Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

[Taranok]

It doesn't need a total overhaul. If we had a way to buff our own healing temporarily or a way to shove our missing healing to the other healer, our healing would be fine. If cards were more reliable or more effective, they would be fine, too. Neither of those need a total reworking of the class.

You still are missing the problem: The Astrologian is a healer that, by design, is intended to replace the White Mage or the Scholar in the standard WHM/SCH duo. As long as this is true, the class cannot stand on its own. The healers need to be made interchangeable to the point where any 2 healers would work all the time without directly out-competing each other.

I'd change quite a few things, but still keep a couple core tenants. The major changes, however, would be summed up as this:

1. Remove the stances, replace them with mutually-exclusive buffs, one Diurnal, one Nocturnal, with different benefits and downsides unique to the AST.
2. Redesign Synastry to be a permanent buff that does what it currently does, boosts healing directly on that target (by a smaller amount), and also heals the target for damage done, roughly around the rate a fairy does, for one target only (sanity cap so it doesn't turn into mega-heals).
3. Make it so Royal Roads are given at random every time you draw, let spread save the Royal Road, Shuffle swaps the card, RR swaps the royal road, cannot pull what you just had, and cannot change both the card and RR effect.
4. Adjust A.Benefic and A.Helios so that they are unique to the AST, but that the AST has at least 1 strong enough barrier, where "enough" is defined as 10% of an equivalent ilevel tank's total health (stoneskin).
5. Combine Collective Unconsciouses 2 effects into 1 and increase its radius to be identical to Sacred Earth, but keep the Channeling effect. If it requires channeling, it better be the best thing you can cast for the entire duration.
6. Redesign Celestial Opposition. As an idea, make it so that it gives the entire party the benefits of Synastry, perhaps even at 100%, for 10 or 15 seconds on a very long cooldown. Whether it boosts buffs and stuns enemies is irrelevant past this, but the idea is that it should be incredibly powerful for having an incredibly long cooldown.

Obviously, adjust all numbers (including base healing levels) as required to achieve balance. But for instance, for Diurnal/Nocturnal, Dirunal could make all base (Benefic, Benefic II, Helios) heals heal for an additional 25% potency every tic for 6 seconds (2 tics), stacking HoT, while Nocturnal could increase the mana cost of all base heals by 20-25% but also increase the potency by 50%. They both force the opposite onto a 1 minute cooldown and are personally on a 2 minute cooldown (or something like that).

The idea is to define the healer around Synastry as a mechanic instead of a cooldown, and make the cards random but powerful and a bit easier to use and, in doing so, make them a hair more consistent.

Remember, the class is a healer first and foremost, and it must be as good as the other 2 at it. This nonsense that people will just bring 2 ASTs can be designed out of the system such that it isn't a problem, so making the class actually competent should be the forefront of any changes.

[Taranok]

I thought about this as well and I happen to agree with you that the class needs an overhaul. What are your thoughts on them making AST a HoT based healer with a few direct heals that are buffed depending on how many HoTs you have rolling on someone? That would certainly make it different than the other two healers, as for the cards, I've been really having trouble thinking of a fix, but I do like the idea of the card fitting in with the HoT idea above, but not sure how.

I just noticed this, and I wouldn't be opposed to any of 3 different styles: First, a HoT-based style (such as Druids from WoW), second, the Synastry-based design which I detailed in the above post, and 3 is a reactive healer type where you buff someone who, when struck, gets healed for an amount, otherwise relying on barriers. Synastry is already on the class, so it seems better to align it towards that first, and it would change the class the least overall without breaking the story in any significant way.

Working the cards into the healing mechanic is also an ideal circumstance, as the cards should define the class as a healer as well, but I'm really not sure what can be done other than tweaking what already exists.

I don't think mechanics should get too complex (such as heals that scale based on the HoTs rolling), but a HoT-based healer is just fine.

But, with the cards in play, the style of the class, they'd need to change the class around a bit more to work it all in. As such, I feel keeping with a limited but potent healing kit to be the best option to complement the cards themselves.

[Arcana]

Make expanded buff as an ability and remove it from RNG card. CD 90seconds. The RNG should be only for extended duration or potency buff but AoE buff must be put off the RNG system.

[Muahbec]

...

I wish SE had more people with your creativity, honestly.
AST needs its own identity.
But i'm afraid that SE will just buff them, do something about the RNG and....DONE.
*sigh*

[Vlady]

I wish SE had more people with your creativity, honestly.
AST needs its own identity.
But i'm afraid that SE will just buff them, do something about the RNG and....DONE.
*sigh*

And that is what some of us want. I dont want the job to change.I hope they just do a few tweaks.

[Cynfael]

To be the devil's advocate, it's easy for us to play backseat developer.

I suspect that SE's chief competing priority when designing AST was preserving overall game balance. SCH and WHM are rather exceptionally balanced with each other and with the design of encounters, to the point where designing a truly unique healing style without making it either horribly underpowered or ridiculously overpowered will be quite difficult and time-consuming.

That's not to say that there isn't room for such innovation to be done well, but my guess is that they deliberately sacrificed a bit (or a lot, in the case of AST) of originality with new Jobs in this expansion in their effort to ensure that nothing would fly off the rails. I do hope that the next expansion is more of a focus on original systems, though, even if we don't get as many pretty maps.

[Geardagas]

And that is what some of us want. I dont want the job to change.I hope they just do a few tweaks.

I agree, the class is fun and thematic and I hope it doesn't change into something unfun. All they need to do is make the multitude of worthless abilities (cu, co, spear, noct sect) into something worth using, and either add a healing cooldown or have lightspeed lower the gcd.

I think the majority of the fun of the class comes from how thematic it is. Flat-out removing the RNG would kill that.

[SuzakuCMX]

You still are missing the problem: The Astrologian is a healer that, by design, is intended to replace the White Mage or the Scholar in the standard WHM/SCH duo. As long as this is true, the class cannot stand on its own. The healers need to be made interchangeable to the point where any 2 healers would work all the time without directly out-competing each other.

I am not missing the point. I am saying you do not need to majorly redesign the entire class to differentiate it from WHM/SCH. Redesigning a few key abilities (Aspected Benefic, Synastry, CU, CO mainly) would go a long way in making them unique.

Additionally, all of their cards besides Bole (and sometimes Ewer/Spear) can currently be boiled down to: how much does it increase DPS? If it doesn't increase DPS by a substantial amount then it is effectively useless. The cards need more diverse effects.

EDIT: I think the source of the misunderstanding here is that we consider "major redesign of the class" to be different. It seems we are in agreement in which abilities need to be changed and to what extent.

[nexas506]

What if the cards themselves had a small healing potency attached to them? Like "here's an attack boost and a mini cure" all in one move. That way if you drew a card you didnt need, you could still throw it on someone who needs a (mp free) hp boost. That could also make up for the lower potency of all the other heals.

[Cynfael]

What if the cards themselves had a small healing potency attached to them? Like "here's an attack boost and a mini cure" all in one move. That way if you drew a card you didnt need, you could still throw it on someone who needs a (mp free) hp boost. That could also make up for the lower potency of all the other heals.

The problem here is that this isn't the kind of help AST needs; it needs cooldowns, not greater healing potency in general.