Please do not nerf Astrologian instead buff WHM/SCH

[HyoMinPark]

Failing that though, Balance at the LEAST needs to be looked at/addressed. A flat 10% DPS increase on everyone in the raid is something no other healer comes even close to emulating in value.

The trade-off for that though is the RNG, I think. I will have some runs where I get Balance after Balance, and other runs where RNG says "Oh, I heard you really wanted some Spears." Really, they could rework Spears to make them useful for more than just Royal Road/Minor Arcana burning. Instead of limited CD reduction to CDs used during the duration, maybe adjust to 10% reduction on CD timers on party members outright (5% if AOE). Not too OP (20% single/10% AOE outright could possibly border on OP), but now not nearly as useless. Only time I use Spear is on myself for Lucid Dreaming timers. If I have one at the ready when I need to pop Lucid. If they changed Spear to where it just flat-out reduced CD timers of skills already on CD, it would be useful to throw on tanks to allow them to get their mitigation CDs back faster. Especially on tanks like DRK where certain mitigation skills are very situational (Dark Mind), and they only have a couple solid ones for all content (Rampart and Shadow Wall, for example).

They could look at other cards to try and make them more viable and more desirable, but everyone is going to desire DPS increases in a game where the playerbase cares so much about numbers, so Balance will always be the card people care the most about. There isn't really a way around that other than nerfing it to the point where no one cares. And if they don't add viability to the other cards, AST will go back to 3.0 AST--undesirable because they don't bring anything the other two don't already have. That doesn't solve anything. Just makes another job gimped where as the others aren't. One shouldn't have to suffer at the expense of "fixing" the others.

I like the fact that I can buff on AST, and I don't really want them to change the buffs on AST. Rather they need to look at the other two healers and buff them; give them things that AST cannot bring to the table, be it more powerful HoT/HPS, or more potent/longer-lasting shields, or better mitigation. Fix SCH's fairy to where Chocobo Companions DON'T out-heal them. Give SCH fairy maybe different buffs (something other than Fey Wind/Fey Illumination to make them desirable). Expand on WHM Lilies maybe (can't speak much on WHM right now since I haven't looked into the whole Lily/Confession thing yet). Something to give healers their own niche rather than taking away from one healer because they can't figure out what to do with the other two to bring them up to speed.


For those saying AST needs reworked: how are you wanting SE to rework the job? The idea behind ASTs was the card buffs, little weaker HoTs/HPS, little weaker shields (though right now Noct shields are better than SCH even with Noct losing it's heal potency increase--SCH definitely needs to be looked at and buffed to bring it back to viability). What rework would you propose to make all three healer jobs viable in some way while also maintaining a sense of uniqueness about them all?

Before when ASTs were garbage, they had nothing to bring that the other two didn't already have. Their buffs' effects were negligible, and the Draw design was clunky at 3.0 launch until SE fixed it. Then SE buffed the cards (Balance in particular), and now AST is suddenly too OP and needs to be nerfed? Nerfing AST buffs will just make it back into a weaker version of WHM/SCH with nothing to bring to a group that matters.

The thing that needs to be done is not nerf one job to make the others viable. Rather the other jobs could be buffed instead to give them their own niche back. AST's niche is its cards, and it took SE basically an entire expansion to get AST into a good place (and really, I sometimes think they still aren't entirely sure what to do with the job sometimes). SE needs to give the other two healers tools that AST doesn't have; tools to give them a uniqueness and make them appealing to a group/static setting. The solution should never be to nerf one job so that the others can be viable again.

[Evumeimei]

Whm in which I main is purfectly fine. Actually they consolidated the spells they removed in one. I dps and heal. Glad they removed stance switching and insta cast areo 2. The vocal minority is salty cause they can't do it they old way. I could go on. I love the new way. Just an small learning curve is all.

We are fine for the most part but no one can excuse away our lvl 70 skill/confession stacks. What's the point of having a completely useless skill, especially as our final one? As far as I know, WHM mains aren't asking for much at this point. Just that one fix. I'm having a blast playing the job right now, but haven't used Plenary Indulgence even once.

