Just buff Astrologians

[ErnestoGiovanni]

My problem with AST is, it is very hard to "catch up" if you burnt your cooldowns on tank busters a big blasted AOE. If your two reactionary cooldowns are down and you pull a card before a cast, you are now perpetually behind because of the one second delay between a cast and an ability, then using royal road spread or shuffle puts it further behind. Your tank needs to be on point, and so do you. DISABLE every tank buster and /or raid killer if you miss one you need to burn one of 2 essential cooldowns to catch back up, the problem my FC has is the stances, the HoT is far better than the shield stances.

[Violin]

then using royal road spread or shuffle puts it further behind.

Not sure how this is possible when you can easily weave Draw, Shuffle, Royal Road, and Spread through your healing abilities without having to wait a full global cooldown. A lot of the time my animations are canceled for those four abilities because I immediately started casting a heal before the animation was complete.

[YuiSasaki]

@yuisasaki Lol i think you misunderstood his post.

Did I miss the sarcasm sign? :/

[Eudyptes]

As someone who mains healer in general, AST is honestly fine as is.

It's not though. Level the other two classes to 60, and you'll notice a significant difference in performance. Healing on my whm is the same effectiveness, but different than healing on my sch. While ast is flat out less effective than both.

The issue is that it's not an "entry level" healing class. You can't expect it to heal like WHM OR SCH because it is neither, and it isn't even close.

I see this argument a lot around here (especially from a certain ast white knight who shall remain nameless), but ast isn't some majorly difficult class whose secrets have only been unlocked by a select few who've mastered it. Most of us here know exactly how it's supposed to be played. The problem is when you compare the classes side by side, there is nothing ast can do that whm/sch can't do better. And that's not opinion either, but an objective fact backed by math and loads of evidence.

With that said, you can certainly clear content as ast. It's just much more difficult than it is with the other two healers, which shouldn't be the case in a game like this. There will always be classes that can perform better than others, but the idea is to get them as close to balanced as you can, and ideally give them all a niche that would give certain classes the edge in certain fights. Atm ast doesn't even have that.

[Rewind]

I mean absolutely no disrespect in saying this, but that is a terrible answer to the issue. I agree whole-heartily that change takes time, and I don't want just a buff to be mini whm/sch. But to say just switch to another healing job is ludicrous. Heck, one of the reasons fun stuff like elemental weakness was removed was to ensure certain jobs were excluded or told to change. Here's hoping we do get a little love in an area that allows us to shine not more than whm/sch, but in a different way than them. Cheers!^ ^

I was only responding in extreme because the OP was posting in extremes

"Literally can't play the game" is not true. AST can play the game fine atm. Not amazingly but fine.

[Parawill]

Not sure how this is possible when you can easily weave Draw, Shuffle, Royal Road, and Spread through your healing abilities without having to wait a full global cooldown. A lot of the time my animations are canceled for those four abilities because I immediately started casting a heal before the animation was complete.

Just adding on, the reason Benefic II procs are instant is because they're trying to incorporate a DPS concept into healing where you weave OGCD (off-global cooldowns) during your global cooldown. That's the same reason for Lightspeed. Considering potencies are scaled to balance out cards, you would assume Lightspeed's initial 25% potency reduction was to highlight how insanely powerful Lightspeed was; however, one could hypothesis that the skill initially acted like a Presence of Mind which may have warranted the 25% decrease in potency. Unfortunately there's no proof of this, but back-tracking to the dev's intention of each skill helps understand the class even more.

~ Ramble ramble ~

Adding on, Luminous Aether promotes active healing while under the effect of Luminous Aether, which most likely means that they expected Astrologians to be constantly healing; however, here is the issue: when you tie in two utilities into one spell, you detriment the other. Promoting healing during Luminous Aether means you either save it when you expect high-enmity gains (which luckily isn't an issue as it was with WHM in T9, where you actually needed to Shroud before Naul jumps back down) isn't very good game design because you're holding a cool down that ties into resource management. Fortunately enough though, Lightspeed was changed from a 25% potency reduction to whatever MP reduction it is. Considering how Lightspeed is basically 4 ~ 7 Swiftcasts, in my opinion, I wouldn't call this a healing cooldown but more of a resource management & personal healing utility (casting while moving in exception to Ascend) skill.

~ End ramble ~

As much as I would love buffs now, I'd rather sit tight and wait for more appropriate changes that makes AST less of a card dealing WHM/SCH and more of... well... its own class.

[Rox_Unlimited]

I was only responding in extreme because the OP was posting in extremes

"Literally can't play the game" is not true. AST can play the game fine atm. Not amazingly but fine.

I don't think he meant they couldn't play the game. I think he was referring to the many groups starting to appear setting their healers spots for WHM and SCH only.

[Assirra]

yeah, i don't expect a huge overhaul, but yoshida said that if they need to buff us they'll do it by reinforcing our job main feature, as in Cards. I'm not sure if it means cards we'll have an impact on healing capabilities or that they'll just enhance cards potencies.

Anyway the cards are in their hands!

Just give me a card with +healing on it already. We got every other stat, except the one we need the most.

[bounddreamer]

I got Stone Vigil for my duty roulette on Monday and wiped at the first big room when a patrol joined the mobs. I kept aggro the entire time so that wasn't the issue. The AST could just not keep up with the heals. I died, then he died. Felt bad about it, but he never said a word. No issues the rest of the dungeon but...that was a wipe that never should have happened.

[Kolsykol]

Just a random thought, something I'd find to be useful perhaps.
What if they allowed us to pre combat '' buff '' our chance for specific cards? I actually enjoy the RNG factor, and I just find Astrologian to be one of the most fun healers I've played in any MMO so far.
I find use for all of the cards, but sometimes I wish that I could draw some cards a bit more often :P.
Maybe allow to before combat starts, take some chance away from a card or two, and add it to another?

I am not at 60, and I dunno how the class plays at max. Just randomly had that thought ^^.
It's a bit annoying to not be able to see my party members TP too. But I heard that it's going to be implemented in a coming patch.

I am trying to choose between the three healers now tho.
I have scholar/smn at 55, but the other two just look more interesting to me. Too bad that I don't find White mages animations to be as cool as Astrologians, and I actually do like the cards a lot.