Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

[ForteNightshade]

I didn't bring up Baelsar's Wall because I feel it's relevant content, I brought it up because I carried a group through it despite adjusting to the AST changes, which were significant enough to affect how the job plays before max level.

Let's face it, if it can't get the job done @50, 60, 70; it's not going to get it done at 80 either. At the time of my post, I had not run HS with my AST yet but I've taken it through it several times now, and what I have surmised about the job has not changed. I still casted plenty Gravity outside of LS; lots of Benifect IIs, etc. Still no MP problems. There was one wipe, but silly DRK pulled wall to wall after the first boss, and didn't use Living Dead. Other than that, healing was not an issue in there.

To your credit though, even HS isn't all that good of a reference point to gauge any of the healers in ShB considering at 72 all of them just get upgrades to their DoT and filler spells; hardly a game changer. Running 70+ dungeons however, does give AST access to Sleeve Draw, which allows for better efficiency with Divination. I already have my own issues with that skill, which I pointed out in my last post.

You're still missing the point. Baelsar's Wall has been nerfed, thereby making it completely pointless as a comparison. AST being capable of healing gimped content does not mean it will measure up with current content. For reference sake, I can mass pull Xelphtol on DRG with Bloodbath. That's how weak the mobs are. You claim Holminster Switch isn't a good reference point except... it is. The mobs there aren't nerfed into the ground. This, in turn, makes huge pulls much harder on AST than any level 60 dungeon. My BFF, having recently leveled AST had no issues whatsoever with the old content regardless of small pulls or wall to wall mega pulls. With the 70+ dungeons, she was struggling on MP mightily. Why? Because like I said, those mobs aren't a complete laughing stock.

That really is a huge discrepancy if that number is true. If it is true, it's going to get addressed. However, AST DPS by itself was always a snorefest. What makes made it interesting was all the weaving they get to do between Malefic/Gravity spamming. They still get to do this. Between my filler spamming, there was a consistent amount of draws, redraws, plays, and minor arcanas keeping me busy. Those three charges of redraw fill quickly, then add sleeve draw on top of it all and it feels like I'm always drawing cards. This means that those 6% buffs are consistently going out, and almost feels like upkeep than an actual buff. We're going to have see those savage numbers ran to see what exactly an optimal AST is doing to rDPS to really know.

Except... they don't. AST struggles so much right now that weaving in Gravities outside of Lightspeed can easily get the tank killed if they do giant pulls. WHM does not have this problem whatsoever nor does SCH. That is the fundamental issue people have beyond how boring AST has become. It simply cannot heal like the other two while also having all its utility significantly reduced. I would like to believe the devs will address this quickly but DRK, WHM and MCH waited the entirety of Stormblood before their needs were addressed. Forgive me if I lack faith AST will see immediate attention by 4.05.

[Sir_Swallow]

I haven't posted since I was a little noob, but I had to add my voice here: I mained AST and RDM about equally until this patch, but as of now I have no desire to engage with AST. I'll get it to 80, just to see the skills, and then become a RDM main.

All of the fun of on-the-fly-decision making has been replaced with a a flowchart--eight identical paths to only one outcome. But if losing seven of my eight cards is bad, losing losing royal road is soul-crushing, and losing TD + CO is the final blow. AST was one class that was generally considered to function near-perfectly, barring some tweaks to card potencies and effects, and this is what they choose to do? How can I have faith that any other perfectly functional job won't be butchered in the same manner?

Decision making--gone.

Quick-thinking moment to moment play--gone.

Synergy of any sort--gone

Utility--gone.

Class fantasy, the thing they cared so much they deliberately botched Blue Mage for the sake of it--utterly gone.

It's doubly upsetting because the seal system is a brilliant idea, and would have added another layer of creativity to play to make up for the more passive play style they're forcing on healers.

Absolutely tragic.

[HyoMinPark]

You literally boost peoples damage every 15 seconds. You have a party wide damage boost for 20 seconds every 3 min. You can switch between shields and go Regen at will. You even have some abilities that allow you to do both at the same time!!! And this is what you are gonna whine about???

