Things currently wrong with frontlines that the community would like to see fixed

[lovelikewinter]

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I was push off a cliff by a sch. A lot of the elevated areas are really wide, have a good amount of wall space or have really unforgiving chokes I find. I can really only think of 2 nodes where I've seen aura blast be anything more than a poor man's fluid aura.

You must play against some shitty scholars, then.

[Mutemutt]

You must play against some shitty scholars, then.

Or more gung-ho warriors I suppose.

I've seen plenty of sch's try to push me off the edge, it's just really easy to work around in most places.

[Kyani]

Yeah, i'll go right in to the tight choke area, pop Aura Blast, then immediately Attunement if i'm being focused at all. A good Aura Blast during that opening engage will often send 4 or 5 people to low ground, which is game-changing when you have the initiation to follow up on it.

Similarly, you can Blizz2 -> Aura Blast for a proper AoE Fluid Aura! If you "precast" Fluid Aura during Blizz2's animation, the knockback will occur before the bind. It's weird, but you can do it reliably - I learned about that property of Blizz2 back when I used to 2-man spiritbind with a WHM friend.

Aura Blast is really versatile and you can do a lot of cool things with it if you have the opportunity to charge in.

e: it's also worth noting that you're (presumably) not the sort of person who will chase an Astrologian that they can't kill - Even a 10y Aura Blast can pretty reliably low-ground that crowd, because they don't think about positioning half as much as you do.

[Dimitrii]

Celestial opposition is more annoying to me personally than Retrogradation due to the random element associated with the debuff selection. Especially when used by premades as a prelude to coordinated cometeor bombs or mass knockbacks from tanks/sch on ledges. But then again I mainly only use drg in pvp as my dps so I dont have that overwhelmingly important buff like aetherflow/hallowed ground/greased lightning/wrath stacks that would cause me to rage if i lost them. I mean it would suck to lose battle litany and stuff but the job has soooooooo many self buffs its unreal.

I can really only think of 2 nodes where I've seen aura blast be anything more than a poor man's fluid aura.

Thats kinda harsh lol. Only thing fluid aura has going for it over aura blast is the 30 sec recast.

[Houston009]

TBH, knockbacks in this game can be worked around like Super Smash Bros. by DI'ing (Directional Influence), so whenever i see someone trying to knock me off, i run in the direction that'll keep me from falling/sent into enemy forces.

[Kyani]

Thats kinda harsh lol. Only thing fluid aura has going for it over aura blast is the 30 sec recast.

(e: dunno what i was thinking)Fluid Aura is actually probably the best of the knockback effects! Because binds clear momentum, you're way more likely to knock an un-cc'd player in the intended direction than you are with Aura Blast / Tempest / Glory Slash (see Straigus' post.)

You're also right that something like CO -> Swift Blizz2 is a powerful engage tool! The stun is a lot quicker on the windup than Holy's, and it lasts long enough to layer a root with solid death.

[Caelum_Dragguell]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ob_statistics/

[Darwyn_Ulondarr]

Looks like they need to rename Seal Rock into Summoner Rock.

[Petite]

They are far better at keeping themselves or one person alive as a pocket healer than they are at keeping a party up. They are actually pretty pathetic at party heals compared to whm and sch.

Sorry Knives but saying ASTs are pathetic at AOE healing is stretching it immensely.

- Your group got hit by a Bane? Pop Retrogradation and Focalization
- Your group's HP is dangerously low? Pop Light speed and spam Helios/Aspected Helios
- Light speed on cooldown? Equanimity is still very useful to ASTs so you can just stand in place and AOE spam
- Collective Unconscious gives a 15s HoT to party members that stand in it for at least 2 seconds so use it when there's no rush
- Synastry
- Healer LB

Yes WHMs have a better kit for AOE healing (Assize, Asylum, Sacred Prism), but AST's AOE healing is still strong. You just don't see many great astros because most are mediocre players that just use Asp Benefic and Dignity.

That said, all healers can single or AOE heal just fine, but Noct AST is better suited for SR because of its far superior healing-mobility, a huge advantage.

P.S.: Imagine adding a 1 second cast time to aspected benefic. No one would even consider playing AST lol.

[Kyani]

You, uh.. you do know damage for DoT effects is only calculated the initial application, right? You have to have Focalization up before Tri-Diaster even lands, because no amount of defensive buffs will change the damage a dot, baned or otherwise, ticks for. One of the only changes SE has ever made to current raid content was changing T12 because Summoners could do way too much damage to Phoenix by baning off of a vulnerable target.

For AoE healing, Equanimity is slightly better for AST than SCH/WHM because of your ability to choose between Medica and Succor, but CU is not very good outside of a coordinated team - you're giving up your mobility and several GCDs (thanks to the shoddy way the buff is applied) to maybe get the HoT on half of your party. Whispering Dawn is a more reliable (if slightly less powerful) version of the same effect, on a shorter cooldown.

You're still missing the forest for the trees, though! Outside of Retrogradation every 2 minutes and ED every 40 seconds, AST is tightly GCD locked - your cooldowns, even Synastry, are all about giving you better healing per GCD, rather than a faster GCD or OGCD burst options. As fights go longer, this becomes a significant disadvantage - if you're ever crowd controlled or otherwise forced to stop casting, you don't have anywhere near the ability to recover compared to WHM or SCH's OGCD and passive options.



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I understand that Astrologian is a strong class, and definitely the strongest healer while moving, but there are a lot of claims being made here that are wildly exaggerated. The class does have weaknesses: having the highest per-GCD potency "floor" (603 even while moving) comes with having the lowest potential potency ceiling. Just as SCH can never hope to match the raw throughput of WHM or Diurnal, and WHM lacks the ability to heal "over" max HP like SCH or Noct, Noct suffers from not having the option to add "extra" potency outside of a few long cooldowns.

Seriously, run the math before claiming how wrong I must be - if both parties pop everything, INCLUDING CE, Noct & SCH heal for almost the exact same amount. Scholar's frontload is significantly better, but falls off with time, whereas Astrologian maintains a similar level before flatlining from a lack of mana. All of the following assuming no particular burst damage, no cc/interrupts, and no single-target threats that need to be addressed (all of which favor Scholar to varying degrees thanks to Indom and Lustrate being off the global):

Over 20 seconds, AST winds up with 3528 (504*7) potency/target from Helios, 1050 (150 * 7) from CU, and 150 from Retrogradation, for a total of 4728 potency per target (Obviously excluding overheal, because this is magical christmas land). Astrologian additionally has access to a single Essential Dignity, which scales between 400 and 900 potency - an "average" essential Dignity adds (700 / 8 = 87.5) potency, for a total of 4815.5.

In that same timeframe, Scholar winds up with 3024 (432x7) potency/target from Succor, 770 (~110 Player Potency*7) from WD and 400 from Indomitability for a total of 4194 potency over that same period. The Scholar also has 8 Lustrates - enough to heal each target once (though this undervalues the ability to split them), bringing its total over the same period to 4794.

It's when you peel away cooldowns (either because they're inefficent uses or they've been used elsewhere) that Astrologian falls behind: If you aren't able to roll CU before the fight starts, you have no real answer to even the passive healing of Medica II or the off-GCD utility of Indomitability and Whispering Dawn: all of your options use the same cooldowns as your single-target heals, and you can't generate extra time for yourself the way Lustrate & Prism/Asylum do to get yourself some breathing room.