To Swing a Pendulum - An Astrologian Retooled

[AzureFlare]

Regardless if you agree with my retooling or not, I will continue to be a proponent of AST redesign because I don't want a job that will always be balanced between being a WHM and SCH with some card mechanic tacked on. While healing classes will always have some overlap, I always feel they should at least have a unique style associated with them. Right now, AST lacks any semblance of style and will thus always be designed into a small column between the two jobs they are trying to represent.

Honestly, while I'm on the side of wanting AST redesigned to be more unique, I feel like we might be too far in already and some people enjoy the way it plays now too much. I'm very afraid they'll simply wait until 4.0 and do it then or put in new abilities to tackle the uniqueness issue. But I do echo this sentiment, not only for AST but any future healer we get. If we can have 7 somewhat unique DPS jobs, we can have more than 2 somewhat unique healers. Then again, I also think SE really shot themselves in the foot not only by making AST a carbon copy with different ink sprayed on, but on insisting that one of the healers should have mitigation once you attempt certain content on a certain ilvl, simply because base mana + CU + Dragon Kick/Delirium or Halone + Storm's Eye + Disable might not cut it (and god knows the last thing we need are encourage DRK + WAR compositions more), while still making SCH have pretty much the same (if not higher?) HPS single-target as a WHM, and definitely relative to their mana. And them removing whatever % stuff they can (Lustrate and the Granite Skin trait) I'm even more afraid they won't ever implement any % stuff if they can, be it based on enemy DPS or target health or whatever. Think they still have nightmares from people cheesing Ramuh.

Anyway, slightly off-topic rant there. We pretty much went over all 'no number stuff' segments and the one thing I'd still look at is forcing Benefic 2 to be cast for a Draw reset in Nocturnal. If Aspected Benefic becomes more mana-efficient, I'd think merely fishing with Benefic would be enough at a 10% proc-rate or so, since you're already giving away reliability, globals and you'd still need a good card in the end anyway.

[Ghishlain]

I have a huge respect for you Ghislain and your push to see that balance is maintained across all healers which few people seem to think about when they post on these forums but saying that the astro is just a ghost of a white mage is something I would not have thought would come from you. We are on par with white mages for the most part minus having the highest burst heal potential single target and very competitive aoe healing at a lesser rate then the white mage. I agree the astro needs identity but what it needs is something unique that does not take away from the other two healers but makes it a choice that raids would value and have to carefully consider during each phase of a raid mechanic. Tacking on abilities that extend our buff our heals from the cards is not the right approach. I agree that we should stance dance as our approach but I want to see noc be the offensive stance that gives us a unique mechanic for the astro.

I am afraid that there will always be a debate of which job will be benched for the aspect of raid cohesion but I think maybe SE can give astrologian's a unique mechanic like a reverse shield that heals a % of damage received in noc stance while letting astro's have a potency increase in noc stance without having healing penalties like cleric stance has. That could be imo a slightly less needed overhaul of the astro which SE will not do until 4.0 and would let astro's be a semi offensive healer that is not as strong as the scholar offensively but let them weave spells in more easily and maybe give the astro an identity as the buffer+offensive healer that is the best choice for maybe tank healing.

Give white mage's back the top aoe dps burst and aoe healing somehow with protection having the magic defense tacted on.

When I say shade/ghost, I mean by design AST is meant to be "weaker" with weaker being either incredibly weaker or a touch weaker than their counterpart they are imitating. In this case, AST and WHM have very similar single target healing out put. AST excels at single target burst healing and provides party augmenting buffs. WHM brings better MP longevity, better enmity management, and better AoE healing. I personally don't mind this divide at all and feel if S-E were to continue this route, they should refine Nocturnal to suit SCH better as AST's toolkit is lacking compared to SCH's toolkit.

With that being said, that's not the point of my post either. I feel AST needs an overhaul to give itself an identity before or at 4.0's releas, else it will be difficult to expand on the limited yard space it's been given between the two yards of WHM and SCH.

In terms of raid benching, that should always be dependent on the raid meta and the healing toolkit each provides and each should have their unique pros and cons. I wouldn't say I don't care about what healer will get benched (I can probably make an entirely massive wall of text about that too), but again, it's also not quite what I'm aiming for in this thread, though it is an important consideration to have at the back in the head while balancing.

In the end, I'd just like something to say "And this is what AST does" that's more than "AST is either a faux-WHM or faux-SCH that has cards that augment your party". I want something like "AST has to balance play between two sects that are interchangeable and both provide unique impacts to the fight depending on which Sect you're in. You have to play to each kit's strengths and you should change often enough as there are these unique bonuses when you change that will make you an overall better AST".

