Astro in savage

[FoxyAreku]

Any Double AST clear in any floor?

I doubt anyone has bothered to try double anything on any floor. It hurts the limit break gauge too much.

[Brightshadow]

I agree with Bmattattack, the job “NEEDS” its own identity because while in theory a hybrid healer seems like a great idea it’s actually not because you will always be subpar to the specialists. While the cards are a great idea it’s not part of their main role because first off there is no support role in the game, and our main job is to heal the party. The cards should remain a selling point of the job; however, they also need a unique healing style that is on-par with their competition. Sure we will never be as good as the white mage in the healing department because they are the standard healer, but we need to be on par with Scholar because they are basically bringing the same utility as us just in a different way since they deal damage and use their fairies to make up the difference. Here is a new healing/skill kit which I think could potentially solve the identity crisis the job is currently up against. The new kit is supposed to make them a quick/time based healer that uses Healing overtime to give them the opportunity to focus more on providing their secondary role (Cards) to the group. The New/Changed Mechanics have been bolded and changed to a green text. New Spells are in a blue font.

1. Malefic (Level 1)
-Unchanged

2. Benefic (Level 2)
-Restores target’s HP. Cure Potency: 300. Additional Effect: Grants a healing over time effect with a cure potency of 150 to target for 12s.

3. Combust (Level 4)
-Unchanged

4. Lightspeed (Level 6)
-Reduces MP cost for spells by 25% and cast times for spells by 2.5 seconds. Additional Effect: Removes the GCD of all spells. (NO PENALTY)
-Cooldown Reduced to 120s

5. Luminiferous Aether (Level 8)
-Removes the MP cost of all spells. Additional Effect: Gradually creates a storage of MP based on the amount of healing you output while under the effect of Luminiferous Aether. The stored MP is transferred to your MP pool when the “sublimation” ability is used.

6. Sublimation (Level 8)(NON-REPLACMENT)
-Transfers the MP stored from the status effect “Sublimation” This ability can only be used if you are in possession of the Sublimation status effect the storage remains on your status bar until used, K.O., or if level sync is used.

7. Helios (Level 10)
-Grants yourself and all nearby party member a healing over time effect with a cure potency of 200 to targets for 30s.

8. Rewind (Level 12) (Replaced: Ascend)
-Resurrects target to a weakened state.

9. Swiftly Forward (Level 15) (Replaced: Essential Dignity)
-Transforms the “Regen” status effect on the target into an instant HP recovery cure equaling the amount of HP intended for the healing overtime effect. (Maximum Healing Potency: 1000)
-Recast: 40 Seconds

10. Expel (Level 18) (Replaced: Exalted Detriment)
-Removes a single detrimental effect from target.

11. Stella (Level 22)
-Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Inflicts target with slow +20% for 12s. (Effect gets weaker with each application)

12. Benefic II (Level 26)
-Restores target’s HP. Cure Potency: 400. Additional Effect: Grants the target “Energize” which is a status effect which provides an instant healing effect with a potency of 200 when the status effect expires. (Energize 6s)

13. Draw (Level 30)
-Ewer: Refreshes target’s TP & MP.
-Spire: Increases Critical Hit Rate

14. Diurnal Sect (Level 30)
-While in this stance your Casting Speed increases by 10%. Cannot be used with Nocturnal Sect. Effect ends upon reuse.

15. Stop (Level 34) (Replaced: Aspected benefic)
-Freezes the enemy in place. Additional Effect: Time Compression (Prevents the reapplication of Stop for 60s) (Duration 4s) (Similar to Stun/Petrify but separate effect)

16. Royal Road (Level 35)
-Returns the currently drawn Arcanum back to your deck to enhance the effect of the next card. Additional Effect: Lowers the recast of the next draw to 15s.

17. Disable (Level 38)
-Reduces the potency of the target’s next special action or spell by 5%. Additional Effect: Pacification for 6s (Pacification useless on bosses)

18. Spread (Level 40)
-Unchanged

19. Helios II (Level 42)
-Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members (Cure Potency: 200). Additional Effect: Grants the party “Energize” which is a status effect which provides an instant healing effect with a potency of 100 when the status effect expires. (Energize 6s)

20. Shuffle (Level 45)
-Return the currently drawn Arcanum to your deck and draw another. Additional Effect: Cannot redraw the same card that was in your possession.

21. Gravity (Level 46) (Reassigned Level)
-Deals unaspected damage to a target and enemies near it with a potency of 200. Additional Effect: Heavy +40% for 10s

22. Nocturnal Sect (Level 50)
-While in this stance your Healing Potency increases by 10%. Cannot be used with Diurnal Sect. Effect ends upon reuse.