[Calva]

Mp is awesome on ast. I really never have an issue with it unless I zone out for a bit and forget to keep on top of. The best combo I found requires a bit of luck but it will take you from empty to full while spamming heals. Get a arrow and ewer lined up with any buff other than the 50% aoe. Use the arrow then lucid dreaming then ewer and extend them with celestial opposition.

But even if you cant get those cards using ewer whenever it pops up and arrow with lucid dreaming you should never have mp issues as long as you keep an eye on it.

[loreleidiangelo]

snipperooni

This is a pretty big wall to respond to, so my solution is to respond with an equally as long wall because I just can't shut up when prompted:


1.) I don't care if you've had a streak of bad RNG where you never see a single Balance, there are plenty of ASTs that are seeing plenty of Balances in the content that they do, and this is reflected on things like FFLogs everywhere. There is a 16% chance to draw it outright, then a 20% chance to draw it after that, THEN a chance you can STILL get it if you're willing to sack Sleeve Draw at level 70. I assure you, Astrologians are not struggling to AOE Balance nearly as much as you're trying to claim. Consider that it takes at least 60 seconds to set up, but LASTS for a whopping 30. (40 if you blow Celestial Opposition every 2 minutes.) We'll be generous and assume it takes you that two minutes to set up AOE B - that's 40 seconds of 10% AOE DPS uptime out of two minutes - or 33% uptime. And from personal experience, that's being pretty generous - I'd say I can set up an AOE Balance reliably every 1.5 minutes on average now that Spread works better and Redraw is on the same cooldown timer as Draw. Ninja's Trick Attack, which was used as a comparison earlier in this thread, is 10 seconds every 60, or 16.67% uptime, and Trick Attack is already being discussed by the DPS community as a fundamentally problematic skill that makes Ninja a highly desirable DPS choice for raids.

I think a lot of people are falsely conflating me disliking Balance with me wanting to ruin the card system as a whole, and that's not the case. I'm just tired of Balance being the only desired card in my deck, and I think the community's general response and reaction to it should be a CLEAR indicator that the skill is not well-designed in regards to the rest of AST's kit. I'd love to see cards like Bole, Arrow, Spear see more use, instead of just being Royal Road or Minor Arcana fodder. Sure, we COULD try to buff those cards to ridiculous values to make them "as good as" Balance, which is what people in this thread seem to think is the solution to everything, but that's just not fundamentally possible by design (except with the exception of Arrow, obviously, which could be buffed to be a bigger DPS increase than Balance at the cost of TP/MP hits). As you said, all the community GAFs about is DPS increases, so the best way unfortunately to make the other cards have value is to make NONE of them DPS increases.

The kneejerk reaction to this suggestion seems to be, "but then no one would take an AST to raid anymore", but that just doesn't make sense to me. SCH and WHM didn't have DPS increases in 3.0 and yet they were taken over AST - AST had lackluster healing and Balance wasn't as easy to get in 3.0 as it is now (2 minute Shuffle cooldown lmao and it could still give you the same garbage card you were trying to get rid of). AST now has similar healing, BUT AOE Balance is also insanely easy to get, so my suggestion is pretty much to either nerf their healing again (hard to tune) or just get rid of Balance so that all three healers pretty much heal the same (theoretically; SCH isn't doing so hot right now and definitely needs buffs) but none of them bring a 10% raid-wide DPS increase anymore either.

I'm not really sure why I'm bothering explaining my position, tbh. I'll never get clingy AST mains to agree that their favorite toy needs to be taken away. At this point I'm just gonna wait and see what the developers decide is the best choice of action - if they feel like my OP ez mode class is fine the way it is, I certainly won't complain haha.