Correction: Divination is a 15s duration every 3 mins.

The card buffs are shadows of what they used to be. They’re weaker than old Balance by a mile. Divination is weaker than old AOE Balance. Sometimes it barely feels worth it to draw them because you don’t feel like they had the impact they used to have. The decision making is literally “oh, melee card” and “oh, ranged card”—followed by “oh, I have my seals now with Divination still 100+ seconds from being off CD so I guess Minor Arcana card”. It’s boring.

Neutral Sect allows you to utilize both sects for 20s every 2 minutes. At best, you’ll get in 2 A.Benefics and A.Helios without overwriting your HoTs. You cannot “swap them at will” while in combat, and Noct is still as MP inefficient as it was in HW and SB.

People are complaining about EVERYTHING when it comes to AST: weak heals, weak damage, weak cards, uninteresting/clunky gameplay (hello Horoscope), poor MP management (but hey, that was a thing in SB, too—at least we had Ewer to give ourselves MP...but that’s not a thing anymore). A lot of career ASTs mention the cards above all else simply because that was what attracted them beforehand, but now the mechanic has been dumbed down and is a shadow of its former self with zero variety to it. Someone phrased it perfectly in a thread I was reading: “Why do we have 6 skills [the cards] that do the same thing [+3%/6% damage]”.

But you clearly aren’t reading discussions if you think the cards are the only complaints ASTs have right now.

EDIT because posting limits:

It's not 6 skills though is it, it's only 2 or 3. Draw, Play and Minor Arcana.

It is 6 skills: Balance, Arrow, Spear, Bole, Ewer, and Spire all effectively do the same thing. The only difference is the original damage cards are melee, and original utility cards are ranged. But they all do the same. Hence, “why do we have 6 cards that all do the same thing”, i.e., give a 6% damage buff for 15s. Lord and Lady now do the same thing (with a +8% damage for 15s) with the same caveat—that a caveat of melee card versus ranged card exists doesn’t suddenly make this a revolutionary or thought-provoking mechanic. It’s boring.

Having played AST for 5 levels now, having come from an position of initial disappointment, it's growing on me again.

You’re welcome to your opinion, but my experience was the opposite. Each level gave more and more disappointment. Especially as I progressed and didn’t get any stronger as a result. The only skill I enjoyed getting was Celestial Intersection, but the shield is still fairly weak and gets broken in a matter of a couple autos on a tank. I think Divine Benison is actually better than it.

The cards... aren't so bad.
Balance needed a slight nerf, let's be honest, and once you factor in the fact that Balance was a 1-in-6 before (or a 16.6% chance, 36.6% chance when factoring in redraw) with Arrow and Spear not being as effective, the potencies averaged out aren't that much lower. Given that you've basically gone from a 36.6% chance tops to a 100% chance, the nerf seems proportional. From 10% to 6%, on a half duration, is 30% of the averaged potency, and 40% on a Minor Arcana. It's almost perfect. Given that over the course of 3mins you'll use 3 of the base cards (30%) and between as many as 6 Minor Arcana with Sleeve draw (40%) it's basically the same 36.6%.

The cards are a direct nerf from what they used to be. 6%/8% on one person for 15 seconds is already weaker than the 10% for 30 seconds a single-target Balance original gave, and you can no longer extend their effects with Celestial Opposition or Time Dilation, making them even weaker than before. 6% on 8 people for 15 seconds every 3 minutes is a joke compared to the old Balance, even when you try to factor in RNG. There’s no way the cards make up the rDPS gain they used to—Balance alone could net you ~1,000 rDPS, and Spear only got stronger as the gear progressed because players could stack more and more of it on their gear (and jobs with crit mechanics like 4.0 BRD and MNK loved the card almost as much as a Balance—especially during a burst window).

If Balance needed to be addressed, I don’t think the solution was to change all of the cards into weaker Balances.

