What AST needs to set them apart from other healers

[Sidra]

Astro being able to switch stances is pointless. I can switch a job and be stronger then a astrologian. Maybe put in a cool down to let them switch sects in battle. 5 minutes. The buffs need to be strong enough that Astros buff dps more then a scholar could provide personal dps or remove partial randomness from cards.

But all of the Card using is not on the GCD - an AST can provide their own DPS in addition to the card buffs - and their single target damaging skills are quote potent.

[416to305]

Clearly people are disappointed with AST. I find it funny seeing the ones that defend it to the death. I liked it at first but I find it just too boring now. The card buffs don't interest me like they did when I first started it, getting excited to see what would come up. Just did Haukke on roulette with an okay party, but for some reason the final boss wiped one person, then was constantly keeping us all with under 30% HP. Just kept thinking to myself man as WHM I have so many great tools to fix this, but instead was just button mashing to try and get our heals without running out of MP. What I thought was funny though was that there was NO time to start messing with cards, I was literally curing the tank as she was taking damage that would have wiped her. Had I paused for a second to draw a card, we'd have all wiped.

I agree the cards are too situational as well. Like never fails, start of a boss battle and you pull Spire, then Ewer. You can't even see the tanks TP so you don't even know if using that Spire card saved the day or did anything. I'd have preferred even slightly weaker buffs, but be AoE for the party. People can say what they want, but I'm pretty sure most DPS players have no idea when they are hit with a card buff. When I started AST I felt so cool, drawing cards thinking everyone else was looking at me thinking wow awesome! Then now that I've gone back to WHM, any time I get an AST in the party I don't even notice them drawing cards since people don't pay that close attention to other players. Same with the buffs. The players on here are all clearly dedicated, but all my friends I play with (that play often as well) aren't as hardcore, and would have no idea if a card buff was on them. When you play on PS4 you don't have a mouse to just quickly mouse over a buff to see what it does. For all I know, an AST could have used Ewer on me during an instance, and I'd have zero clue since there's always random buffs that pop up, and when you play with the controller you can't just check what they are that easily and are usually too busy with the battle anyway to keep checking "do I have a buff on me?" I'd have almost preferred cards that target the enemy instead, like when using Virus. A card that does 10% damage reduction for 10 seconds, Slow, reduces attack power by 10% etc, those I feel would be way more beneficial because it wouldn't matter what card you get, they are still going to be slightly beneficial.

[Sanguisio]

I think the cards are alright and at the end of the day, novelties wear off.

I do feel like ewer should be more potent than it is.
Also please for the love of god prevent drawing the same card twice
It would also be amazing to have a 2nd spread slot

[Ayrie]

After doing a bit of 8-man content I can say that about the only thing AST is in dire need of is MP help.

I made a white mage fairly envious, but at the end of the night I was calling for him to take over a bit more due to sustainment issues.

He was shocked at the difference between the first hour (Nocturnal Sect) and afterwards (Diurnal). My output overall shot up enough to allow him time to DPS, which eased a few checks.

Expanded almost anything in 8-mans is fairly good. 45 second Aspected Helios + 30 second Aspected Benefec is also very strong from Diurnal Sect. A lot of MP savings and not needing to recast expensive buffs for the tank.

Ewar almost immediately goes on me unless I have Expanded RR active. Then I spread it for after burning the RR.

Then there is the 50% healing to another target buff. Made the whm sick that I could almost keep both tanks up through damage spikes.

There are perks... but the MP crunch can get painful.

[SuzakuCMX]

AoE buffs shouldn't lose potency; you're already sacrificing a card in order to make it AoE, or change it to 20% reduction instead of 50%
Make Enhanced RR double potency instead of just +50%. Outside of DoTs, Extending Balance/Bole/Arrow is going to be a larger gain than Enhancing it...

[Vlady]

Well so far what astro is suppose to have going for it is the buffs they bring to enhance group defenses and or dps and mp/tp usage. What I am seeing is white mage brings the strongest heals in the game and as of now damage spike is high enough that I am not capable of providing dps from constantly having to sustain smaller and overall more button work. Normally it takes 3-4 global's just to intelligently use the card buffs to its maximum effect. Spread Ewer for myself for mana intensive situations and shuffle/royal road the rest hoping for arrow/balance. Bole imo is too situation and range dependent to even consider it a viable buff without using spread which is better suited imo for Ewer or Balance.

My dps maybe potent but it is also on par with white mage and still under the scholar and if I do manage to go into dps mode my mana will drop like a rock. I do not believe Astrologians are bad. They are extremely mobile and I believe Astrologians will perform well as gear scales so will our mana issues and our ability to go offensive will increase. We do not need a heal increase. We do not even need a potency boosting cooldown since those are covered by other jobs. What we need is that silly bubble to not force us to stand still and channel it along with immunity for pulling the same card twice in a row if we use shuffle.

I love the Astrologian job to death though and it will be my main as long as I am interested in the game.

[416to305]

I think the best part with AST is that the gear is the same for the most part as WHM and SCH. So for myself as WHM which I absolutely love, I like that I can switch between them if I want to change it up and not have it be like playing some DPS class where I need to gear it all up separately.

[Dyvid]

Okay, if I was going to make real changes they would be as follows:

Changes to the Spear Card so it also reduces target's action recast time which have already been used.
Add an effect to Royal Road that reduces the cast time of Draw to either 15s or 20s. This would encourage players to use it more often. Also for increase Royal Road recast to 30s.
Add an Addition Effect: Slow to Gravity that last for 10s.
Allow Spread to be used when not in combat.
Change Aspected Benefic to Lv. 30, yea it's actually 34 while Diurnal Sect is Lv. 30

At the end of the day though, people need to accept this is FFXIV version of the Gambler job.

[Kietsu]

Changes to the Spear Card so it also decreases the cooldown of GCD which have already been used.
Add an effect to Royal Road that reduces the cast time of Draw to either 30s or 45s. This would encourage players to use it more often.
Add an Addition Effect: Slow to Gravity that last for 10s.

At the end of the day though, people need to accept this is FFXIV version of the Gambler job.

The Arrow already reduces GCD. If you mean reducing the cooldown of spent off-gcd abilities, then yes, that'd be really nice. There was a rumour of a change like that happening, but I'm saying that's unlikely.
Draw already has a 30 second cooldown. I honestly think Royal Road is fine, although the Enhanced Royal Road has really poor efficiency compared to the other two.
Slow (not to be confused with Heavy) would actually be a great addition to Gravity, and give it the same quasi-mitigation purpose that Holy has. 10 seconds would be a bit much, but it's otherwise a pretty great idea.

As an aside, I'd totally play a Corsair were it added - but it seems that MCH is supposed to be a mini-Corsair that doesn't do Corsair right at all.

[SolidN7]

After doing a bit of 8-man content I can say that about the only thing AST is in dire need of is MP help.

I made a white mage fairly envious, but at the end of the night I was calling for him to take over a bit more due to sustainment issues.

He was shocked at the difference between the first hour (Nocturnal Sect) and afterwards (Diurnal). My output overall shot up enough to allow him time to DPS, which eased a few checks.

.

If that the case that whm was a noob or a scrub, because a good whm will never be envious of an AST