Astrologian impossible to balance as it is

[TatoRazzino]

And I am in the credits for Diablo 2 as a beta tester from the days of early Battle net and kali but that does not mean my perception is the same as the setup the designers have for the game. That does not make you an expert any more then someone else who has played the game and know the system to a detail for years.

True, I can't possibly know exactly what the developers plan to do, not any more than other people. But suggesting a floating moon and copycats of SCH DPS spells for AST while complaining, at the same time, that AST has no unique identity is pretty messed up, if you ask me. Knowing game design in theory and practice, not only as a player or consumer, grants a different insight. People are not worried about balance when they suggest balance ideas; they want their job to be OP, and that's a characteristic of game players. If 90% of the ideas in this forum were taken into consideration, the game would have three jobs that would be repeated, since everyone wants their favorite job to be able to do anything the other jobs do, with different names and animations. So I may not be an expert that can guess what the developers want, but I can have a different point of view and I can sort out lots of ideas that won't work. If you, who experienced game design from a developer point of view, can't do that, that's your problem not mine.

[Eisenhower]

I'll chime in here for a moment, not too deeply about the AST "balance" topic because despite reading the thread I'm still unsure in what aspect balance is desired. I think it's argued that N-AST is to be made more desirable with relation to the rest of the AST toolkit, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's AST vs SCH/WHM. Time Dilation if nothing else is a thorn that needs attention.

[...] Most people that cry about Nocturnal are not clearing the fights as WHM/SCH as well, simply because they can’t do the mechanics properly.

[...] This raid tier has been having a lot of issues that are not related to job design, but to raid design. Most groups can’t clear A3S because of issues like latency, which makes the Wash Away + Digititis mechanic impossible to handle.

Although I don't fully agree on A3S being a badly designed fight (personally finding it the most enjoyable fight in this tier), I support the claim that a certain number of statements regarding the weakness of AST stems from not using the job the way it was intended. AST possess tools that are similar to that of the other healers, but to have the rest of the party (or more importantly the healers themselves) act as if the AST is whatever healer the AST's replacing probably plays a part in failures experienced.

As a small tangent, I'd like to point out that it's quite possible to clear Wash Away, Digititis and Equal Concentration even with medium to high latency, but the way to tackle the mechanics need to be adapted and it makes the whole phase much more stressful.

[Sidra]

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful. For 95% of the game, if I could I would trade regen for Adlo on my SCH in a heartbeat. Shields are used, primarily single target ones, when there is a full hp threat of death which isn't that often. Noct isn't weak. There isn't much difference from a Diurnal vs Noct AST except that regens become shields, the rest of the job stays the same. Regens are simply more useful. I can go entire encounters without casting Adlo on SCH, but why would I ever go a whole fight without casting a regen?

The other thing to consider is that a Diurnal AST still has mitigation tools in Disable and Collective Unconscious.

AST needs to be balanced as a whole, there is no problem with Noct sect being niche. I thoght Titan Egi and Fists of Earth were great examples. The 4.0 healer add should be more off-healer focused to compete with the SCH slot, as AST currently completes much more fairly for the main healer role.

[AlphaSonic]

snip

I remember you have a regen called "Fairy"

[Sidra]

I remember you have a regen called "Fairy"

True fairy works much like a regen. But that's irrelevant to the point. I'd still trade A Regen spell for Adlo 95% of the time, whether the fairy existed or not.

[TatoRazzino]

Although I don't fully agree on A3S being a badly designed fight (personally finding it the most enjoyable fight in this tier), I support the claim that a certain number of statements regarding the weakness of AST stems from not using the job the way it was intended. AST possess tools that are similar to that of the other healers, but to have the rest of the party (or more importantly the healers themselves) act as if the AST is whatever healer the AST's replacing probably plays a part in failures experienced.

As a small tangent, I'd like to point out that it's quite possible to clear Wash Away, Digititis and Equal Concentration even with medium to high latency, but the way to tackle the mechanics need to be adapted and it makes the whole phase much more stressful.

I believe the fight is poorly designed mainly because of three reasons:
1) Its position in the progression, that locks out a lot of groups before the final fight. I've heard/read some people stating that A3S and A4S should be swapped, and I agree with that;
2) The gear progression is a big problem, because SE locked the three most important slots of most builds in A3S and A4S, making it harder to gear up before 3.1 hit the thing. This is a problem related to the first reason;
3) A3S requires fast reaction, raid awareness and precise positioning for several of its mechanics. All that with a tight DPS check, not only in Equal Concentration, but in the fight as a whole. Latency makes it way harder than it should be, specially because Digitiis, Ferrofluid, Protean Wave and the Tethers have short timers. Mix that up with some RNG components, and everything is just too hectic. One example: during add phase, all adds can spawn in one side of the map, which requires the group to move around much (this messes up casters and BRD); when the tether spawns, the affected target may be too far away from the tank and any issue with latency can mess up the tether passing. This makes progression a pain in the ass, and most groups don't have the energy to keep going after a while.

The main problem is that A3S was kind of designed in a vacuum, without much regard to the actual community and the material issues that are present when playing an online game. Animation lag can kill someone in a split second in A3S, and if your group can't spend a lot of time practicing it, it's going to take a long time to clear the fight. When real life happens, statics break up, people give up etc. This is why I believe the fight is poorly designed. When done properly, it's a lot of fun, but it just doesn't work with the rest of the game, in my opinion.

[Sidra]

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

[technole]

Honestly sect changing would help but not how you think. WHM + AST, I would use Noct for barrier and Diurnal for dpsing. SCH+AST I would use Duirnal for Regen and Noct for 20% healing buff. This is why I said Sect is a contradiction in a previous post. You kind of need both sides to fill the job of main healer and back up healer.

That is why I also presented the A4S scenario. It would be a bit OP to allow changes, more importantly how much more broken the capstone raid could end up being with fast mitigation for ball/carnage mechanics and being able to churn out HoTs for the leg mechanics without much of a barrier. This is assuming one GCD for a stance change.

You also don't need both sides of the job at-once. With today's gear levels no one is struggling in Alex Savage without the MND buff. There isn't even a thread anymore complaining about it like there was during July. You don't need Noct simply for a healing buff. Synastry is perfectly fine for anything that used Divine Seal.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful.

If you've read the whole thing, you would have known the issue with Nocturnal Sect isn't limited to mitigation purposes.

[TatoRazzino]

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

In coil, some body/leg pieces dropped from the second fight and the other piece dropped from the last one, so this has been done before.

And I wouldn't mind progressing slowly if my static wasn't spending 90% of the time looking for subs/replacements instead of progressing.

I believe that A3S is poorly designed, but that's my opinion. I don't believe in vacuum design, which is the design choice for a lot of content in games since games have existed. But that's my bias.