Why does no one want Astrologians in the new Feast?

[Stormfur]

I get that Warrior is not as strong as they used to be. Or that Red Mage is squishy and has to do their melee dance...but what's wrong with Astrologians? I understand white mage seems to be the superior choice but I haven't heard what's wrong with Astros.

[RisettoMiracle]

I myself got to Gold Rank as AST, and I really can't be friend with playing WHM and SCH at all. Especially SCH which is prefered by the most from what I've seen.

However the true fact is that AST only advantage is to overheal, which does not work when you get a Melee DPS literally LBing you with stacks carrying around. And because you can overheal and kite, your MP will also suffer from this compared to the other healers which also is not a good thing.

But playing the class itself should not be prevented as healing still works fine for any class. It's just you need to work way more than WHM and SCH together.

(P.S.: however due of insane lags and constant 90ks during 4vs4, I avoid to play any healers atm because well I can't see anything that is porting and no skills working at all XD)

[Mirch]

I get that Warrior is not as strong as they used to be.

It's not that warrior is not as strong as the other two, warrior is stronger than the other two, simply it lacks those lock crowd control skills the other 2 have and it has almost no support skills, warrior damage is deadly.

[Korihu]

I found that in higher level games, AST can't handle the constant pressure as well as the other healers. Lightspeed doesn't boost your healing, just makes it instant cast, which means that it doesn't actually increase healing throughput unless the target is yourself, since you can kite with it. and a lot of the times I find it is delegated to being used as an MP tool since unless I get lucky with ewers, AST has mana troubles. Synastry is useful since the target of it gets 25% extra heal if you heal the same target as Synastry, but you can't use it on yourself, so once Lightspeed is on cooldown (which is fairly long, I find), I find AST to be the most squishiest and suspect to focus. Furthermore, they do not have any Shields or Regens. With that in mind I found AST also to be the most stressful healer to get stunned on, because you won't have anything ticking for those few seconds that you are out.

The RNG of Draw also works against it. Spire still isn't that great even though dps use more TP than before because a lot of DPS already have adjusted their overall gameplay around their base TP regeneration. Ewer means that AST's mana balance is adjusted around an RNG mechanic, so some games you'll go and just be starved on RNG. Previously we have redraw, spread and royal road which made the RNG not as big as a factor, but now an RNG skill takes up one of our precious 9-slot skills, which has a pretty big effect. It'd be nice if it was constantly Bole or Balance, and if needed nerf it slightly so it's not overpowered, just always useful.

AST probably works better in lower level games, especially since Synastry makes them the best at healing split damage. But once people start focusing I find it has the most trouble. It doesn't help that Deorbit is not helpful in a lot of scenarios, and it gets less useful the higher level people get since it is mostly a skill to correct mistakes while the other healer cooldowns are always useful all the time. It also has the detrimental effect where you could accidentally interrupt your melee's LB and other things like Samurai's casted skill.

That's my opinion and experience after playing a lot of Astrologian in preseason, especially since most people who were playing in preseason were the higher level PvPers so it was pretty intense matches. In the end, Astrologian is not that bad, you can still make it work! I just found it to feel very subpar, and a lot of my old AST main friends found it the same. It's my favourite class so I tried very hard to make it work, but SCH and WHM just flowed a lot better for me.


tl;dr: no regens, no shields, cooldowns feel weaker, deorbit isn't useful (often)

[KusoWat]

AST is in a terrible state. There is a long list of reasons, but the greatest one in my opinion is that their healing kit is entirely centered around this whole "cast while moving" playstyle which is just not good in the current state of the game. With healers being shoehorned into muse/safeguard/cc break (concentration or purify) there is no way you are taking bolt, while dps and tanks typically will. This means you're not really going to "kite" the enemy with your mobility, and besides, you can just be CC'd anyway.

Let's break down the AST kit...

Your GCD healing spells are just like WHM. Nothing bad here. The built in dualcast mechanic is not too terrible, but it is nothing compared to Lilies or even Adlo. With how frequently you can be CC'd, the instant cast spell is just not that valuable.

Malefic is easily the worst offensive/cc spell of the 3 healers. Broil gives you AETHERFLOW, and stone has heavy which is great for helping your team stick to a target. Bind? 3 second bind will accomplish next to nothing.

Synastry is a spell that would be exceptional if you could place it on yourself, since it would fulfill the role of healing yourself while that annoying tank just sits on your the whole match while at the same time your team is getting bursted down. "But guy, you can heal yourself and it will heal your synastry target that is getting bursted" Nah, its not enough potency. 25% potency healing on the synastry target is basically a regen. A regen on ONE target. Yes, regen costs 500 mp per cast, but that is a low cost to pay for the greater utility.

Deorbit is just useless. Not sure what they were thinking.

Disable is literally a worse version of protect, which has a 5 second longer CD and cant have the CD reduced by lilies...

Lightspeed is just underwhelming. You already have dualcast, so the real appeal is the 50% reduced mp cost. Also, it only lasts 10 seconds, so you can be effectively CC'd for the majority of the duration.

Draw is the worst. Without the rest of the card kit, you just have to use whats given to you. Spire is still bad, Balance is decent, and bole is decent. Ewer is good because of the MP economy on AST being the weakest of the 3 healers. While drawing an Ewer is good, the fact that you even have to leave the health of your MP economy up to chance is really bad from a design perspective.

And lets not forget...They are the only healer that has no form of shield OR passive healing like regen, which makes CC just that much more potent against them.

TL;DR: AST has a playstyle that is bad in the current CC-heavy meta and its utility kit is objectively worse than the other two healers in just about every department.

[loreleidiangelo]

AST got gutted with the PVP revamp, IMO. No Sects, so no shields or regens, no card manipulation tools so you're stuck getting rid of whatever the game gives you (some of which is utterly useless, just like in PVE).

It's like the devs read the endless complaining on the forums wrt "the unkillable AST" meme and adjusted them based on that.

[Krolja]

(P.S.: however due of insane lags and constant 90ks during 4vs4, I avoid to play any healers atm because well I can't see anything that is porting and no skills working at all XD)

Aside from the actual 90ks are you sure it's not just the server tick lag updating positions? I don't lag, currently, and stuff just moonwalks around during animations and cancels my attacks due to EVERYTHING being tied to the stupid server tick. I have a lot of trouble with it and it's very frustrating.

[Synestra]

It's not that warrior is not as strong as the other two, warrior is stronger than the other two, simply it lacks those lock crowd control skills the other 2 have and it has almost no support skills, warrior damage is deadly.

Yeah it can still do nice burst with FC + Upheaval + FC + Onslaught with IR up but i find myself using IR more for those CC immunity side effects than for bursting as it is better than concentration for that. WAR is still probably most fun tank in pvp even tho it is barely a shadow of its former glory, if only we had Onslaught and Upheaval in HW..... jeesh that would have been super fun back then ;__;