Another comparation between AST and WHM

[Ghishlain]

This isn't a thread discussing AST population; Vlady tries to make every single thread about a discussion about AST population somehow meaning it's balanced, which it doesn't.

A detailed break-down about AST population has no place in a thread intended to discuss and compare AST skills to WHM and SCH skills.

While I appreciate the effort and research you've given in your post, please don't feed the troll.

Based on the way S-E designed AST, I feel like AST was designed to be a single target healer (more so than SCH now) since they don't have anything particularly bursty heals in the AoE department compared to Assize and Indomitability. Synastry is very limited compared to more universal buffs like Divine Seal and Fey Illumination. Also, I don't really have any concerns with ASTs base potency values as they're already covered via faster output (Diurnal) or more power (Nocturnal). As many others have commented, I'm also more concerned about ASTs ability to pull more healing out on demand like SCHs and WHMs can. So, let's build on that a little and see if we can make something comparable to what WHM and SCH has since both have good "o crap, I need to boost my healing abilities" while maintaining the unique flavour of "fast, single target heals".

Synastry - 20s of 50% healing potency when healing someone who isn't buffed by Synastry on 120 second cooldown. Effectively 8.33% increase but limited by the fact it's only affected by Benefic / Benefic II / Aspected Benefic. While the potency value is great, this is a really restrictive spell and if you're taking the time to single heal your entire 8 man up, you run the risk of someone eating danger and dying. I feel like the simplest change is just allow the buffed target to get 50% of the healed amount regardless of if the AST is healing a Synastry'd target or not. May need to tone down the potency a little to suit, but this gives AST a viable healing booster that's still unique to their play style and much more usable.

Lightspeed - As many others have said on these forums, a GCD reduction would go great with this. 25% would be nice and that'll allow you to fit six spells in what was previous a four spell period.

I feel like that'll put AST on track for emergency buttons. Essential Dignity is already really powerful and doesn't really need to be adjusted in any way short of a very slight reduction in its' recast time.

[Vlady]

This isn't a thread discussing AST population; Vlady tries to make every single thread about a discussion about AST population somehow meaning it's balanced, which it doesn't.

A detailed break-down about AST population has no place in a thread intended to discuss and compare AST skills to WHM and SCH skills.

While I appreciate the effort and research you've given in your post, please don't feed the troll.

I am sorry but how is name bashing and making yourself look bad trying to smear someone contribute how to a meaningful discussion about viability of astrologians? People throw numbers at how no one takes astrologians into savage raids and use numbers quite often as a means to measure strength tied to popularity and overall health of a job in particular but once it is applied to balance against your arguement you invalidate your opponents arguement as trolling? Sigh. Why am I feeding the troll even replying to this is beyond me. Please keep to the discussion at hand or it may make you look bad.

Based on the way S-E designed AST, I feel like AST was designed to be a single target healer (more so than SCH now) since they don't have anything particularly bursty heals in the AoE department compared to Assize and Indomitability. Synastry is very limited compared to more universal buffs like Divine Seal and Fey Illumination. Also, I don't really have any concerns with ASTs base potency values as they're already covered via faster output (Diurnal) or more power (Nocturnal). As many others have commented, I'm also more concerned about ASTs ability to pull more healing out on demand like SCHs and WHMs can. So, let's build on that a little and see if we can make something comparable to what WHM and SCH has since both have good "o crap, I need to boost my healing abilities" while maintaining the unique flavour of "fast, single target heals".

Synastry - 20s of 50% healing potency when healing someone who isn't buffed by Synastry on 120 second cooldown. Effectively 8.33% increase but limited by the fact it's only affected by Benefic / Benefic II / Aspected Benefic. While the potency value is great, this is a really restrictive spell and if you're taking the time to single heal your entire 8 man up, you run the risk of someone eating danger and dying. I feel like the simplest change is just allow the buffed target to get 50% of the healed amount regardless of if the AST is healing a Synastry'd target or not. May need to tone down the potency a little to suit, but this gives AST a viable healing booster that's still unique to their play style and much more usable.

Synastry is tailor made for allowing additional healing to be applied to a tank when you are needed to also help bring up critically low people or to allow you to double tank heal when the necessity arises.

