Never healed before in my life in a game until now and I gotta say....

[Valic]

Hi, I main tanks in this game. Was DRK last expac, now gunbreaker. Prior to those 2 I was either a melee dps, ranged dps, or caster... kinda kept jumping until I found out I love tanking. Over the years I have always felt healing was an absolute chore from a distance. I look at healers complain about dumb dps or dumb tanks, and I just imagine "why put yourself through such a stressful job then?" I've cleared this tier of savage as my first tier of current savage content ever, and I'm currently working on clearing TEA. Now.... In the mean time, I felt a little bored and figured, I'd give healers a shot. Scholar always fascinated me because it's more of a mitigation healer.... I like mitigation. Unfortunately, fairies and its cosmetic didn't appeal to me as much. Then I considered white mage... Neat job but, feels a bit vanilla to me I suppose? So I picked Astrologian. I've picked up some things over the years I get from healers and I'm now level 58 with it and I wanted to share my opinion so far as a first time healer both in FFXIV and in mmo's in general.


So, I do remember last expac AST had cards that boosted your mp gain, your defense, and general dps. I know they've completely changed that now and I do notice a significant difference between the 3 healer job types. So far.... I feel.... busy, but bored? I'm trying to figure out what would give me a high for this job like others do. For Red mage it' the melee combo burst window, for dragoon it was the geirskogul and jumps, for tanks it's successful tank swaps and mitigation as well as positioning perfectly. Every job I've played gives me something that I value as "fun" and gives me a high to do.... With AST right now.... I don't know what I should be feeling.


I get a sense of tension when I do trials because I'm not sure what my other healer covers or will do. I only have about 3 dps skills total, one of which is just for aoe'ing. My cards are still a thing but they feel... annoyingly stressful? I'm sure it's a dps gain and all and I like the concept behind seals for divination but.... Something is just off about how it feels. We have skills that are in strange spots imo too.. Like I did Hauke Manor today, seeing I have Diurnal Sect, but I don't have any skills that it affects?....

I also have Undraw.... still not sure why someone would want to use this as it doesn't seem to affect cooldowns or anything. It's simply removing the card in general and that sounds like a waste of a cd for Draw to begin with. I'm healing fine I suppose, but so far I don't feel anything out of doing it. All my heals feel like they're small or I have to use twice in a row to really heal someone up... But I understand that's WHM's job to have really high healing. Then the same case for being in nocturnal sect... my shields feel, negligible and not really worth using half the time. Frankly if I see a WHM in my trial, I go noct with the mindset of "I guess they got this covered, Ill add my healing but it's not going to really show." So i'm confused on that front.... If the draw of the job is about the card system and being the red mage of healers while providing support to your party through these card buffs.... why did they nuke the joy of it? I don't heal very well to feel good, I don't provide shields well enough, and my cards are tedious all to buildup a group dps buff.


I guess what I mean to ask here is... Is this how AST is supposed to feel right now or am I missing something? Where do healers get their "high" from in playing the healer role in this game? Is there a reason they changed astrologian so much and is this change why people have been complaining about AST right now(if so, I kinda see it and I haven't even played SCH or WHM)?

[MuseTraveller]

Welcome to the healer role!

Unfortunately it is exactly as you described it. AST changes made the job absolutely un-fun and that's exactly why healers complain so much. Unless you prefer fast casting job, I'd suggest switching to WHM to at least enjoy the blood lily. Or max AST and see how it feels at 80 but it's dynamics don't really change much.

Personally, I decided to completely ignore the seals in roulettes/alliance raids. Everyone gets whatever I draw and everyone gets divination when it's up. It didn't made the job more fun but it removed a portion of my frustration with it.

Hopefully changes in 6.0 but until then, it is what it is.

[Iscah]

Like I did Hauke Manor today, seeing I have Diurnal Sect, but I don't have any skills that it affects?....

I also have Undraw.... still not sure why someone would want to use this as it doesn't seem to affect cooldowns or anything. It's simply removing the card in general and that sounds like a waste of a cd for Draw to begin with.

Sects affect whether your "aspected" spells apply Regen or shields, and you don't have those yet in Haukke.

Undraw seems to be a leftover from the older system where you would need to clear a drawn card (and corresponding skills to clear your held card and Royal Road effects) sometimes. There isn't any benefit to it now when there's no downside to using the 'wrong' card.

[Valic]

Welcome to the healer role!

