells/weaponskills have to be used while it is on for it to be effective. If you target moves or starts doing anything else instead of casting, the buff gets less effective each second; that is true for both SCH and AST. However, the Arrow, even though it has an obvious RNG component, is concentrated and can be stored to be used in an optimal situation. Depending on the situation and if used properly, you can get more DPS output from it by using it on a single target than Selene will be able to get from an entire party. According to my testing in a dummy, Selene barely added 25-30 extra DPS output to a DRG, which is supposedly one of the best jobs to receive it; and that was in a dummy situation, with no moving and no mechanics.

Even with the capacity to spread that card, AST is still statistically less likely to provide an equal or better dps boost over the course of the fight. Of course it's not impossible, just not guaranteed. That's what's being gotten at. Reliability and predictability are simply valued more.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Fairly certain I pointed that out in the text below what you quoted, I grouped them together because they are all instant cast, and it shows that if they added a heal to it or some kind of effect that works with the sects, it could be on the level as those other 2 abilities, as it is, it is not worthless, it has uses, and can be used in a pinch to add time on to your hots in diurnal stance and allow you to cast a bigger heal, instead of refreshing the hots.

Yes, you're right, it has uses (albeit very minor). However, for our ultimate level 60 spell, a 4-second stun on trash only and a whopping 5 seconds extra on buffs, I consider it completely lackluster compared to a lot of other abilities the other healers get.

Do I use it? Yes. Is it amazing? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

[Ghishlain]

The thing is: Selene doesn't add this average. Dragoons benefit the most from it, according to some threads, and they can only get 25-30 on a dummy. In an actual fight, that number will be lower because of moving, target changing etc.; if I would just guess a reasonable number, I'd say 15-20. So for 6 people it's 90-120, and I'm not counting the fact that tank DPS is usually lower in most fights and that you can get nothing out of a haste buff, because it's only effective when a certain number of casts is done (that used to be the problem with how Ewer and Spire worked before the fix, btw).
And about Adlo, I was talking about ET+Adlo, not about Adlo alone. Adlo alone is more shielding and shields are never wasted; healing, however, doesn't work the same. hitting a 7K heal when you only need 4.5K lets 2.5K to waste, which is basically the whole crit.

Without knowing exactly all the different DPS rotations and only knowing what I know as a level 50 DRG, I would feel DRG is better suited to have Balance versus Arrow because of the amount of oGCDs they have that do nothing with Haste and I would have to respectfully disagree with your assessment. They'll still be able to make use of it, but I feel the 3% Haste is better for NIN / MNK / WAR than it is for DRG. Also, take into account any mechanic that reduces the effectiveness of your Selene buff will also reduce the effectiveness of your AST buffs too, especially if said buff is Extended / Time Dilationed. Most A1S parses I've seen have their DPS clocking in at around 800-900 DPS which means Balance would probably give an individual somewhere between 80-110 40-80 (edit, realized my internal math was slightly off since full time Balance = 5%) assuming perfect RNG. I feel the upper end limit would be higher just because there's a lot of downtime in the fight with movement and gives AST time to set up good combinations when the Oppressors are in the sky.

Also about the Adlo comment, yeah, I can agree with that. However, if you're a good SCH, you're hopefully never putting yourself in a position where you're relying on Crit Adlo + ET to live through something ^^;

As a random aside, I appreciate the amicable discussion on the whole thing. It's quite refreshing compared to some other discussions.

Do you already have the enhanced royal road up or are you working for that? Do you already have Balance up on the spread, or are you looking for that? Are we in a 4 or 8 man raid, there is quite a few ways this could pan out, and it cant really be answered with the amount of info presented to us. And while our buffs are tied to rng, we really don't have bad buffs.

This is actually why I like AST so much, is because you just don't know. Would I have Balance on spread and looking for the RR? Would I have Enhance on RR and looking for the right? That's the nature of the AST beast and it's fun to play the job on the fly as it is. You may have all the pieces lined up already and you may not but the DRG in your raid told you "Hey, my B4B is about to get off CD" so you make a decision there on how to proceed. I know it doesn't answer the question, but I'd like to think there are equal amount of opportunities where the card lines up perfectly and other times where it just blows up entirely in your face.

