Serious feedback on Astrologian after clearing A1 Savage.

[Lycinder]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/659

You may want to try posting here, instead of General Discussion, if you have not already.

Actually these points have been echoed there by numerous people and right now it does just feel like a big echo chamber of a subforum, Machinist and Bard oft had "We need serious buffs." being brought into General Discussion for visibility and it seems like it works a lot better.

Anyway back to the main topic - I was greatly disappointed when the buffs were just small card mechanic buffs, I was planning on entering savage as an Astrologian but ended up bottling it and instead asked our summoner to go scholar while I level up Dragoon (we have bard + Machinist so Disembowel is gonna help up our dps) I really love playing Astrologian and it is so fun, I even defended it back when it first came out thinking it just needed a little ironing out and would work well but in the end things happen.

[Waterdeep]

AST will get a lot more viable once we are in Alex2. Simply because if they keep acc off the healer gear the whole DPS component will drop*. Granted a SCH will still have more utility and the better buffs and a WHM will still have better healing, but at least you don't hinder the other healer from DPSing.

*unless they keep the savage encounters as tight as they are now. In that case healer can fully expect to spend millions of Gil on crafted gear with acc melded into it

[DarkmoonVael]

A seriously seriously excellent post here OP. Like you, i wanted to go AST for bleeding edge progression, but what ended up happening is me having to power level SCH in time for alexander. AST is just flat out not tuned to the same extent as WHM or SCH for any kind of progression based content, and its pretty sad to see the new healing class introduced into the game to be utterly underwhelming and verging on the absolute useless.

[Lycinder]

AST will get a lot more viable once we are in Alex2. Simply because if they keep acc off the healer gear the whole DPS component will drop*. Granted a SCH will still have more utility and the better buffs and a WHM will still have better healing, but at least you don't hinder the other healer from DPSing.

*unless they keep the savage encounters as tight as they are now. In that case healer can fully expect to spend millions of Gil on crafted gear with acc melded into it

Dps component won't drop, groups like Lucrezia have already found ways to get the acc (fending accessories + full acc Melded healing accessories) the only time when we will see the dps component stop being as used might be when overgearing is a thing for savage and healers don't "need" to dps, though even then they still probably will.

[madolyn]

It seems like they tuned savage to people in full 190-200 gear. With that said, it also seems like they are trying to get away from having healers DPS. Though AST has some glaring issues that need to be addressed, I think if my previous two assumptions are true, then it will get easier as time goes on. I understand you and others want to be on the "bleeding edge" but give it time and await some changes.

EDIT: for the record, i absolutely love AST and am in complete agreement with the OP.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

I don't play AST, but I really hope they push the support part of the job instead of raising the potencies. Basically from what I understand you'd need the buffs to be strong enough to offset the other healer not dpsing at all and instead focusing on healing only? So the buffs need to equate to the dps doing about the same amount of dps more with buffs that the other healer could have provided. I guess that provides issues when there are parts of a fight which is really heal heavy where another healer could just stop dpsing and start healing whereas an AST would still be buffing, but have a really hard time healing through that phase? Hmm, maybe they could get a reliable buff spell that they can put on the other healer so the other healer gets a lot stronger for a period of time? Would be kind of fun to supercharge the other healer so that you can keep buffing DPS and support heal.

[Assirra]

I don't play AST, but I really hope they push the support part of the job instead of raising the potencies. Basically from what I understand you'd need the buffs to be strong enough to offset the other healer not dpsing at all and instead focusing on healing only? So the buffs need to equate to the dps doing about the same amount of dps more with buffs that the other healer could have provided. I guess that provides issues when there are parts of a fight which is really heal heavy where another healer could just stop dpsing and start healing whereas an AST would still be buffing, but have a really hard time healing through that phase? Hmm, maybe they could get a reliable buff spell that they can put on the other healer so the other healer gets a lot stronger for a period of time? Would be kind of fun to supercharge the other healer so that you can keep buffing DPS and support heal.

This does not work in the current state of the game.
You still need 2 healers to carry your group and it doesn't matter if 1 got magical super support if the group dies form too much damage and to few healing.
The problem is SE made a support job but not gave it a spot in the current game.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

What I meant was that what if the AST could also buff the healer to be able to heal a lot better so that it offsets his lack of potency? Or is that still bad? I just thought it would be more fun to push the support aspect of the job instead of buffing potencies.

[Luvbunny]

Thanks for posting this, great review on the job. Let's hope SE gets on the ball and actually do some works to balance this job, it's a really fun job. I think they balance it for level 30-50 (which the job excels well) - but for endgame, this jobs seriously lacking on all department.

[DarkmoonVael]

I don't play AST, but I really hope they push the support part of the job instead of raising the potencies. Basically from what I understand you'd need the buffs to be strong enough to offset the other healer not dpsing at all and instead focusing on healing only? So the buffs need to equate to the dps doing about the same amount of dps more with buffs that the other healer could have provided. I guess that provides issues when there are parts of a fight which is really heal heavy where another healer could just stop dpsing and start healing whereas an AST would still be buffing, but have a really hard time healing through that phase? Hmm, maybe they could get a reliable buff spell that they can put on the other healer so the other healer gets a lot stronger for a period of time? Would be kind of fun to supercharge the other healer so that you can keep buffing DPS and support heal.

A healer has to be able to heal proficiently. If it cant, then your group is in serious trouble. The main issues with AST strictly centre around its healing underperformance. By pushing the support aspect of the job you sadly end up with a weaker healer than WHM or SCH.

Also SCH arguably is still the defacto healer/support healer. It brings a panopoly of utility cooldowns that do not rely on RNG, has many emergency heals and can DPS fairly unhindered whilst keeping healing up.