Honestly, while I'm on the side of wanting AST redesigned to be more unique, I feel like we might be too far in already and some people enjoy the way it plays now too much. I'm very afraid they'll simply wait until 4.0 and do it then or put in new abilities to tackle the uniqueness issue. But I do echo this sentiment, not only for AST but any future healer we get. If we can have 7 somewhat unique DPS jobs, we can have more than 2 somewhat unique healers. Then again, I also think SE really shot themselves in the foot not only by making AST a carbon copy with different ink sprayed on, but on insisting that one of the healers should have mitigation once you attempt certain content on a certain ilvl, simply because base mana + CU + Dragon Kick/Delirium or Halone + Storm's Eye + Disable might not cut it (and god knows the last thing we need are encourage DRK + WAR compositions more), while still making SCH have pretty much the same (if not higher?) HPS single-target as a WHM, and definitely relative to their mana. And them removing whatever % stuff they can (Lustrate and the Granite Skin trait) I'm even more afraid they won't ever implement any % stuff if they can, be it based on enemy DPS or target health or whatever. Think they still have nightmares from people cheesing Ramuh.

Anyway, slightly off-topic rant there. We pretty much went over all 'no number stuff' segments and the one thing I'd still look at is forcing Benefic 2 to be cast for a Draw reset in Nocturnal. If Aspected Benefic becomes more mana-efficient, I'd think merely fishing with Benefic would be enough at a 10% proc-rate or so, since you're already giving away reliability, globals and you'd still need a good card in the end anyway.

The funny thing is the fact you can still cheese Ramuh because ability heals go through that debuff. You might not have Graniteskin anymore but if you're doing Ramuh EX unsynced, it shouldn't be an issue either with how massive the HP pools.

As I mentioned above, I don't think the change needs to be immediate, but I do feel a change needs to happen. It could happen just before or at 4.0 with the stated "We're giving ASTs a whole new toolkit to make them more unique compared to WHM and SCH and our new abilities will reflect this change". Like you've said, it's probably too much into the current expansion cycle to make that change. The only reason WAR got the change it did was because it was near unplayable / noncompetitive at the time of launch. AST might've had a similar issue at launch but S-E took a pretty high powered but non-game changing buff instead of reworking the entire class (probably because we have two other healers in 3.0 whereas there was only one other tank back in 2.0).

Out of curiosity, what would you like to see for Enhanced Benefic in Noct? I'd like for it to do something but not quite sure what that isn't completely off the wall. Giving Noct a Freecure style proc feels out of the question in my head but maybe a potency increase would be nice. /think

[Vlady]

Normally I take you as a straight forward person Ghishlain so that is why I thought you was implying the astro takes the back seat to white mage. Your points are fair but remember as long as raids are centered around just two healers there will always be a job to be benched. Until they change the paradigm of the high end raids to accompany the third healer no amount of balancing or adjustments will prevent two jobs from dominating the other. The most SE can do is once more and saying this gives me a headache is to copy wow and constantly rebalance jobs always shuffling which is the overall stronger healer or create mechanics that cater to the healer in question.

I would support the benefic II proc being changed to resetting draw though. That is a very good idea.

[Ghishlain]

Unfortunately, once you start introducing more diversity, you also start to introduce more variables that need to be balanced around each other. There's no way around that but there are ways to ensure the gap between classes in similar roles stays fairly close. There will always be a top tier and bottom tier of any list but the ultimate goal is to ensure they can all fulfill the desired role reasonable. If you want to put that in terms of school grading, you kinda want everything to be within a grade of each other (IE, make all healers be an A to A+ or B- to B, C+ to B-, etc etc). This way it doesn't matter what classes you field for the role, they will still be able to accomplish the task at hand with some exception from the top 1% FCs/LS'/guilds to maximize their potential and win the World First race.

As I mentioned earlier, AST is in a fairly good spot ATM and could at most use some polish in the Nocturnal Sect department and possibly either a potency reduction on Benefic / Benefic II / Helios to reflect their Sect bonus or the removal of Sect bonus entirely.

However, S-E has designed themselves into a corner in two ways with AST (as I've stated in the OP):

1. AST is competing with itself with its Sects. When one class has two unique healing styles that cannot be modified in combat, there will always be one of those styles that is more dominant and thus more appealing. Any polish you add to the weaker style starts to tarnish the stronger style until the other is stronger and vice versa.
2. AST is designed to have a toolkit similar to WHM and SCH with some limitations. That means they want to build AST to be something like 70%-90% WHM and a 70%-90% SCH. By extension, this means the only real way for an AST to grow in later patches is in parallel with the toolkit changes to both WHM and SCH. As soon as AST surpasses either or both of these kits, there will be an outrageous amount of salt on these forums.

For the first point, since S-E has decided to disable Sect swap in combat, the player will decide what Sect to approach each fight with. Predominately this means Diurnal in the vast majority of PvE content because of the better MP efficiency and higher output. Once you start to polish Nocturnal to become better, the value Diurnal gives starts to diminish until either Nocturnal will dominate or there will be a nice (and hard to hit) line that allows the player to make use of each sect for different fights and compositions.