Lightspeed - As many others have said on these forums, a GCD reduction would go great with this. 25% would be nice and that'll allow you to fit six spells in what was previous a four spell period.

I feel like that'll put AST on track for emergency buttons. Essential Dignity is already really powerful and doesn't really need to be adjusted in any way short of a very slight reduction in its' recast time.

Lightspeed was made to help fix our mana issues which it does well. Light speed was made to let the Astrologian be able to provide full time healing strength during stressful times when you are having to be wary of mechanics but needing a constant stream of heals. Despite the slightly smaller aoe radius of helios I am able to use lightspeed and move around near a center crowd in a circular motion and hit multiple people faster then a white mage missing people who are not in the radius with light speed so it does have some nice uses. Let astro somehow stance dance between noc and duirnal since Noc is a very potent single target healing stance that can operate with some impressive recovery ability tied to a 500 potency instant cast fronted heal and shield along with single target healing stronger then a scholar when not factoring the pet additional embrace. Being able to swap from durinal to noc would possibly be the only real change we need to handle being able to burst heal.

[GideonHighmourn]

People throw numbers at how no one takes astrologians into savage raids and use numbers quite often as a means to measure strength tied to popularity and overall health of a job in particular but once it is applied to balance against your arguement you invalidate your opponents arguement as trolling?

There is absolutely zero correlation between (how you feel about) the population of AST on your server and how it's skills compare to WHM/SCH's, which is what this thread is about.

Please keep to the discussion at hand or it may make you look bad.

You are the one who brought made-up numbers (based on how you feel, not actual data or research, which at least Ghishlain provided) pertaining to the population of AST into a thread about comparing skills of AST to WHM, not me.

[Vlady]

There is absolutely zero correlation between the population of AST on your server and how it compares to other healers.



You are the one who brought made-up numbers (based on how you feel, not actual data or research) pertaining to the population of AST into a thread about comparing skills of AST to WHM, not me.

Only because I see people post pictures that are setup for scholar and white mage for healer in parties. Conjecture to battle conjecture. The only premise people truly have to argue against the astrologian to begin with is direct comparison of a white mage vs astrologian which is in itself a flawed way to even argue as to why the Astro falls behind. White mage blows the astro out of the water on emergency situations because that is what the white mage does.. At the core I am one of a handful of people who try to stem the tide of so much overwhelming negativity coming across a job that minus two cooldowns that need a change, ben 2 proc buff and allowing astro to stance dance somehow does not need anything else. Our healing minus white mage cooldown use is within the margin of a few % of healing math wise and parse wise.

When I see people ask that astrologian get healing potency boosts I just raise my eyebrow and say what the fudge?

And isnt everything people are bringing up just basically based on what they feel since astro's have proven they can heal savage mode alexander the only thing they have to go on is how they feel the job is so inferior to white mage and scholar they have to let everyone else know how the feeeeel by posting thread after thread after thread after thread of the same thing.

When the ninja job came out there were easily 10 threads a day as to why it was OP and should be nerfed to hell and back then after it was tweaked two weeks later to still show up within 5% of being in line with monk dps you saw another 1 month of belly aching that the job was weak and only summoner would surpass it as being kicked out the most in raids. Same premise different topics.

[GideonHighmourn]

I feel like that'll put AST on track for emergency buttons. Essential Dignity is already really powerful and doesn't really need to be adjusted in any way short of a very slight reduction in its' recast time.

I'd have to agree, overall. I'd personally love to see the proc effect on Enhanced Benefic II be changed to reduce the CD of ED, which some have suggested. Regardless, I'd really just like to see the healing CDs improved. Currently, it feels like playing a 2.0 healer in 3.0 content. It's doable, but not as potent (in emergency situations) or as flexible as it could be compared to WHM and SCH.

[Vlady]

Cant argue with that.I just feel the ben 2 proc should be tired more to our mana efficiency over letting essential.I am not against the proc making the next ben2 free.

[Leiloni]

Cant argue with that.I just feel the ben 2 proc should be tired more to our mana efficiency over letting essential.I am not against the proc making the next ben2 free.