You've basically lost the RNG aspect entirely when it comes to individual cards, and only need to worry about it for the seal mechanic. That is to say, your outgoing rDPS is no longer RNG dependant, the RNG is entirely contained within your personal mechanic management.

You’ve also lost the satisfactory element of applying the cards.

When it comes to Divination/Expanded-Balance, it's a similar situation, but it is a nerf.
Again factoring in redraws, you had a 26% chance to draw an Expanded-Balance over a minute*, you now have a virtually 100% chance to gain a full Divination over 3 minutes, so 33% efficiency in comparison to that 26%.
33% over 26% is... 126% as efficient, and at 6% instead of 5% damage up, it's another 16% more potent for a total of 142% of the averaged potency. Plug in the halved duration, and it's 71% as efficient as the old Expanded-Balance. If you want to give Divination a like-for-like potency, then it could be reduced to a 130s cooldown, therefore a neater 120s cooldown would actually be a slight buff.

As for the agency of choosing where the cards go, this is what I was most concerned about when we first got the tooltips, and initially, it bothered me. But it's really just a matter of adjusting. Choosing where to apply to ranged or melee, is fundamentally no different from the axiomatic application of crit to BRD/MNK, or speed to SAM/BLM. You just lose the grey area of "I don't have a BRD or a MNK, where does this Spear go?" which to me always made it feel more disappointing that I hadn't drawn a Balance instead...

*Expanded-Balance chance math:
Draw a Balance 1-in-6 = 16.6%
Redraw it for a 1-in-5 = 20%
Add them for 36.6%

Draw a Spire/Ewer for Expanded 2-in-6 = 33.3%
Redraw it for a 2-in-5 = 40%
Add them for 73.3%

To factor both outcomes together, multiply 36% by 73% for 26% overall.

I feel as if you are focusing too heavily on “there’s no more RNG now so it’s a straight gain” without actually looking at the potencies and considering that, even with the removal of RNG, the cards are straight up weaker than they were before without the RNG. The removal of RNG does not make up for the fact that they are weaker—especially with Draw having the same cooldown outside of Sleeve Draw windows. They certainly aren’t tipping the charts in favor of AST when you compare it to the other two healers.
As a side note, if you didn’t have a BRD or a MNK, Spear could either be Minor Arcana for an oGCD heal/damage card, or you could toss it on another job. Towards the end of 4.0, most jobs were stacking crit over any other substat, so it wouldn’t be a huge loss to put it on any player so long as they weren’t AFK or drooling on their keyboard. I feel like you’re really underselling Spear simply because it was +crit and not +damage. Was it weaker than Balance? Of course. But it wasn’t worthless.

WHMs are pulling 7,000 in just personal damage. ASTs are hovering around 4,000~4,500. Our cards are not making up 2,500~3,000 in rDPS to make us a viable alternative to WHM, and our healing is the weakest among the three (SCH is actually able to basically solo heal now with all their Aetherflow being relegated to healing resources only—even with its boring DPS rotation now). It seems more and more as if you’re purposely gimping your party bringing an AST.

[Seraphor]

It's not 6 skills though is it, it's only 2 or 3. Draw, Play and Minor Arcana.

Having played AST for 5 levels now, having come from an position of initial disappointment, it's growing on me again.

Potencies could do with tweaking, CO and CU feel a bit like wet noodles, but it's nice to know they're there for a healing boost.
But once you get Intersection, it's nice to throw out the odd shield in Diurnal, as it's on such a short cooldown. Coming from a DRK main, it feels like what shields should be, situational to react to incoming damage spikes.

I've actually enjoyed healing dungeons now though, I'm making full use of Lightspeed (previously used purely for Gravity spam) and Synastry (often ignored before ShB) and it feels more engaging.


