Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[Jacost]

I like the collective unconscious animation at least.. but all it's good for now is a mana free heal.

PF groups are already setting healer slots to whm/sch. and this is the easy content, it's only going to get worse

I actually saw a PF group asking for a WHM/AST party. But most don't really care.

In any case, I agree that Lightspeed should be altered to a 10 second buff that removes the GCD in addition to it's current effect. Making ASTs emergency ability into "rapidfire heals"would cement the "speed healer" identity it seems to be going for. It would then probably need a longer cooldown, though... I'm leaning between 300 seconds to make it the AST equivalent of Bene, but then throwing out heals as fast as you're pressing the button with a 25% penalty won't do your MP any favours, so it might get away with 180 seconds...

As for CU, maybe make it work more like Leylines and allow you to move within the radius at least, and still use cards. Perhaps just cancel the effects of your stance while it's active instead of removing casting entirely? Otherwise, the damage reduction in Noct should be more in the realm of 20-25% if you can't heal while doing it. Or even give an MP refresh effect on us while we use it. WHM got an extra MP regen tool, and it's not like we'll be doing much anyway if we're OOM.

[Elysaine]

Arrived at level 42 on my Astrologian last night in Stone Vigil. And so far I'm having a blast with this class. Got to try out Aspected Helios at last boss in SV. So nice when you have to dodge those flying attack phases to have your HP regenning instead of having to resort to swiftcast + medica or swiftcast + succor when a lot of people decided standing in the badstuff is cool. It's basically having Medica 2 at level 42 already, awesome

What I find lacking in the lower level branch is no AOE attack (Lightspeed + Blizzard 2 can make up for that a bit). And like Conjurer/Whitemage only a handful of DPS spells to use. Stella being very situational. So it's basically Combust and Malefic for now. Did cross class Aero for some extra damage (and Cleric Stance of course). But it's still Malefic casting 95% of the time. Granted it was that way with my Whitemage as well up to the point where I got Holy.

The cards system is decent but is a bit much RNG for me. Occasionally I get the right cards at the right time. But really.... Drawing the TP card 5 times in a row when soloing... Ungh..

I'll be sticking with the class for sure. Put HW on hold to get my AST up to 50 and then continue from there.

[Nihility]

my problem with them as of right now is

I leveled astrologian to 60 and geared it in 170/180 first thing and it felt normal to me the whole time. Thinking maybe it's just the content is a little harder to heal
then i started leveling scholar and already at 52 i felt far superior to my 60 astrologian

the ability to keep health bars topped off is night and day and scholar is more mana efficient too

It seems to me the damage increasing utility of the cards should be offset by the fact that it's totally random and highly unreliable
the actual healing should be completely on par with WHM and SCH and now that i have them closing on 60 it is becoming painfully apparent how far off it actually is

and the other problems are the obvious ones
collective unconsious sort of requiring you being in the center of it and self stunned just to have the same effect as the ground targeted non-channeled aoe's of the other classes seems kind of ridiculous. Your locked into a stance once the fight starts with the sheer level of downsides collective unconscious should be like 2-2.5x stronger. It even has the longer cooldown

disable 9 times out of 10 will just be reducing an auto attack instead of the skill you were casting it on. Very unreliable

time dilation and celestial opposition only working on card effects is pretty lame and the tooltips are just outright lying. Also wtf at celestial oppositions cooldown, it's not that amazing of a spell to need that

lightspeed should just be removes cast times of spells that are 2.5s or less. It's current incarnation is good for healing on the go in a pinch but pretty crippling in any other way

bole should probably not be a card, tanking buffs are too important to be random. Even with spread you often never get it before you need it to hold onto

and emergency heals. AST has essential dignity and that is it
SCH now can do lustrate potentially 6 times in a row and has indomitability for aoe too. Their ability to heal in a pinch is through the roof
WHM now has benediction, tetragrammaton, and even assize for aoe, Again able to handle multiple problems in a row and aoe
AST is severely lacking in this department and it is an important one

Same thing with healing buffs
SCH has the fairy up full time support healing, it is truly incredible
WHM has divine seal and presence of mind both increasing output tremendously when needed
AST just has lightspeed which is a pretty severe nerf to healing output, it does not increase casts per second or healing output all it does is make them frontloaded and noticeably weaker

and of course have to include the regen/shield aspect
diurnal stance aspected benefic is basically just a super expensive renew that is frontloaded a bit. It's honestly really bad in a side by side comparison
nocturnal stance is a weaker heal/shield and no crit bonus but the instant kind of makes it forgivable but again super expensive by comparison
the aspected helios are both just straight up worse than the counterparts
keep in mind an AST can't be switching back and forth to be shielding and renewing as needed throughout a fight. There is no reason for their spells to be just plain worse

[VitalSuit]

Celestial opposition and time dilation affect aspected benefic and aspected helios too not just cards.

But yeah Noct Sect needs a buff, the reason why SCH shields works is because the fairy acts as a backup healer, the shields eat the damage and the fairy provides a small backup boost to ensure the damage going through the shield won't be significant.

Lightspeed as it is like I've said in all the other threads, is worthless. 25% reduction is HUGE.

I disagree with you on aspected helios and aspected benefic though. Aspected helios's hp ticks are just about the same as medica 2, the only difference is the frontloaded portion of the heal (not the hot) is larger on medica 2. Likewise aspected benefic and regen are just about the same but aspected benefic gets a front loaded heal along with it.

[LycorisSelunis]

Celestial opposition and time dilation affect aspected benefic and aspected helios too not just cards.

CO also affects your self buffs Luminiferous Aether and Lightspeed (lol if you ever use it).

I feel like it SHOULD extend Synastry but is perhaps bugged.

[Yumi_umi]

We need some alex ast raid vids nowwwwwwwww.

[Arcana]

In order to be succesful with the AST, AoE card buff effect should be an independent ability like time dilation and not a RNG probability. This is one of the biggest problems to be a good buffer in raids