Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

[Vlady]

I'm glad they are being wise about rushing to change astrologians.allot off what people post is not legitimate feedback bit changes that would overpower the job.

[Lastelli]

I'm glad they are being wise about rushing to change astrologians.allot off what people post is not legitimate feedback bit changes that would overpower the job.

What are you talking about? Yoshi-P has just acknowledged that AST is weaker than other healers: "The current problem with Astrologians is the luck based party buffs and lack of healing potency compared to other healers."
This is what everyone but you has been saying since the beginning. How can you act like you agree with him? lol
And btw it just proves that our feedback was legitimate and we weren't whining just for the sake of whining...while you were playing devil's advocate.

[winkf1ma]

At a bare minimum, here are four changes that would greatly improve AST:

(1) Disable makes no sense in comparison to Eye for an Eye. Instead of working on only a single hit, Disable should work for all hits on a single target for a set time frame.

(2) Draw and Shuffle need cooldown reductions. It would be really nice if shuffle was reduced to like 2-3 seconds so you could shuffle a few times off a single draw. This would greatly increase your chances of getting what you need off a single draw.

(3) Eternal Dignity makes no sense. Benediction heals a single target completely, and Lustrate can be used multiple times. Eternal Dignity's cooldown needs to be revamped to be an adequate heal for "oh shit" moments.

(4) The day stance should increase spell speed more and should also increase healing potency. The night stance should increase critical hit rate and spell damage. This way the night stance can be used to DPS and give better healing shields.

[Zaresin]

I'm glad they are being wise about rushing to change astrologians.allot off what people post is not legitimate feedback bit changes that would overpower the job.

Your parents need to take away your internet privileges. Let the adults talk. Please go back to go fish.

[Yumi_umi]

Dont think they came to this conclusion from ppl's forum posts lol. Think the majority of feedback/ data were from the top groups.
So ppl that ACTUALLY did the content and ACTUALLY have exp that can back up their data vs ppl on forums just theory crafting.

So lets all be thankful for the ppl doing A3 savage. Without them yoshi would still be more hush hush about it.

[Iagainsti]

My reaction to no mention of a Warrior nerf

[SuzakuCMX]

I'm happy they're considering buffs but very disheartened that they won't come until 3.1 which is at least another month away AST has already been flopping around for a month and a half at this point and people have already had to abandon it for their first Eso weapon, so even if AST is buffed to be comparable to WHM/SCH in 3.1, they'll be far behind in the gear game unless you already devoted all your Eso to an undertuned class.

Also they were talking about DRK and MCH being used in savage being a sign of flexibility, but both DRK and MCH have things that clearly separate them from other classes in their roles. DRK has higher DPS than PLD but also better magic mitigation and utility (Reprisal, Dark Dance, Dark Arts abilities, infinite MP). MCH has similar DPS to BRD but also has damage-down attacks and can give Physical Vulnerability up. AST has less healing output with small variable buffs to the group. AST is clearly different from DRK/MCH in that they are significantly worse than its counterparts in a clear way.

[Viviza]

This is good to see. YoshiP's response to the current state of AST is very wise.

I've seen rapid balancing in other MMOs. Inevitably, the result is that things become imbalanced in other ways, which doesn't fix the problem at all. The slower and more objective approach of collecting data first causes some frustration for people who want changes fast, but fixes the real problems sooner.

Patience is difficult but rewarding. On the bright side, experienced AST who are toughing it out will find themselves in a very good place without having diminished the value of their friends' enjoyment of the game.

[Ghishlain]

A reddit post for the same article with a different translator and more detail can be found here

Here are the bits relevant to AST

Please tell us about the update roadmap for the near future.

Y: On July the 21st, we released patch 3.05 which included a new Frontlines mode as well Alexander (savage). Later we will be releasing small bug fixes to these contents, as well as job balance adjustments based on players' feedback.

Will you be adjusting the new jobs as well?

Y: Our biggest focus right now is adjusting Astrologian, which I think is also something players are very interested in.

Please tell us a bit more about how you see the current job balance.

Y: We've been continually looking over our players' feedback, and we made adjustments to the things we believed were the most urgent before the release of patch 3.05. However, in the particular case of Astrologian we felt that it would be too risky to do that without first looking at the job's performance in Alexander (savage). We are currently looking over play logs for Alexander (savage) and reading player feedback as we decide which changes to make.

There have been may requests regarding Astrologian's card system.

Y: I think the players' comments on the random factor are completely on point. However, the Astrologian's cards have the power to increase the party's strength as a whole. If they also had the same heal output as a White Mage or Scholar, then those two jobs would have nothing to offer to match the increase in party power. The two problems we are focusing on are the unreliability of the cards' RNG and Astrologian's lack of healing output compared to the other two jobs, however a single misstep could end up making the job overpowered, which is why this is taking so long. We apologize for making you all wait.

In order to keep things balanced, every time you increase something you have to reduce something else.

Y: Since Astologian can use two different healing stances, there is a risk that double Astrologians could become the optimal party makeup, which is something we absolutely wanted to avoid. If the top players progressing through savage found something we didn't think of, that allowed them to use Astrologian better, while we at the same time balanced it upward, then the job could have become overpowered. It pains us to force Astrologian mains to wait like this, but data collection should be over very soon. We will observe the situation for another 1-2 weeks, and then start carefully addressing players' concerns in a way that doesn't endanger the game's balance.

I've updated the OP with this information as well.

[GideonHighmourn]

It makes me happy to see SE continuing to listen to it's player base. I understand the need to not be hasty with balancing, but I have faith they will make the proper adjustments to AST like they did with WAR in 2.0. SE has always been pretty good with balancing and listening; I can't wait to see how they balance AST.

I don't envy the work they have to do, though! ;P