LL impressions pre-patchnotes: healers still garbo it seems

[MintnHoney]

Why?
What happened with it historically?
All I know is on release it's DPS was really bad? Or something?

It's usually by patch x.3 that AST specifically receives buffs, and it usually skyrockets the potential of the job, usually due to something of a delayed knee-jerk reaction from Squeen to put a band-aid fix on problems with AST. Or so it has been in the past, since AST's release.
This time around, AST is already supposed to be the strongest healer, but things are relatively balanced regardless. So I wonder if these updates will still make AST so good that we start to see nerf requests on the forums again, or complaints from other healer mains being told by their statics/FCs that they need to switch to AST, or if Squeen will break tradition.

[Aurturia]

I dropped out of healing early in the expansion but my understanding is the biggest complaint for sleeve draw is how busy it is, especially on controller. What are the odds the change is just a brute force fix to give 3 seals and nothing else?

[Maltothoris]

Why?
What happened with it historically?
All I know is on release it's DPS was really bad? Or something?

Ever since its inception, Astro was always in a strange sort of limbo. When it first came, it's healing was woefully short of what the other two healers could but it was with the assumption that it's buffs would make up for that gap but that didn't. Patch 3.07 comes around and the cards and Dinural sect are buffed where di astro could heal as well as a Whm but noct was still pathetically weak to scholar back then. Patch 3.3 comes around and Astros get a huge boost their mp management which made it better than whm at the time but still wasn't widely used. Patch 3.4 (the infamous patch for many healers) they went all out in trying to buff astro. Noct sect got huge buffs all around on top of what it got in patch 3.3 but it still didn't compare when Balance got buffed from a 10 percent buff single target to a 20 percent buff single target and with expanded royal road, 10 percent all around buff. On top of other things like Celestial opposition getting a buff where it extended buffs by 10 seconds, Astros were far and large the best healer in the game in Heaveansward, though not as tightly designed as sch

In the stormblood era, changes were made to make noct and di sects more even. Cards stayed the same til patch 3.05 where balance was nerfed back to its original strength but spear was changed to a crit buff. Then in patch 4.3, two big things happened. One was when astro cast time of malefic was from 2.5 to 1.5 for the better weaving with cards. Second was lightspeed which used to reduce your damage by 25 percent and was changed to where it no longer had a damage penalty. Then two changes put ahead of Whm in stormblood for nrealy the rest of the expansion til 4.5 when they super buffed Assize since Whm was falling behind again there.

[Heilstos]

(...)

In the stormblood era, changes were made to make noct and di sects more even. Cards stayed the same til patch 3.05 where balance was nerfed back to its original strength but spear was changed to a crit buff. Then in patch 4.3, two big things happened. One was when astro cast time of malefic was from 2.5 to 1.5 for the better weaving with cards. Second was lightspeed which used to reduce your damage by 25 percent and was changed to where it no longer had a damage penalty. Then two changes put ahead of Whm in stormblood for nrealy the rest of the expansion til 4.5 when they super buffed Assize since Whm was falling behind again there.

With ShB the AST lose his power to extend Buffs and lose the way to extend Lucid Dreaming (10s more) and mana get no other way to get mana back. So Manaproblems come and the Dev team try to fix the Problem. So they delete mana reduce ( that could be called nerf) but give a other spell the way to give mana back. (nerf/buff) I belive this mana reg is not high or goes in the same way like the (50% reduce). So the make something on the mana costs smaller. BUT there are GCD so people try to avoid.

The question is who they want to change SD. Maybe the stressful playment is over.

We should wait until the patch notes come out. So long leave the pitchforks and the torches at home or bring them to shiva in E8S

[currentlemon]

Well, crap. So much for any good news. It's still relatively early to call bad news since the patch notes won't be shown till August 10th, but I still got a bad feeling about this.

[bundythenoob]

I'm so upset that they didn't at least address that they're working on SOMETHING for SCH. I haven't had even a slim scrap of fun on it since I got lv 68 back in STB with the aetherflow perk (rip in one piece). I mean, would it be so hard to give us back shadowflare, even if it cost 1 aetherflow? I'll take that over broil spam anyday.

[Ilenya]

Part of me has been wondering if they took away Shadowflare in preparation for a potential GEO. I would *hope* not but...

[SpiralMask]

Part of me has been wondering if they took away Shadowflare in preparation for a potential GEO. I would *hope* not but...

I mean WHM lost all it's elemental ties and AST lost all it's time stuff (and AST/GEO relationship is apparently a big thing in the quests), so i would not at all be surprised if SE revealed that the new class is just a horrible frankenstein of everything healers have lamented losing since ShB

[Ilenya]

I mean, I'm one of the people who really hopes the (potential) new healer is a Garlean-inspired Chemist over...Basically anything else they could come up with.

It makes sense, SE. DO IT!

[elioaiko]

I mean WHM lost all it's elemental ties and AST lost all it's time stuff (and AST/GEO relationship is apparently a big thing in the quests), so i would not at all be surprised if SE revealed that the new class is just a horrible frankenstein of everything healers have lamented losing since ShB

I was joking about this with a friend that they'll give us Time Mage or Geomancer as a new healer and just give the stolen abilities from the OG 3.

Like imagine if GEO had Earth V (Stone V) for spam, Wind IV (Aero IV) for DoT.

Or if TIM had Time Dilation and the old Celestial Opposition effect.

It's like SE can't make any healer unique without stealing something from another healer.