Unfortunately it is exactly as you described it. AST changes made the job absolutely un-fun and that's exactly why healers complain so much. Unless you prefer fast casting job, I'd suggest switching to WHM to at least enjoy the blood lily. Or max AST and see how it feels at 80 but it's dynamics don't really change much.

Personally, I decided to completely ignore the seals in roulettes/alliance raids. Everyone gets whatever I draw and everyone gets divination when it's up. It didn't made the job more fun but it removed a portion of my frustration with it.

Hopefully changes in 6.0 but until then, it is what it is.

Huh... that's a good idea. Well dang, that's a shame.

Sects affect whether your "aspected" spells apply Regen or shields, and you don't have those yet in Haukke.

Undraw seems to be a leftover from the older system where you would need to clear a drawn card (and corresponding skills to clear your held card and Royal Road effects) sometimes. There isn't any benefit to it now when there's no downside to using the 'wrong' card.

I mean, I guess my point there was.... why give me a dozen abilities at level 30 including a buff that adds regen to specific spells... and then not give me at least one of said spells? It's like Machinist getting their overcharge heat buff but they don't even get the heat blasts/arrows or even the potency buff.... At that point, why bother? Seems like they should've given me a sect + aspected benefic to start ya know?

[Iscah]

I mean, I guess my point there was.... why give me a dozen abilities at level 30 including a buff that adds regen to specific spells... and then not give me at least one of said spells? It's like Machinist getting their overcharge heat buff but they don't even get the heat blasts/arrows or even the potency buff.... At that point, why bother? Seems like they should've given me a sect + aspected benefic to start ya know?

There are lots of jobs built like that, though. Lv30 is your first step into a job but they often give you "half an ability" at that point.

I'm not sure what the setup now is, but previously warrior got tank stance at Lv30, which gives you the Beast Gauge... but you don't get the skill Inner Beast (ie. the thing you spend gauge power on) until Lv35 so the gauge just sat there and you couldn't do anything with it.

It can even happen later, eg. summoner getting Dreadwyrm Trance (Lv58) but not immediately getting Deathflare (Lv60) so you just let your trance fizzle out at the end.

[Rongway]

I mean, I guess my point there was.... why give me a dozen abilities at level 30 including a buff that adds regen to specific spells... and then not give me at least one of said spells?

It's a vestige of the HW/SB days when Sects buffed your healing magic potency and reduced enmity generation for all spells, in addition to the Aspect-specific effects. General buff to healing at 30, then Aspected Benefic a few levels later.

That's why Diurnal Sect feels anachronous now that the Sects strictly only add regens or shields to Aspected and Celestial actions.

previously warrior got tank stance at Lv30, which gives you the Beast Gauge... but you don't get the skill Inner Beast (ie. the thing you spend gauge power on) until Lv35 so the gauge just sat there and you couldn't do anything with it.

Similarly, once upon a time, WARs got Defiance at 30 and could start building stacks of Wrath to give themselves a scaling buff that affected them generally, and then a few levels later they got an action to spend their Wrath stacks, resetting the buff to 0 but dealing a big attack.

[MitsukiKimura]

I understand your frustration and believe me.. I've been very vocal about how AST got changed with its card abilities. 2 years of playing since before Stormblood was when AST felt amazing and fun, now it's just pure damage. You won't feel like you're contributing to anything outside of a savage/ultimate raid. Some people say it was for balance but for it to change to something like this, just feels rushed without thinking outside the box. When the expansion of 5.0 came out, AST was horribly awful. It's been receiving buffs lately but I'm still waiting on some answers about any feedback they're willing to provide for this card system. Hopefully we'll hear something in the next live letter to come out on Feb 6. We might have to be patient but hopefully good things come to those who wait.

[Valic]

There are lots of jobs built like that, though. Lv30 is your first step into a job but they often give you "half an ability" at that point.

I'm not sure what the setup now is, but previously warrior got tank stance at Lv30, which gives you the Beast Gauge... but you don't get the skill Inner Beast (ie. the thing you spend gauge power on) until Lv35 so the gauge just sat there and you couldn't do anything with it.

It can even happen later, eg. summoner getting Dreadwyrm Trance (Lv58) but not immediately getting Deathflare (Lv60) so you just let your trance fizzle out at the end.

