Please don't overbuff Astrologian

[Halik]

If your solution to bring players over to Astrologian is to buff it; please, just don't.

All it will do is push WHM out again, pulling over players that want to play WHM and not even appease the main issue actual Astrologians have with the job.

Spend that energy actually making Astrologians happy, and people who want to play the job will play it because of intrinsic joy, not extrinsic efficiency; even if the numbers aren't quite on par with the others.

[Hereon]

At this point, both of those go hand in hand. AST is neither effective nor overly engaging to play. Maybe it will change due to gear scaling later on, but for now, WHM will remain in the spotlight, since the devs made it very clear the changes are here to stay.

[MintnHoney]

Spend that energy actually making Astrologians happy

As I read this, I couldn't help but think "who do they think they're talking to."
I'm sorry.

[HyoMinPark]

Even if they did buff it to extreme levels, the current card system really hampers my enjoyment. So I doubt I'd play it anyways....

[Almostward]

Buffing this class to the high heavens wont fix the flaws that hold this class back after the rework the devs decided to give it.

Whm will always be better than a Astro this expansion so dont worry

[PondHollow]

That something would plausibly be done that could "overbuff" any of the healers seems incredulous. The three healers have collectively stagnated or decayed. Let them buff Astrologian with abandon and then bring the others up as needed.

[Mansion]

The job has been "fixed" only a week ago, it's normal that it's not represented that much in Savage clears yet, because people did not consider bringing it to Eden when WHM and SCH were doing fine. We have yet to see more clears and more data, but I'm fairly sure it terms of "doing what it's supposed to do" aka dps, heal and buff, AST is fine without any further buff now.

The sensitive issue is the card system, because some people don't like it and felt like switching to another job because of that. The devs have said they would not change it for now, so the discussion is kind of meeting a dead end here. Maybe people will get used to it, maybe they won't. Players are invited to keep providing feedback, so maybe later in 5.X cycle they could reconsider that question.

[Arale]

Assuming they aren't miles behind in overall DPS contribution compared to WHM, all I would want at this point is a buff to Divination (4/7/10%), Horoscope to auto-detonate, Neutral Sect to be applied to ALL healing (Edit: tested this with a few oGCD's, looks like it's sadly true.), adding 500MP return whenever you use Draw (so 10% MP per minute), and really that would do it for me. Maybe if they needed a bit more DPS, give Malefic IV 250 potency instead of 240 but with it's fast cast, I feel like all they need to do is make cards more impactful and add some QOL issues. This is assuming that they won't ever revert or seriously alter the current card system, which seems to be the case.

[Hereon]

Assuming they aren't miles behind in overall DPS contribution compared to WHM, all I would want at this point is a buff to Divination (4/7/10%), Horoscope to auto-detonate, Neutral Sect to be applied to ALL healing (unsure on this one, tooltip says it flat out increases potency but I've seen people saying it only affects healing GCD's), adding 500MP return whenever you use Draw (so 10% MP per minute), and really that would do it for me. Maybe if they needed a bit more DPS, give Malefic IV 250 potency instead of 240 but with it's fast cast, I feel like all they need to do is make cards more impactful and add some QOL issues. This is assuming that they won't ever revert or seriously alter the current card system, which seems to be the case.

A little note on the healing buff side. Healing buffs have always only worked on GCD heals, at least as far as I can recall. So i wouldn't count on them ever changing that. On the fast cast topic i personally like the idea of ast being the mobile healer, and thez are clearly heading in that direction with him. Maybe they could make a 1,5 cast time baseline for all ast GCD while reducing his pDPS and increasing the card buff in return. Because right now if you not perfectly weave your ogcd you actually lose more than what you gain from the cards.

[Arale]

A little note on the healing buff side. Healing buffs have always only worked on GCD heals, at least as far as I can recall. So i wouldn't count on them ever changing that. On the fast cast topic i personally like the idea of ast being the mobile healer, and thez are clearly heading in that direction with him. Maybe they could make a 1,5 cast time baseline for all ast GCD while reducing his pDPS and increasing the card buff in return. Because right now if you not perfectly weave your ogcd you actually lose more than what you gain from the cards.

I was not aware of that. Good to know. I'll test it on my WHM with Temperance later when I can get 3 lilies stacked. I like that fast cast idea but their pDPS is already pretty low. Malefic 4 is already 40 potency below Broil III, and 60 below Glare. Not to mention MP issues that would likely wise from such a playstyle. AST definitely needs their own secondary MP skill to bring them in line with WHM/AST. There was a thread dedicated to this and it had quite a few great ideals in my opinion.