Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[DarkmoonVael]

So i have my astrologian at level 54 now, done lots of stuff with it . The cards are strong when uses correctly, like seriously strong. Manipulating them through spread, shuffle and royal road brings a nice level of skill to the job. The healing is fine, my co-healer in Ravana story mode got them selves killed and managed to rescue the sitution on AST, its through put of HPS in that situation seemed to be fine. However, when going into Sohm Al (lvl 54 dungeon iirc) i had some issues, which may have been down to the tanks choice of play style. So new dungeon, new people, tank decided to speed run the thing O.o. It went fine, however the AST theough put of healing for this was ditincly low. Even in Diurnal Sect using Aspected Benefic, Benefic and using procced Benefic II and then shoring up the healing with Essential Dignity, there seemed to be something slightly lacking with its healing capabilitites. However, this could entirely be down to trying to speed run a dungeon when undergeared as well. What also didnt help was the abrd who stood out of aoe healing distance all the time on the opposite sides of the boss arenas, so far that if i wanted to get him in the aoe healing, the BLM would have been out of range O.o.

Also, synstry seems to have applications in raids, but in 4 man dungeons this seems to be less useful . Nice skill, but has its distinct times and places to use.

The lack of cooldowns on AST to boost your own healing is also noticable, making the AST through-put of healing feel noticably weaker compared to WHM/SCH.

My only real concern once i get to end game is with tanks not understanding AST vis-a-vis speed running end game dungeons, i am not sure if AST has to tools to get the HPS ip to where it should be.

In a raid, its going to be strong.

AST is very lackluster and while it may be fun to mess around with there is no way ever that ast will replace either whm or sch, you cant match either whm or sch at what they are doing by that logic why would i bring an ast which is meh at both over a sch which is the god of utility and mitigation or over a whm which is the god of group healing. Also ast/whm is much less viable than sch/ast due to losing supervirus covenant or sacred soil (talking bout progression)

SMN also brings supervirus, AST brings Disable which can stack with supervirus. AST has exactly the same skill as sacred soil whilst in Noctural Sect, albeit on a longer cooldown.

WHM can not match AST buffing power through cards.

SCH cant match AST buffing capabilities through cards.

Three healers, each bringing something unique to the raid.

[jars]

SCH cant match AST buffing capabilities through cards.

yeah they can

[VanilleFang]

yeah they can

Um. How so?

[DarkmoonVael]

yeah they can

Fantastic, well thought out, well argued reply. 10/10 for effort. The evidence you have just supplied is so compelling i think i will now approach the devs and ask them to remove AST from the game based on the evidence of this response, its just so strong.........

The buffing capabilities from AST are exceptionally strong when used correctly. They are a burst buffing class, unlike SCH since selene buff. The ability to significantly manipulate things like burst dps checks with Balance, mitigate huge tank busters with Bole, reduce healing costs and blm costs through Ewer etc.

Eye for an Eye is avilable on all other caster classes, Supervirus is brought by 2 jobs, sacred soils has its AST equivalent.

Disable is a brilliant ability that can stack with virus and more.

[Viviza]

My own take on it right now is that AST suffers too much in its basic heals in return for very circumstantially useful buffs. It results in a number of "if this and this and this happen, then using the cards this way was worth it". For example getting Spear card just as someone is about to trigger several abilities with cooldowns, or Bole before a big boss hit, or Spire on someone who would have ran out of TP if you had not used Spire. And the more times you spend redrawing to fish a good card, the less useful it is overall.

Take a best-case and always-useful scenario where you royal road Arrow or Spear, then draw Balance or Arrow, for raid dps. You increase raid dps by 5% for 15 seconds, at the cost of two draws, so once a minute. This works out to 1.25% dps to the raid. This also only has an 11% chance to actually happen, without using additional abilities like spread and shuffle. Compare this to Selene, a pet, who offers 3% speed with 50% uptime, and works 100% of the time. So about 1.5% bonus dps.

[RoseM]

Take a best-case and always-useful scenario where you royal road Arrow or Spear, then draw Balance or Arrow, for raid dps. You increase raid dps by 5% for 15 seconds, at the cost of two draws, so once a minute. This works out to 1.25% dps to the raid. This also only has an 11% chance to actually happen, without using additional abilities like spread and shuffle. Compare this to Selene, a pet, who offers 3% speed with 50% uptime, and works 100% of the time. So about 1.5% bonus dps.

Lvl 54 AST. I have been thinking about the exact same thing:

AST: 5% party attack speed boost, 15sec duration, small radius, 60secs cooldown, High skill required (think on the fly, quick finger, lots of buttons to press)

Selene: 3% party attack speed boost, 30sec duration, medium radius, 60secs cooldown, Low skill required (1 button to press, u can even set her on auto mode)


Okay, based on the above observation, please show me why AST isn't complete trash??
People have been saying AST is a fancy class with high skill level required for high reward. But so far I could only see the skill level part, and I highly doubt the reward part...

[Kiaris]

Lvl 54 AST. I have been thinking about the exact same thing:

AST: 5% party attack speed boost, 15sec duration, small radius, 60secs cooldown, High skill required (think on the fly, quick finger, lots of buttons to press)

Selene: 3% party attack speed boost, 30sec duration, medium radius, 60secs cooldown, Low skill required (1 button to press, u can even set her on auto mode)


Okay, based on the above observation, please show me why AST isn't complete trash??
People have been saying AST is a fancy class with high skill level required for high reward. But so far I could only see the skill level part, and I highly doubt the reward part...

You lose Eos's AOE Dot heal to do this. AST doesn't ?

That's all I can think of

[RoseM]

You lose Eos's AOE Dot heal to do this. AST doesn't ?

That's all I can think of

That's all I can think of too.
But AST loses chance to cast other buffs too. So it seems like an even: SCH can only choose between 2 fairies, AST can only choose 1 of the 6 buffs.

[RoseM]

Lvl 54 AST. I have been thinking about the exact same thing:

AST: 5% party attack speed boost, 15sec duration, small radius, 60secs cooldown, High skill required (think on the fly, quick finger, lots of buttons to press)

Selene: 3% party attack speed boost, 30sec duration, medium radius, 60secs cooldown, Low skill required (1 button to press, u can even set her on auto mode)


Okay, based on the above observation, please show me why AST isn't complete trash??
People have been saying AST is a fancy class with high skill level required for high reward. But so far I could only see the skill level part, and I highly doubt the reward part...

lvl58 AST now. Healed approximately 10 runs of Vault yesterday. My thoughts so far:

1. The problem of REALLY WEAK buff still remains. Every time I RR'ed an AOE balance/arrow, it reminds me that as a buffer, my dmg buff can't even out-buff Selene..

[continue...]

[RoseM]

lvl58 AST now. Healed approximately 10 runs of Vault yesterday. My thoughts so far:

Continue on my own thread. I'm a lvl 60 AST now, healed 10 runs of Ravana EX last time and got my 190 weapon. Thoughts so far:

1. On the healing side, AST can do his job, but his fault tolerance is really low. The reason behind that is AST lacks of burst healing ability. E.g. when the other healer died, I know I can solo heal the party for at least 30sec ish as a WHM, with Divine seal, Presence of Mind, Tetragrammaton, and Benediction, I know I can do that even better as a SCH, with 9 stacks of Aetherflow, Virus, Lustrate, Indomitability, Both Tactics, and Dissipation. But when it comes to AST, all I have is Essential Dignity, and perhaps an Arrow card if I was lucky... Lightspeed? Are you kidding me??