2.) In regards to a rework, I want the devs to keep the card system (aside from Balance's ironic broken-ness, I think the cards are pretty well-designed overall and the interactivity and fluidity of using them is great) but scrap the stupid hybrid "can be a SCH or a WHM" healing system and give ASTs something new. I could type a whole diatribe on what could be done (and have in other threads in the healer subforum, in fact), but I won't make this post any longer than it is by going into at length here. But the short of it is that I think AST being able to slot into the WHM or SCH spot, with all of their inherent strengths BUT a massively OP raid utility that the other healers can't emulate (without basically giving them a raid-wide 10% DPS increase cooldown) is a serious design flaw and should be rectified ASAP. AST SHOULD have drawbacks, possibly more drawbacks than WHM or SCH have, because of their super-good card utility. I DON'T think the solution is to give all the healers "similar raid utility" because short of homogenization nothing can really compare to AOE Balance, and if it can than we're looking at some pretty awful power creep overall that I don't think this game needs. I think AST should just have more defined weaknesses as an actual healer (NOT just talking about straight potency nerfs a la 3.0 AST), and the easiest way to give it those weaknesses is to have it heal in some way that isn't a "WHM or SCH" way.

There are a lot of possible healing avenues that haven't really been explored yet, and it's been a pretty big disappointment of mine that AST was created to basically copy two healing avenues we'd already trodden, rather than shirking the trend and trying to be something new. Time/space just SCREAMED "HoT-based healer!!!111" to me, but with that spot being bizarrely given to WHM instead of WHM being a bursty mana-hungry healer like I envisioned from old-school FF games, the devs probably would have had to try something different. Still, just about anything would have sufficed, and hopefully have made AST different enough where their strengths would be better suited to some encounters while WHM and SCH strengths would be better suited to others. Right now I'd actually argue that all three healers have such similar throughput (or did pre-4.0 at least) that it's so easy to compare them and see which ones just plain aren't cutting it when it comes time to form up for raids.

Compared to my ideas of nerfing Balance though, I actually think a lot of people playing healers at the top ends of play are in favor of AST being completely re-done at this point. Similar suggestions have gained decent traction both in the healer subforum here and on the FFXIV Reddit. Those obviously aren't the be-all/end-all of the playerbase, but I just thought I'd put it out there that AST's hybrid design doesn't seem to be as well-liked or conceptualized as people might think. It's also a nightmare to balance, for what it's worth, and we've been seeing the endless tug-of-war in relation to that since 3.0.



EDIT: Upon further reading, I realize that a lot of my phrasing is pretty harsh, and I apologize, since that wasn't my intention. I just get a little frustrated at the illogical approach of "buff everything! nerf nothing!" because in a development environment that's just not feasible, I'm sorry to say. I can't say I AGREE with Square's nerfs to SCH this expac, but I can respect and understand that they probably NEEDED a few donks with the bat for balance's sake. I think that AST if nothing else didn't need the ridiculous buffs it got, but now that they're here I can only reasonably suggest that they get tweaked in other areas too. Tbh, I think 3.2 AST was a pretty solid case of balance (except with Nocturnal Sect), but for some reason the dev team just took it a step farther and I just don't even.

[Vilenya]

By no means is AST a definitive more powerful healer then WHM.

Can they Benedict? ......snip

You have to be joking thinking sch is anywhere near the same plane as ast. It's so far off right now that it isn't even funny. Let’s start with shields, the only shield that sch has better is a crit aldo. Aspected benfic provides a non crit shield with 25 less potency than non crit aldo, is less mana, and instance cast. I'll take that any day over aldo. Aspected Helios is just straight up better then succor in every way (more healing, less mana, and bigger shields). To be frank, ast regen or shielding needs to be worse than their counter part healers, not better. This is made up by the support they bring to the group. If you want to talk about dps, sch dps is a complete and utter mess now. I've done some calculations with bane and its significantly worse than gravity and holy. In fact on more than 2-3 mobs Aero III outputs more dps then both sch dots and bane. That’s one spell out dpsing 3 different sch abilities; that is not acceptable at all. Do I think ast needs a nerf, well that depends on where SE view ast in terms of the content. If they think they are too powerful then yes they should get a nerf. If they think they are just right then the other two need significant buffs. Am I salty against ast, no not really, I'm salty that the healers are not properly balanced. Trying to justify where ast is by saying there is nothing wrong with the other classes when clearly that is not case does little to help fix the game.