Our mana hasn't been a huge issue since the last patch. I would much rather they fix healing first and a few changes to cards to make them shine more (but these too are at least improved with last patches changes). I actually had a few Alex runs recently in DF where the WHM's were running low on MP, despite me pumping out tons of heals. I actually threw a WHM a Ewer today which I never do.

[Ghishlain]

Noc is a very potent single target healing stance that can operate with some impressive recovery ability tied to a 500 potency instant cast fronted heal and shield along with single target healing stronger then a scholar when not factoring the pet additional embrace.

Just as an FYI - Aspected Benefic still gets the 5% bonus on healing power so Noct Aspected Benefic is actually 2 * floor(250 * 1.05) = 524 potency instant eHP heal. With that being said, it's not exactly fair to compare AST to a SCH who isn't using a Fairy since the Fairy is an essential part of their kit. Saying a SCH without a Fairy is like saying an AST is not using their cards and not making use of a Sect.

Also have some food for thought. SCH + Fairy embrace on a single target is at least 520 potency @ 442 MP versus Noct Aspected Benefic 524 Potency @ 707 MP. AST slightly wins the heal race in that respect at the cost of a lot more MP.

I'd have to agree, overall. I'd personally love to see the proc effect on Enhanced Benefic II be changed to reduce the CD of ED, which some have suggested.

I've suggested in a different thread that Benefic II proc have something to do with what Sect you're in. Diurnal is always about time (faster heals / healing about time) while Noct is about power (higher potency / shielding effects). So, with that in mind, I suggest:

• Diurnal Sect - Make Benefic II an oGCD ability
• Nocturnal Sect - Either make Benefic II more potent (perhaps 20%) or reduce the MP cost (perhaps 25%)

[Fallen_Owl]

Just a thought here: do you guys think it'll be broken if Royal Road buffed the current card instead of the next one? This way, we cancel some rng without changing too much. And it could help AST prepare a little bit better.

[VanEinstein]

Just a thought here: do you guys think it'll be broken if Royal Road buffed the current card instead of the next one? This way, we cancel some rng without changing too much. And it could help AST prepare a little bit better.

You mean treating it like any other cooldown, rather than burning a card to make it happen? I could go for that. As it stands, the only effect worthy of burning a card for is the extended duration. Royal Road being a cooldown that improves a card you've just drawn would be fantastic. You could actually use it to much greater effect then, and not get stuck with the wrong improved effect on the wrong card. "Oh happy day! I have just extended my bole effect to everyone in the party!"... likely said no Astrologian ever.
The same could be said of things like ewer or spire in an all melee dps or mage-dps composition respectively. Whats a bunch of mages going to do with TP, or a bunch of Melee going to do with MP? I'd rather drop the that Ewer on a single target in that case.


Of course I could see some issues with my interpretation of your statement, too. In this case I suppose RR would have to get it's effect trigger straight from the card its improving, meaning that ewer and spire could never have an extended duration, but rather only be spread to additional players, and Spear/Arrow would be subject only to the improved duration, while Balance/Bole had the 'Enhanced' effect. Frankly, I could live with that. It would present me the option in all cases to improve each card in some way on demand, and "on demand" skills is something that Astrologian is sorely in need of.

Even if Ewer/Spire were restricted to single target vs being spread to additional targets, this would be very helpful in duty finder scenarios in which you lack a Bard or Machinist, or one in which you do have said jobs, but they are unwilling to use their support skills (I see this all the time). Unfortunately it's not quite so useful with Ewer... Black Mages hate having their rotation thrown off by the MP regen. Perhaps if they switched Ewer/Spire back to the way it used to be, as duration extending? I don't know. Tough call :/
As for the rest of the cards, I could see there being moments when I'd be willing to burn my RR cd to beef up Bole (though I honestly wish it were better than 15%... perhaps 20%?), or extend the duration of a Balance card during a burn phase.

There's also of course another issue with my interpretation. Cards that have been spread would be unable to function with with RR since it wouldn't be a buff that sat waiting for a card to be played anymore. Spread cards would be more like keeping that card you know you're going to need at some point that you cant leave up to RNG.

Bah! I doubt any part of what I'm saying is useable or likely, because without going deeper into other skills and rewriting those too, I've just backed myself into a corner with new problems as I try to fix the old.