One of the solutions to this is what I have proposed - add Sect changing and encourage the use of Sect changes via bonuses (in my proposal, you get a MP restoration per change and a reset on one of your CDs). Instead of balancing each Sect individually, now you've balanced AST to shift from Sect to Sect and not leaving either in the dust (though some players may decide to stay in one Sect longer than the other thanks to the mechanics of the fight or personal play style preference).

The second point is about the future of AST. By intentionally building AST to incorporate pieces of both the WHM and SCH toolkit, they are intentionally stunting the growth of AST. All changes WHM and SCH get in future expansions will have to be mimicked by AST in some capacity to keep up with their mentors. Not only can this be argued to be lazy game design, it also doesn't encourage AST to flourish in any capacity. As soon as an AST can flourish, every SCH and/or WHM will be screaming down the forums indicating that AST baked their cake and ate it too. AST will never be a resounding success for healing as long as it continues to follow those footsteps - hence my desire to re-imagine AST. By providing AST a unique healing kit, you can now allow ASTs to flourish without massive outcry or retribution from the other healers.

When dealing with balancing, there will always be some complaints but most intelligent players will realize that it's impossible to perfectly balance three+ classes. In some cases one class will be more favorable than the others due to their current kit and what the fights involved AND that this tier list can change from expansion to expansion. From a design standpoint, the challenge is keeping each healer polished enough where they don't feel left behind either.

[AzureFlare]

Not sure what I'd like for Benefic 2. I'd probably make it duplicate some of the opposing sect's bonus to encourage the use of both sects, plus I'd like it if they would mesh both sects together more ("WHM regens? SCH shields? AST needs to be both? Fine, have it your way, we'll be a little of both, but we'll be the best at juggling both in that case"- kind of idea).

Then again, I was hoping for AST to be something super drastically different than it turned out to be. Healing cast times to be like 1.5s (2.5s base recast), weaving cards extensively OGCD or 2.5s casts while weaving cards wisely GCD and having a pretty mediocre filler (and a card sacrifice for damage in solo content/burst phases to compensate I guess). There's no way I'll see them do that kind of weaving for healers if they are already afraid of having a different third healer, though.

[Yhisa]

I think i will just shoot myself as a astro healer.....and im just sticking it out because im hoping for a massive change in my gameplay and not be a shadow of whm or sch... This is the problem with ast enough with the copy paste bullshit ... Synasty was a double copy paste..."hey ast u need a heal cooldown, here have a fairy and divine seal on a cooldown all in 1 button, there ur fixed". NO i dont want this anymore ... Make me unique and shine on my own.... Not a whm or sch wannabe ... There is many ways to heal... Could of pure hots.... Could have reverse time healing which store damage taken and heal a % back after so many seconds...... Could have healing which gives out buffs .... Could have transfusion healing where u sap life of others to heal players but they take reduce damage once sapped.... There is many ways to do it just need to be more creative....instead of copy paste rename skills

[Yhisa]

Me personally want a buff which stored damage and heals on demand.....keep benefic 1 and 2 ... Turn aspect benefic into buff where it stored damage over time... Same for aspected helios...... Turn essential dignity into the skill that activates the buff healing..... So i place aspect benefic on tank.... It lasts 30-40 sec..... Im healing tank with benefic 1 and 2 ... Tank is low... I blow essential dignity which eats the buff and heals him for a portion of all the damage hes taken within 30-40secs... Essential dinity goes on cooldown for 15 - 20 secs. And this is just 1 of many of my ideas

[Ghishlain]

My personal vision of AST after some information was brought toward was hoping it'd be a HoT healer to compliment the mitigation SCH provides and raw power WHM provides. At first I didn't mind what I saw from AST but as played it, thought about it, and read other player's opinions about it; I could see the ramifications this can hold with AST development as future expansions were released.

It's part of my motivation to make this post in the first place - just to see if I can spark some discussion and thought in that direction and encouraged more ideas to hit the table by presenting my own vision of an AST retool. I will openly admit it's a bit discouraging that so many of the healers the frequent these forums are "happy with AST" in its current iteration and feel it doesn't need a revamp.

From a performance standpoint, AST is fine. It can use some polish in Nocturnal to bring it closer to SCHs level.
From an identity standpoint, AST has very little that defines it and thus very little that can be cultivated for future expansions.

Not sure what I'd like for Benefic 2. I'd probably make it duplicate some of the opposing sect's bonus to encourage the use of both sects, plus I'd like it if they would mesh both sects together more ("WHM regens? SCH shields? AST needs to be both? Fine, have it your way, we'll be a little of both, but we'll be the best at juggling both in that case"- kind of idea).

I can see a 30% of the healed amount being a shield (in your case) or 30% more healing (to fit my own theme in this post) on the skill to be a suitable number, if we were looking at ways to enhance Enhanced Benefic thematically.