23. Synastry (Level 50)
-Generates an aetheric bond with target party member. Each time you cast a healing spell on a party member not under the effect of synastry, the party member with which you have the synastry bond will also recover HP equaling the same amount healed, and receive any cards/enhancements provided by the Astrologian.

24. Combust II (Level 52) (Reassigned Level)
-Unchanged

25. Malefic II (Level 54)
-Unchanged

26. Time Dilation (Level 56)
-Additional Effect: Allow it to work on all enhancements not just the user ones.

27. Collective Unconscious (Level 58)
-Creates a wheel of fortune around the caster stopping time allowing any beneficial effects used by the Astrologian to continue within the aura after they expire until the party member exits the aura or collective unconscious ends.

28. Celestial Opposition (Level 58)
-Creates a beacon of light Instantly Transforming any “Regen” status effect on the party into an instant HP recovery cure equaling the amount of HP intended for the healing overtime effect. (Maximum Healing Potency: 500)
-New Recast: 180s

[Muahbec]

....

I love your originality
but i would change some stuff >_>
Energize: duration reduced from 6s to 4s on both helios 2 and benefic 2
CO: CD reduced from 180 to 90
Lightspeed: Instead of removing the GCD it would reduce GCD by 1 or 1,5s (i feel like removing GCD would mess up the animations)
Synastry: keep it the way it is ingame now but turn it into a toggle with a 20s CD (c'mon, SCH has his fairy and WHM has the strongest regens ingame)
Helios: since it would only have the regen effect instead of an initial heal, i would increase its potency to 240.
Stop: i would rework it- Stops time, making the ticks of all HoTs and Buffs on target stand still for 10 or 15 seconds, after the duration ticks will decrease normaly.
Benefic: Initial heal potency increased to 350 and add an additional effect: For every tick (only benefic 1 HoT ticks) there will be a 5% chance that Swiftly forward will have its CD reduced by 15 (or removed)
Benefic 2:initial heal potency increased to 450
Swiftly forward: reduce its CD to 30s (it works similar to SCHs emergency tactics, the only diference being that instead of turning the shields into heals, it turns regen into full heals so having the same CD would not be bad)
Spear card: When used it will reduce all of target's CD by a % (even it their skills are already on CD)
I would completelly rework time dilation.
"Delays all damage (including dot) dealt on target for up to 40% of target's total hp, when the % is reached the target will receive all damage as dot for 10 seconds.
example- use TD on tank > tank has 10k HP> TD delays damage> the 40% amount is reached (4000 damage) > tank will then take 400 damage as dot for 10 seconds.
or reduce it to 5 seconds, then tank will take 800 damage as dot for 5 seconds."
I would also keep the instant benefic 2 proc.
overall, i loved your ideas i wish i could see them ingame T-T

[Lastelli]

-snip-

SE should hire you, so many good ideas! Maybe Lightspeed, Lum. Aether and Sublimation are a little OP but overall I really like it. The "Energize" effects could really give this job its own identity, but it would put a restrictions on the possible mechanics of future content since whm+ast=no damage mitigation. Well, if the Energize status is used when a player's HP go to 0 to prevent his death (kinda like auto-life, but with no weakness penalty and as long as the Energize effect is strong enough, so in practice it would work like a shield) that would do the trick.

[LycorisSelunis]

Nice stuff Brightsadow. I was toying around with ideas and I was wondering if a class that had a lot of hots/some shields that could stack but had very little DIRECT healing could work. For example a spell that applies a strong short regen (like 3 ticks but 200 pot) and a shield (300-400 pot), an aoe with with a shield that provides a heal when it is popped or expires, some longer but weaker regens that can stack. A healing cd that 'accellerates' all regens you have cast such as all tick every sec instead of every 3 sec(though the way this game does ticks idk if they could do that)

I will probably post it when I have put more thought into it.

[Umbra]

Some good ideas @brightshadow, but I think the changes to the current system would be too drastic. I'd like to share some smaller (?) adjustment-ideas too:

Synastry:
Keep as is, but make it an On/Off skill with a fitting Cooldown to change the target, maybe even consider making it impossible to change the target mid-fight for balancing reasons. This would give us a unique type of healing, including Regen ticks transfering over to the Synastry target could enhance this further. (I agree on that with Muahbec ^^b)

Short: Synastry On/Off - Targetchange with CD (Or impossible mid-fight)

Draw:
I agree with brightshadows idea here. Merging the Spire into the Ewer and making Spire add crit chance or something similar would be awesome. Also consider the idea of lowering the leftover cooldown of skills on targets of the Spear card to make it a more viable option.