With that being said, while it's true none of the buffs are bad, certain buffs are certainly more desirable at specific instances of the fight. For example, you begin a fight with Faust (Savage) and you pop Expand Balance that was setup to give everyone a strong boost at the beginning. You Draw into your next card. At this juncture, Ewer and Spire are both not necessary (but can be RR'd), Spear won't be useful because you want everyone to maximize their CD usage with the current Balance (can also be RR'd). If you get Bole, you can RR that for Enhance or save it until just as Balance is about to expire and apply Bole on your tank. If you get Arrow / Balance, you can also save this and give it to a DPS once the existing balance is about to expire.

Notice how three of the cards in this scenario mean very little and the other three are very useful? Desirability of buffs is dependent on what is going on in a fight and when you happen to Draw that particular buff. While RR does mitigate the less desirable cards to a degree, if you're lining up for something specific and both your Spread and RR slot are filled, you may find yourself in an bad position of wondering how to play your next card. While clicking off a Draw is always an option to start the next draw cycle, something feels wasted when you do that since now the CD is gone.

[Ariel_Valmont]

Getting locked into a bad card cast is not fun I've noticed as my skill has improved that situation doesn't happen very often. I can see your point on certain cards being desirable, at certain times. But again this too depends on party make up at the time. Of course we want to wait for balance to fall off ( or as close as possible) but I would gladly put the spear on our groups ninja, it has a noticeable effect on his dps. And I would also gladly ewer myself, as for now I'm usually soloing up 4-5 adds, (that's the goal anyway, I make mistakes like anyone else) but then again maybe I'll gamble and set up the royal road, like you said, that's one of the great parts of this job, and I for one don't want to see the randomness taken out because some people think the cards need to be on demand, there is a better solution than that.

[Guilty_King]

It's not that we hate the class, I love the AST class. AST is weak.

There is nothing negative about pointing out class flaws. You can have positive threads about a class not doing good at all.

[Ariel_Valmont]

It's not that we hate the class, I love the AST class. AST is weak.

There is nothing negative about pointing out class flaws. You can have positive threads about a class not doing good at all.

Criticisms, in general are negative, even though they can be constructive. I wanted a condensed place for what people love about the job, so those things have a chance of not getting changed. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about AST at the moment, and that's due to misinformation, and running in to bad players. Can astrologians use a bit of love, probably, are they weak and in need of a complete redesign, no.

Prime example, I was in a Thok ast Thok (extreme) farm party the other day, our other healer a WHM, was flabbergasted after our first clear, he said he would have been doing that fight as an Astrologian, but the groups he encountered told him that AST was unable to do that fight and he should play as a different healer if he wanted to do that. I was glad that I was able to show him it is easily doable.

[Cynfael]

Criticisms, in general are negative, even though they can be constructive. I wanted a condensed place for what people love about the job, so those things have a chance of not getting changed. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about AST at the moment, and that's due to misinformation, and running in to bad players. Can astrologians use a bit of love, probably, are they weak and in need of a complete redesign, no.

Prime example, I was in a Thok ast Thok (extreme) farm party the other day, our other healer a WHM, was flabbergasted after our first clear, he said he would have been doing that fight as an Astrologian, but the groups he encountered told him that AST was unable to do that fight and he should play as a different healer if he wanted to do that. I was glad that I was able to show him it is easily doable.

Your goal in setting up the thread was definitely a positive one, and it flabbergasts me as well that anyone would think that AST can't do something like Ravana EX. Seriously....

Anyway, where criticism was bound to enter this thread was in response to the people who started using it as a safe haven for making outrageous claims of AST's supposed hidden power and complexity. It's fine for people to laud aspects of the Job that they enjoy, but it's really hard for those of us concerned with seeing that AST be made truly competitive not to comment when others attempt to spread misinformation unchallenged (e.g. "AST is just as powerful as SCH/WHM, people just need to learn it play it better" etc.). No, the Job is not close to brokenly bad, but it's not really up there with its peers, either, which means it will consistently get the short stick as time goes on until this disparity is better addressed.

[Assirra]

Well might as well remove this thread since it turned into another criticism thread.