The cards... aren't so bad.
Balance needed a slight nerf, let's be honest, and once you factor in the fact that Balance was a 1-in-6 before (or a 16.6% chance, 36.6% chance when factoring in redraw) with Arrow and Spear not being as effective, the potencies averaged out aren't that much lower. Given that you've basically gone from a 36.6% chance tops to a 100% chance, the nerf seems proportional. From 10% to 6%, on a half duration, is 30% of the averaged potency, and 40% on a Minor Arcana. It's almost perfect. Given that over the course of 3mins you'll use 3 of the base cards (30%) and between as many as 6 Minor Arcana with Sleeve draw (40%) it's basically the same 36.6%.

You've basically lost the RNG aspect entirely when it comes to individual cards, and only need to worry about it for the seal mechanic. That is to say, your outgoing rDPS is no longer RNG dependant, the RNG is entirely contained within your personal mechanic management.

When it comes to Divination/Expanded-Balance, it's a similar situation, but it is a nerf.
Again factoring in redraws, you had a 26% chance to draw an Expanded-Balance over a minute*, you now have a virtually 100% chance to gain a full Divination over 3 minutes, so 33% efficiency in comparison to that 26%.
33% over 26% is... 126% as efficient, and at 6% instead of 5% damage up, it's another 16% more potent for a total of 142% of the averaged potency. Plug in the halved duration, and it's 71% as efficient as the old Expanded-Balance. If you want to give Divination a like-for-like potency, then it could be reduced to a 130s cooldown, therefore a neater 120s cooldown would actually be a slight buff.

As for the agency of choosing where the cards go, this is what I was most concerned about when we first got the tooltips, and initially, it bothered me. But it's really just a matter of adjusting. Choosing where to apply to ranged or melee, is fundamentally no different from the axiomatic application of crit to BRD/MNK, or speed to SAM/BLM. You just lose the grey area of "I don't have a BRD or a MNK, where does this Spear go?" which to me always made it feel more disappointing that I hadn't drawn a Balance instead...



*Expanded-Balance chance math:
Draw a Balance 1-in-6 = 16.6%
Redraw it for a 1-in-5 = 20%
Add them for 36.6%

Draw a Spire/Ewer for Expanded 2-in-6 = 33.3%
Redraw it for a 2-in-5 = 40%
Add them for 73.3%

To factor both outcomes together, multiply 36% by 73% for 26% overall.

[AmeliaVerves]

I just jumped to last page without reading what was said before and just want to add my opinion on Ast.

I mained the job for the last half of SB and learned to love it, it was more complex than Whm, needed more planning ahead, was fun and engaging to play and actually worth the effort you put into (pDPS and rDPS wise), but sadly that changed with SHB.
Right now you have to be on spot for 99% of a fight to be worth your spot (speaking of endgame, EX trials for now since we don't have anything else) in comparison to a WHM. The numbers you get are not rewarding at all, neither DPS nor healing wise, which sadly kills the fun for me personally.

Potencies are honestly a joke at this point. While I consider myself a decent healer it's just disappointing to see Ast being 2k pDPS behind Whm even tho the class is more complex than Glare-mage. :/ Don't get me wrong, I like Whm and I enjoy it being actually good, but they definetly need to change some potencies to give Ast a chance to be more than a personal buff b...uddy for your party.

[ForteNightshade]

IThe cards... aren't so bad.
Balance needed a slight nerf, let's be honest, and once you factor in the fact that Balance was a 1-in-6 before (or a 16.6% chance, 36.6% chance when factoring in redraw) with Arrow and Spear not being as effective, the potencies averaged out aren't that much lower. Given that you've basically gone from a 36.6% chance tops to a 100% chance, the nerf seems proportional. From 10% to 6%, on a half duration, is 30% of the averaged potency, and 40% on a Minor Arcana. It's almost perfect. Given that over the course of 3mins you'll use 3 of the base cards (30%) and between as many as 6 Minor Arcana with Sleeve draw (40%) it's basically the same 36.6%.