Short:

Ewer - MP&TP
Spire - Crit chance increase (or similar ideas)
Spear - Substract CD time from running CDs

Shuffle:
Shuffle shouldn't be able to draw the same card again. (agreeing with several people)

Collective Unconscious:
The whole concept of this skill is pretty broken. We as astros have to sustain that bubble while our healing colleagues can just place it and run off using Succor/Medica/Stoneskin/whatever to keep the party alive, while the bubble they dropped just keeps doing what it does.
I have two ideas for solving the issue without making too much of a hassle out of the adjustment.

1) Make the thing placeable. Not by just dropping it, but let us run where we want it to be, pop up the bubble and then let us move within the bubble. Leaving the bubble will cancel it. Kind of the early Leylines idea from Blackmage.
2) Fuse the effects of both sects. We sustain the bubble, being unable to do anything, thus the application of 10% mitigation and the 200 Pot Regen effect should be more than justified to balance out the inability to move or do anything.

Short:

1) Drop the bubble in person. Moving allowed. Leaving the bubble breaks it. (Leylines)
2) 10% Mitigation + 200 Pot Regen while sustaining it.

Enhanced Benefic (Trait):
Keep the usual effect of 15% chance to instant-cast the next Benefic II, but add Sect-dependent effects. The idea of only getting the additional effect with a 15% chance kind of fits into the overall "random" concept of the Astrologian and given that we don't get a freecast like WHM, the trait could get a little more identity, at the moment it feels like copy&paste from WHM, while changing the effect from freecast to instant cast, which is pretty meh.
Diurnal Sect: Next Benefic II adds a 150 (200?) Potency Regen effect for 12 (9?) seconds, which stacks with Aspected Benefic (!).
Nocturnal Sect: Next Benefic II adds a shield effect equal to the amount healed. (620 Potency, maybe lower, but its random!)
These additions imo could help to increase our healing throughput quite a bit and even give us shields closer to SCHs, but only with a certain percentage, like everything with Astro.

Short:

Diurnal Sect - Potent Regen effect added for a short time.
Nocturnal Sect - Potent Shield added.

Enhanced Essential Dignity:
Add a percentage based chance that Benefic II casts may reduce the cooldown left on Essential Dignity by 10 (20?) seconds.

Short: x% Benefic II reduces CD x secs on Dignity.

Celestial Opposition might need a little addition, but I'm out of ideas right now. =D

[Skapoc]

Agreed with Brightshadow. The jobs real fault lies in the fact that WHM/SCH synergy is to strong and because the devs didn't want to break it they made Astro a hybrid. This was a bad design decision and I feel until the class gets rid of the stances and gets its own identity it's always going to be a red headed step child of the healer class. When a 4th healer comes along SE needs to break the mold and make it unique otherwise the same thing will happen.

Hopefully it will get a redesign but I don't think the devs have the time to do it and I feel like it will never happen.

[SuzakuCMX]

Agreed with Brightshadow. The jobs real fault lies in the fact that WHM/SCH synergy is to strong and because the devs didn't want to break it they made Astro a hybrid.

WHM/SCH synergy isn't THAT strong anymore since SCH got a lot more AoE and emergency heal potential. They can now comfortably partner with a healer that isn't a WHM....provided the other healer can actually pull their own weight, which an AST can't.

Hopefully it will get a redesign but I don't think the devs have the time to do it and I feel like it will never happen.

AST doesn't need a total redesign (well maybe Noct Stance) to become a competitive healer. They need a couple healing CDs and a base potency increase. But that just makes either sect a copy of WHM/SCH so it'd be far more fun and unique to pull cards into the healing mix rather than having it feel tacked on to a weak version of WHM/SCH.

[Alahra]

Hopefully it will get a redesign but I don't think the devs have the time to do it and I feel like it will never happen.

As noted above, a total redesign isn't necessary, but on top of that, it's all but guaranteed *not* to happen. We won't see anything on the level of a redesign for any class until the expansion (though I suppose you could argue the WAR changes in early ARR were a borderline redesign). Anyone hoping for them to swap out abilities or anything that drastic is bound to be disappointed, as SE has always been rather conservative when it comes to class changes.

We'll see potency changes and probably some functionality adjustments (not unlike the Lightspeed change), but a total redesign is a no-go.

[Skapoc]

All I am saying is the class shouldn't be SCH lite and WHM lite, it should have had its own dynamic in the healing department(the cards skills are fine IMO). The devs can't keep creating healing classes that are just redesigns of WHM and SCH. And yes WHM/SCH synergy is still way to powerful. Yes it's been balanced a bit but that's because SCH is borderline OP with it's new abilities. The fact remains that AST is a WHM clone without the powerful cooldowns or SCH clone without the fairy depending on your stance. It shouldn't have been that way and shouldn't continue that way. You can change potency but that won't help the class(20-30 potency in healing is nothing) and changing cooldowns still won't save NOCT stance unless they are drastically redone.