Do AST really need this Buff?

[RukiaFae]

The entire problem with this is that the addition of minor arcana, either Lord or Lady, means that the RNG in Astro has been mitigated fully- no matter what the card you draw is now useful for something and you never have to discard to preserve your royal road again. The worst case scenario for a card draw is now a 500 potency heal.

Ummm no. It is still RNG. You may draw that card when you don't need a heal (everyone is topped off with regen in place) then it is a waste. You may draw the damage card when you need the heal card (tank buster, people dying). Each card has a situational use. If you can't use the card it is still a wasted card and time. And again we don't know what the potency of anything this may change but the numbers are high because of RNG. If the potenct is less than bene or damage is low people won't take the risk to use it and will just royal road the card instead.

[AstroZombie]

Ummm no.[snip]

Ummm yes. First of all people will royal road first regardless because they want an enhanced/expanded/extended balance because that's stronger than either minor arcana. The Lord will always be good because damage is good 100% of the time, so 50/50 you turned a dead card that would have ruined your royal road into a pure upside. For the Lady being situational? Since you don't use the card instantly when you convert to minor it sits there for a while waiting to be used. Even if you don't use it in the window it's available (we don't know how long that window is yet) having a free high potency instant cast heal stocked in case something goes wrong is 100% better than just discarding a card to get nothing at all in exchange.

[RukiaFae]

Snip

Ok yes it is good to hold it but what happens in 30 seconds when you draw again? If no one needs healing and you don't have a good card you will either have to RR it or risk overwriting in hopes for the damage card.
Another way to look at it is if you're getting useful buff cards you may not use the Lord and the Lady much. You're not going to throw away guaranteed buffs on a 50/50 chance you get what you want. This gives you somthing to do instead of wasting a draw, which can suck if you get a bunch of useless cards in a run. People act like you're going to use the the Lord and the Lady every 30 seconds.

[AstroZombie]

Ok yes it is good to hold it but what happens in 30 seconds when you draw again?

Then depending on duration (which we still dont know) you still have it stocked, or you go on about business as normal and either play your new card, royal road it, or convert it to minor again. It's also worth noting that there are very very few times where you will go an entire 30 seconds with literally no one in the party taking any damage at all, so if the duration is that long you've saved at least one GCD worth of healing.

Obviously no one is going to be using it constantly because fishing for enhanced/extended/expanded balances is still going to be the best thing you can do. That doesn't change the fact that turning what would have been a discard into an off-global resource takes even more sting out of the already heavily padded RNG. The fact the heal is 500 potency is just extra bonkers.

[RukiaFae]

And if the heal isn't 500 potency would that make you feel better? Because again we don't know if it will stay that way. I think it should be better than your regular heal because you won't use it often, heck you may go a whole fight and never see it. AST didn't really have any burst healing like SCH or WHM so I can see why it got some this time around.

AST had to get new skills also. What would you prefer for AST to get in terms of new skills? Anything they give them would be considered a buff. Just fyi I'm not talking about potency because I'm ignoring that until we get final numbers.

[AstroZombie]

Honestly? No they don't deserve powerful new abilities AND potency buffs across the board AND better shields AND the lowest mana cost of all three healers. Astro as it is right now in HW is stronger in a raid composition than Scholar or Whitemage are with their SB abilities (at least on paper) while being able to also adequately fill both of their niches. Scholar got hit with the nerfbat in several departments and none of whitemages new skills besides thin air actually do anything at all. If they wanted to give Astro a bunch of new toys that substantially increase the consistency of their kit and add raw numbers they should not have also given across-the-board potency and shield buffs to it too. Letting them turn dead cards into free damage (because a healing off global means your next global can be spent on damage) when they already contribute the most raid damage and the best shields and healing compareable to the (useless) pure healing class is blatantly unfair.
(cont)

[AstroZombie]

Whitemage got almost nothing thats actually useful, its all circumstancial and frankly bad. Scholar took nerfs to both its DPS and its Fairy's healing potency and all it got was a contingency heal (which is underwhelming with the cleric stance change- which seems to have been what the contingency heal was designed for) and a mediocre crit buff (its not additive). Astro got powerful new toys that make up for its few shortcomings and a bunch of buffs- while still having the lowest mana costs to boot. All they need is a lustrate equivalent and a bit more potency on Malefic to be literally the best at every single thing healers do (not that burst healing or individual DPS contributions matter anyways).

[Blueyes]

So... personally I am not bothered by the fact that the most defining feature of Astrologian, the only part that is truly unique to the job, has had its experience enhanced in some way.

Looking at Nocturnal Aspected Benefic specifically, I don't believe there is anything inherently wrong with the way it provides a shield equal to 300% of the amount cured. The issue, in my opinion, is the base cure potency. For example, if the base potency was 140 (the same as the Diurnal potency) then a 300% shield would equate to a shield roughly on par to its value as of the 3.5 patch. The end result would be an overall nerf, but personally I rather like the idea of its use being more strictly focused on providing a shield while being less useful for directly restoring someone's HP because that gives it more of a niche purpose.

Addressing the issue of whether or not Astrologian should be able to heal equally well to a Scholar or a White Mage, my belief is that if anything should be weak it should be its AoE healing capabilities. It does raise concern when a Nocturnal Aspected Helios has a greater shield strength than a Scholar's Succor and by no small margin. Perhaps it would be less of an issue if Deployment Tactics could be used with a much greater frequency, which I think would better compliment the tactician style of a Scholar, but currently a Scholar can only provide a better group shield once every two minutes.

So no, an Astrologian absolutely should not struggle with keeping a tank alive, but if any part of its healing should suffer I believe it should be its AoE healing, forcing a greater dependency on a co-healer while discouraging an AST/AST dual setup.

[FreakinRican]

I like how all these nerf beggars leave out the fact that Thin Air and Divine Benison exist.

[Belhi]

I like how all these nerf beggars leave out the fact that Thin Air and Divine Benison exist.

Thin Air is great but doesn't really address the existing issues with WHM beyond helping somewhat with Mana which WHM was by far the poorest in managing. Divine Denison came at the cost of Stoneskin and honestly I am not entirely convinced that stoneskin wasn't more useful. 15% HP shield instant cast sounds nice but isn't especially strong and is on a 1 min cd. Seriously its not that great and honestly I don't know why some people point to it as being so.

WHM had its healing buffed but its healing was never an issue and frankly it didn't need more healing power. The problem is it lacks utility outside healing and its mechanic, the lillies, are counter intuitive. Either AST has to be able to heal in the Main healer slot or it will get sidelined, Balance or no, which isn't fair to AST. If it is able to heal as a Main healer though WHM's additional heals aren't much value and it offers nothing else but its heals and slightly higher dps if it is attacking which means AST is still going to be better than it.

Regardless, as the healers are designed now there is no way to effectively balance them. WHM is getting a lot stripped down and is getting rather poorly designed healing systems as its new tools. AST is keeping the edge it already has and getting some pretty useful new toys on top of it. Regardless, AST is pretty solidly designed. WHM isn't. Its mechanic is a mess and difficult to use and its new toys rely on procs that require rather inefficient healing to really get use out of.

I am not saying they should necessarily nerf AST, but as things are now the healing Jobs aren't going to be balanced and unless they screw over AST again, it's WHM which is going to be the inferior healing Job. No amount of mana management and short cd heals will fix that.