You are severely underestimating how strong Spear could be. Even Arrow wasn't all that bad, especially on jobs like BLM, MNK or SAM. Furthermore, the potency differences do not average out whatsoever. fifteen seconds at 6% on a single target is laughably weak. Using basic napkin math, I can pull roughly 13k on a target dummy playing Dragoon—which amounts to 780 additional rDPS. Compare that to AoE Balance on just the four DPS bursting for... lets say 12k each (lowball estimate). That amounts to 4,800 rDPS since it lasts for thirty seconds in lieu of fifteen. That is a staggering difference, and highlights why the cards now feel incredibly weak. They are weak.

Did Balance need a nerf? Yes. Hell, I strongly advocated it becoming Direct Hit and they figuring out something else for Spire because flat damage tends to be an issue balance wise. Instead, they made every card a crappy version of Balance—one that cannot come close to how much pDPS White Mage throws out. You may prefer the lack of RNG, however Astro is undeniably far weaker than it was in Stormblood.

[Seraphor]

I've just done the math...
You've both ignored it.

You have to factor in the RNG when talking these potencies.
A 36% chance at 10% over 30s, isn't necessarily better than a 100% chance at 6% over 15s.
Factoring in that at least 50% of your cards will be Minor Arcana'd to 8%, that's not a nerf.


"You’ve also lost the satisfactory element of applying the cards."

Subjective, and I too felt like this when I started playing AST at level 70. But having played it through 5 levels, and several dungeons now, that feeling has dissipated.

[Xelanar]

It's not 6 skills though is it, it's only 2 or 3. Draw, Play and Minor Arcana.

Having played AST for 5 levels now, having come from an position of initial disappointment, it's growing on me again.

Potencies could do with tweaking, CO and CU feel a bit like wet noodles, but it's nice to know they're there for a healing boost.
But once you get Intersection, it's nice to throw out the odd shield in Diurnal, as it's on such a short cooldown. Coming from a DRK main, it feels like what shields should be, situational to react to incoming damage spikes.

I've actually enjoyed healing dungeons now though, I'm making full use of Lightspeed (previously used purely for Gravity spam) and Synastry (often ignored before ShB) and it feels more engaging.


The cards... aren't so bad.
Balance needed a slight nerf, let's be honest, and once you factor in the fact that Balance was a 1-in-6 before (or a 16.6% chance, 36.6% chance when factoring in redraw) with Arrow and Spear not being as effective, the potencies averaged out aren't that much lower. Given that you've basically gone from a 36.6% chance tops to a 100% chance, the nerf seems proportional. From 10% to 6%, on a half duration, is 30% of the averaged potency, and 40% on a Minor Arcana. It's almost perfect. Given that over the course of 3mins you'll use 3 of the base cards (30%) and between as many as 6 Minor Arcana with Sleeve draw (40%) it's basically the same 36.6%.

You've basically lost the RNG aspect entirely when it comes to individual cards, and only need to worry about it for the seal mechanic. That is to say, your outgoing rDPS is no longer RNG dependant, the RNG is entirely contained within your personal mechanic management.

When it comes to Divination/Expanded-Balance, it's a similar situation, but it is a nerf.
Again factoring in redraws, you had a 26% chance to draw an Expanded-Balance over a minute*, you now have a virtually 100% chance to gain a full Divination over 3 minutes, so 33% efficiency in comparison to that 26%.
33% over 26% is... 126% as efficient, and at 6% instead of 5% damage up, it's another 16% more potent for a total of 142% of the averaged potency. Plug in the halved duration, and it's 71% as efficient as the old Expanded-Balance. If you want to give Divination a like-for-like potency, then it could be reduced to a 130s cooldown, therefore a neater 120s cooldown would actually be a slight buff.

As for the agency of choosing where the cards go, this is what I was most concerned about when we first got the tooltips, and initially, it bothered me. But it's really just a matter of adjusting. Choosing where to apply to ranged or melee, is fundamentally no different from the axiomatic application of crit to BRD/MNK, or speed to SAM/BLM. You just lose the grey area of "I don't have a BRD or a MNK, where does this Spear go?" which to me always made it feel more disappointing that I hadn't drawn a Balance instead...