I mean, everyone else actually gets something to go with that ability even when it's by itself. WAR's defiance before was their tank stance, so they could generate enmity to begin with. So that has a function.... Diurnal without anything else, literally doesn't increase anything you do lol. Dreadwyrm is the same, it still resets tri-disaster and reduces your cast time by 2.5 seconds.... So it still functioned to actually do something even if it was by itself. I'm saying giving us a stance at that level... does LITERALLY nothing, no passive attached to it, no halved portion of the skill, it's just literally useless by itself. Seems like flawed design imo.

It's a vestige of the HW/SB days when Sects buffed your healing magic potency and reduced enmity generation for all spells, in addition to the Aspect-specific effects. General buff to healing at 30, then Aspected Benefic a few levels later.

That's why Diurnal Sect feels anachronous now that the Sects strictly only add regens or shields to Aspected and Celestial actions.

That explains a lot...

I understand your frustration and believe me.. I've been very vocal about how AST got changed with its card abilities. 2 years of playing since before Stormblood was when AST felt amazing and fun, now it's just pure damage. You won't feel like you're contributing to anything outside of a savage/ultimate raid. Some people say it was for balance but for it to change to something like this, just feels rushed without thinking outside the box. When the expansion of 5.0 came out, AST was horribly awful. It's been receiving buffs lately but I'm still waiting on some answers about any feedback they're willing to provide for this card system. Hopefully we'll hear something in the next live letter to come out on Feb 6. We might have to be patient but hopefully good things come to those who wait.

If they could keep the seal system how it is to a less tedious degree and give us back all those buffs (maybe substitute spire for crit and arrow with d.hit or determination?)... I feel like I'd at least be useful and diverse in that sense. If they made it so you just need 3 different seals used too, I feel like that would even lessen the amount of "fishing" needed to be done and would provoke more usage of different cards like the bole for the tank, balance for a dps, and some mana for yourself.

[MitsukiKimura]

If they could keep the seal system how it is to a less tedious degree and give us back all those buffs (maybe substitute spire for crit and arrow with d.hit or determination?)... I feel like I'd at least be useful and diverse in that sense. If they made it so you just need 3 different seals used too, I feel like that would even lessen the amount of "fishing" needed to be done and would provoke more usage of different cards like the bole for the tank, balance for a dps, and some mana for yourself.

What I've suggested and many others have as well, is for the shire card to be replaced with Direct hit % increase. I've also suggested that the balance card be cut down to 5%. Testing out suggestions takes time and work put into it. Hopefully they've taken in some suggestions and been testing things out so we can have our different card abilities, without it being too over the top. It made AST unique and really engaging in my personal opinion.

[Sloprano]

I guess what I mean to ask here is... Is this how AST is supposed to feel right now or am I missing something? Where do healers get their "high" from in playing the healer role in this game? Is there a reason they changed astrologian so much and is this change why people have been complaining about AST right now(if so, I kinda see it and I haven't even played SCH or WHM)?

I can't really say to help you on AST, but let me share some history: Scholar used to have a dps class in it's base and boy did it show. The "high" you describe came from pre-emptively shielding, mitigating and find the pauses where everyone is safe to switch stances, put up five dots, one with melee range, able to refresh the core resource out of combat, hardcast 3s for a damage field, able to apply stats down, slow and blind, switch between two fairies for either increased healing or haste and look after it like it was a party member and much more.

Because most of the time I didn't have time to do all that, I was there to make sure nobody died, but the system above ensured I always had something to work with and towards, BOTH in parties and solo. Coming from DPS and tanks, can I wager a guess you also apriciate the feeling of finally manage to just use that right ability or apply a hit at just the right moment. Scholar was that. Always shielding, buffing and debuffing for unavoidables, using the seperate hotbar to manually target the fairies heals even when casting, the making sure I had all five dots up and always judge if I can safely enter Cleric Stance and apply dots for the hard five second cooldown before I could leave it again. Always on the lookout to make use of the whole arsenal. That was my high and what made me play the job.

All that stuff above? It's gone now. Removed and imprisoned in 4.0 and 5.0, for which I can only guess theirs was the crime of being too fun. It's conjecture because SE isn't in any hurry to share details about the design behind ast, whm and sch.

I can still shield and mitigate but it's all for naught because only reward is to press Broil III one more time. All those dots, damage variety, separate fairy hotbar and second fairy and support abilities all gone with the wind. People take damage, I press a oGCD, and resume pressing the same button until everything stops moving. What used to be a fully-fledgded job is now no more than it's role. There is no high anymore, only numbness.