[Ootarion]

Maybe not a complete rework.

But instead of their aspected heals being regen/shield perhaps they should be aspected to whatever card is drawn, save for the minor arcana cards. 50% effect for A. Benefic, and 25% for A. Helios.

That way it would have its own identity as a Buff Healer vs. White Mage being a Pure/Regen healer and Scholar being the Sheild Healer.

Oh god no.....the whole point of AST was to give it the freedom to swap between two different healing styles, leave it alone..-.-

Addendum: They probably very likely thought that btw and if they were gonna do it, they'd have done so by now, if they were gonna change how Aspected Helios and Aspected Benefic work, they'd have already done so. They are not about to change the class now.

[Ootarion]

You have to be joking thinking sch is anywhere near the same plane as ast.

Did I say that SCH is anywhere near the same plane as AST? No. I have even stated that SCH could use buffs to fix the issue, so do not put words in my mouth.

Nothing is going to be fixed if they take something away from one class, and that is fact. Not saying you said that, but that appears to be the general consensus of most people on this thread, that AST needs to have stuff taken away from it to fix whatever problem exists on the other two healers, but that wont fix anything at all.

Did I ever say that there was nothing wrong with the other two healers? I openly admit there is something wrong with SCH, WHM not so much but I COULD see potential improvement to WHM, but you are NOT going to fix the potential issues of WHM and SCH by ripping away what AST currently has, which again seems to be what most people THINK will solve the problem, but again, it really wont.

[dynus]

Oh god no.....the whole point of AST was to give it the freedom to swap between two different healing styles, leave it alone..-.-

Addendum: They probably very likely thought that btw and if they were gonna do it, they'd have done so by now, if they were gonna change how Aspected Helios and Aspected Benefic work, they'd have already done so. They are not about to change the class now.

Maybe, maybe not. Who can tell with the dev team?

But that's beside the point. My suggestion is hardly the most extreme, as only two spells are affected. Some people are calling for it to be completely reworked.

We've gotten to the point where the 'swap' choice is better than the two jobs with fixed styles of healing. And that's just bad design.

What I'm suggesting ties into the cards, which has always been the core of the job's kit, and gives its own identity that isn't WHM or SCH sub.

[Ootarion]

What I'm suggesting ties into the cards, which has always been the core of the job's kit, and gives its own identity that isn't WHM or SCH sub.

When I play my AST the feeling is no where near the same as WHM or SCH, as I have played all three, AST to lvl 68, WHM to 60 and SCH to at least the early 50s, I feel 3 very distinct, very different play styles. While AST has the ability to apply regens like WHM can, there is still the undeniable fact that both classes are very different. I wouldnt wanna play AST if it were to suddenly change. This is not to say that I cannot adapt, just that I love how it is designed with such fervor that I wouldnt be willing to continue if the design Ive come to love was suddenly gone. This has nothing to do with it's strengths or weaknesses, just purely how it has been designed. Take that away, and my reason for playing the class is taken, I wouldnt be surprised if others feel the same.

Addendum: I understand that people here in this thread are just giving their thoughts, their ideas, but radically altering AST, even just two of it's abilities, isnt going to solve the present issues with SCH, or whatever issues there are with WHM.

[Kazrah]

I'd honestly be okay with Balance being brought back down to 10% baseline. That way, it's still got power, but it's not quite an absolute necessity for any major group content.

Plenary Indulgence isn't too completely horrible, but it might make more sense for it to be based off of periodic healing critical ticks rather than the spells least likely to be used generally by White Mages. It also doesn't help either that with all our spangly new UI gauges that PI stacks are still just basic bits on the buff bar.

Lastly, Scholar I think needs an overall re-tuning on its healing kit given that all its spells are built up from a time in which Astrologian wasn't making it obsolete. If Galvanize was increased to somewhat match the absorption levels of Noctural Sect absorption (so ~200% on Adloquium and 150% on Succor) and give the same critical heal treatment to Succor, then it'd probably feel a lot better.