I'll not check if all the math is correct, but instead I'll asume that it is, because from where I am standing it does not make a difference if those changes were a nerf, buff or a clever mathematical formula that balanced it out perfectly.

My argument being, that for me personally it is not all about efficiency. Of course I want to play efficiently but I want to actually have fun while doing so. I loved the versatility of the old card system, even if I was balance fishing most of the time. Having a kit of situational cards at my disposal and being able to use them felt way more rewarding than mindlessly slapping the same buff on players every 30 seconds. Even if they tweaked numbers and made card buffs +50% damage for 15 seconds - I could not care less, because it would still be the same boring, uninteresting mechanic we have now.

I know not everyone will agree with me here, but I'd prefer the array of strong card options we had beforehand, situational as they were. So for me problems lie within Astrologian's new core card mechanics - not exclusively, but in parts. Numbers can be tweaked and adjusted quickly. Entire mechanics cannot.

During expert roulettes I find myself sometimes drawing ewers and boles, whishing their old effects were back so I could spend my mana more freely or help my tank mitigate through all those adds he pulled in overconfidence.

Those cards are far from the only thing that went completely wrong in my eyes though. What about interesting Skills? Does it feel awesome or impactful to use the 'reworked' Celestial Opposition? Or Horoscope? Or Divination? I'd wager that... no, it does not(at least for me it certainly doesn't). Awesome was stacking all those HoTs/Buffs on a tank and use Time Dilation to extend them all at once - it felt powerful, even more so when timed so they'd fall under the previous Celestial Opposition extension effect. Even using Neutral Sect feels awesome because by all uselessness and overhealing the ability provides it at least give the impression of making a difference.

In short: using those skills feels/felt rewarding. Using the new cards/Horoskope/Divination/Celestial Opposition fails to deliver the same, leaving Astrologian with mostly uninteresting stuff, that replaced something superior in terms of fun factor.

[Seraphor]

"During expert roulettes I find myself sometimes drawing ewers and boles, whishing their old effects were back so I could spend my mana more freely or help my tank mitigate through all those adds he pulled in overconfidence."

Lucid Dreaming on cooldown gives more than enough MP, more reliable than a Ewer.
Celestial Intersection gives more reliable mitigation than a Bole.


I honestly find fishing for seals to be just as engaging after having played the new AST for a while now.

There's no frustration of "I've drawn nothing but Spires for the last 5 minutes" or "I couldn't raise because I've run out of MP and haven't drawn a Ewer"

This really is a matter of perspective, and I feel newer players, or those who can get over the old mechanics, will enjoy this job a lot more.


The only gripes I now have, are potencies of CO and CU, and the cooldown of Divination or the inability to get seals out of combat.
Enabling seals out of combat would be a substantial buff in its own right. You'd be able to start a battle with Divination right away, instead of arbitrarily delaying it until 1m into the fight. Which means more Divinations over the course of a raid.

[ForteNightshade]

I've just done the math...
You've both ignored it.

You have to factor in the RNG when talking these potencies.
A 36% chance at 10% over 30s, isn't necessarily better than a 100% chance at 6% over 15s.
Factoring in that at least 50% of your cards will be Minor Arcana'd to 8%, that's not a nerf.


"You’ve also lost the satisfactory element of applying the cards."

Subjective, and I too felt like this when I started playing AST at level 70. But having played it through 5 levels, and several dungeons now, that feeling has dissipated.

Except you're only accounting for Balance in that percentage. You cannot simply ignore them because Balance happens to be better. They all provide far higher damage contributions than the card currents. Additionally, it's you who ignored the fact AoE Balance gave substantially more rDPS than new crappy single target Balance. A 1/3 chance to provide 4,800 rDPS (it would be higher since I didn't factor in tanks or healers) is much better than 100% at 780. It would take current AST roughly seven cards to make up for what old Balance provided as an AoE. And this is only accounting for the DPS still.