What do you want to see on Astrologian?

[Ghishlain]

So now the question for astrologians should be...

Should we use our buffs to up the output of the lowest DPS in the party...or the highest DPS in the party for when we get the Attack Speed and/or Attack Damage buff?

Given the current Meta, I'd say whoever has the highest DPS should get the damage up buff. So, a 500 DPS MNK getting +10% would give them an additional 50 DPS (for the sake of easy math - I know it's more complicated than that) versus another MNK with 400 DPS who would only get 40 DPS. That being said, this buff SHOULD be coordinated with other CDs your DPS may have to maximize bang for buck.

For attack speed (this should also affect spell speed), BLM hands down. More spells, more damage, more up time in Astral Fire.

What about Spire's reducing ability Cooldown?

Depends on the situation. Not knowing how all the DPS work in HW and given current meta, I'd say either NIN for more Ninjutsu or DRG for the massive amount of oGCD abilities they have at their disposal. Can make an argument to give this to a tank too if certain CD rotations help with a specific fight.

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Take it all with a grain of salt though, since we don't know how the rotation meta will shift come Heavensward release. All opinions in this post take into account current raid meta (which is not designed with these new jobs in mind

[Blueyes]

If you're boosting the guy doing 500 DPS by 10%, they're doing 50 more.

If you're boosting the guy doing 200 DPS by 10%, they're doing 20 more.

To be perfectly honest this has me a little worried when it comes to doing any content without a static. If you are in a group with more than one well geared player it can come down to favoritism when deciding which individual deserves the buff. Imagine yourself as a DPS in a dungeon, being well geared and believing you are doing very well, but the Astrologian in the group keeps deciding to buff the other DPS instead of you because they think the role of that DPS is superior or their individual performance exceeds your own. It can cause unnecessary friction and while perhaps the worst that can come from that might just be one less commendation for the Astrologian, I just have to wonder why they decided to go with single target buffs instead of having buffs that affect the entire group equally.

And actually I guess I probably know the answer to that already which is double Astrologian and the potential issue of stacking buffs. Unlike Scholar, who can coordinate to have one player use Selene and the other use Eos, it isn't the same thing to just tell an Astrologian to not use their cards. If Astologian buffs were party-wde and able to stack it could get a little too powerful, but even if they didn't stack it wouldn't necessarily mean that one Astologian would never get to use their cards as Royal Road would still be valuable and you would essentially get an extra card draw or two in the event the primary card user doesn't draw what they want.

[LycorisSelunis]

Perhaps the buffs were all originally aoe and they decided sometime during development that this was either too powerful, or that the buffs would have to be too weak to matter and what ended up happening was what we get now, with only two of them becoming aoe at a potency loss.

As for having 2 well geared dps in a static, why not alternate which one you give buffs to? or perhaps use different buffs for dps-say the atk speed for a nin and the atk potency on a blm (just throwing out non specific examples). Or just throw all buffs on the tank and call it a day? hehe

[Raminax]

Rawr!

Live and let live in that case, to be honest. As said, it's the Astrologian's loss if they're making it harder for the party for whatever conceivable reason they have to do so. If it's desperate, I'd at least attempt to convince the Astrologian to try to use their card buffs on someone else and see if that works to beat an encounter, but that can easily go awry if one accidentally mentions raw DPS numbers. Awfully easy to construct that as harassment if someone in the party is feeling a bit sensitive that day.

As for the reason why they don't affect the entire group... we can only speculate, but I'm guessing that it's to give Astrologians more to think about when using their cards. If all of them affected the entire party, they would just simply hit Draw, Use and then call it a day, making cards perfunctory, especially when they're meant to be a major draw to the Astrologian job.

[416to305]

Sorry if this is a really stupid question but how do you know who is doing the highest or lowest DPS? Based on their apparent gear or HP? I'm not clear on how you compare 2 DPS and say one is doing 200 and one 500, where do those numbers come from?

[Raminax]

There are various damage meters (most reliable one I know of is ACT - Advanced Combat Tracker) for XIV that will happily show you results without having to resort to patience, an abacus and a stopwatch. Damage dealt, health restored, how much a certain skill contributed to your output, you can see it all.

That said, it's... controversial. You won't get punished for just using it, but I've heard that people tend to get bans if they use the results to harass (what constitutes harassment is a player judgment, I suppose) players.

[LycorisSelunis]

There are various damage meters (most reliable one I know of is ACT - Advanced Combat Tracker) for XIV that will happily show you results without having to resort to patience, an abacus and a stopwatch. Damage dealt, health restored, how much a certain skill contributed to your output, you can see it all.

That said, it's... controversial. You won't get punished for just using it, but I've heard that people tend to get bans if they use the results to harass (what constitutes harassment is a player judgment, I suppose) players.

Frankly I am glad that meters are not a huge thing in this game. WoW epeens ruined this nonsense for me, dps and healing both. Actually, healing meters more than dps because you cannot truly judge performance that way- how much you heal depends on how well the rest of your team does at avoiding damage. Flat numbers are less likely to get you through an encounter than proper utility, which is difficult to quantify. About the only thing I do like about meters is seeing things like, oh this tank never used his mitigation cds, dps never popped cds and stood in this mechanic every time, that whm only cast regen single target and no other spell when everyone was getting aoe'd to death.

I guess what I mean is that these tools ahve a place, but the average player misuses the tool. But even so anything that lets you pick apart performance can be used to harass by 'elitists', and probably do more herm than good overall.

[loreleidiangelo]

As for having 2 well geared dps in a static, why not alternate which one you give buffs to? or perhaps use different buffs for dps-say the atk speed for a nin and the atk potency on a blm (just throwing out non specific examples).

A well-organized static will likely do what you just described, though I think the attack speed would be better served on BLM and the damage up on the NIN, in your example. The way the buffs are thought out currently means that no DPS should ever go "without" a buff...EXCEPT maybe SMN, unless the attack speed up is actually spellspeed, and snapshots with their DoTs. Maybe MP reduction on them if no healers have MP troubles. TP reduction would be great on a BRD, MCN, or any melee, and the CD reduction would go well on tanks, DRGs, and BRD.

These are just my speculations. Without full patch notes to theorycraft with, I'm stuck guessing at some of the particulars.

[Cynfael]

I guess what I mean is that these tools ahve a place, but the average player misuses the tool. But even so anything that lets you pick apart performance can be used to harass by 'elitists', and probably do more herm than good overall.

This argument pretty much debunks itself, though; these "elitists" that seem to have the more delicate flowers of our forum community living in perpetual fear of a harshly worded critique from a random stranger couldn't be bothered to actually share this information, whether constructively or abusively.

Also, most people playing on PC who are really interested in the meta game of maximizing DPS are already parsing themselves. The pro-parser threads are mostly for the benefit of console players and to help raise awareness of the expectation of DPS to actually try to do their jobs well, which exists regardless of whether or not the metrics are readily visible to the players.

[Nadirah]

ACT was originally an eq2 tool. Fun fact. Was unaware FFXIV generated an external combat log that ACT could read, though I haven't paid much attention.

What I want to know about AST... What cross class to use? I know conj/thaumaturge but what spells? Same boring stuff sch/whm already cross from both?