balance through Balance

[Caduagm]

By now, Astrologian's healing kit is so powerful that it can easily compete with the other two even without Balance.
.

Are you actually kidding, right?
Even with the buffs on sects WHM still out HPS AST . WHM got 2 new INSTANT heals, assize reduced its CD and now they can spam Cure 3 with Thin Air.
"Ahh but AST got earthly star" yeah we did but it IS NOT an instant heal.
"Ahh but AST got The Lady of Crowns" since we never use it because we always want The Lord, because SE nerfed our damage to the ground.

[Furious]

My healer of choice is astrologian and I couldn't wish more for the balance card to be nerfed. We spend all of our card mechanics heavily aiming at generating balance+aoe and everything else is an unwanted tradeoff at best, despite the fact that every other card is mechanically more interesting.

Ewer and spire both give more resources, allowing potentially for people to recover more easily from death, or spend resources more willingly during aoe phases or whatever.
Spire is a really interesting card that gives significant cooldown reduction if it could actually ever be used for its utility.
Arrow gives haste, which while still a dps increase also has an impact on how we play (although very little with how low the effect is on spread) - it doesn't just give damage, it decreases time spent performing actions.

And then we have balance, which does literally nothing except increase dps by a percentage. It has no aspect of decision making, no effect on resources or gameplay style, just "here's your damage". It's the most boring card by far and it's also the strongest by far. It's a real shame.

All of this doesn't even address the impact it has on healer balance overall, which the other cards wouldn't nearly have the same impact on as they stand now.

Are you actually kidding, right?
Even with the buffs on sects WHM still out HPS AST . WHM got 2 new INSTANT heals, assize reduced its CD and now they can spam Cure 3 with Thin Air.
"Ahh but AST got earthly star" yeah we did but it IS NOT an instant heal.
"Ahh but AST got The Lady of Crowns" since we never use it because we always want The Lord, because SE nerfed our damage to the ground.

HPS is a zero sum game, you don't need to top the meters, but apply it where it is needed and in the form that it is needed. Having a spammable aoe shield and an instant cast high potency shield with a low (comparatively) cost are insanely strong in their own rights, and allow cheesing of many mechanics.

[Ilenya]

Only problem here is the main one needing to be toned down got buffed and scholar took several hits. So it isn't really what happened. Guessing the Ast dev didn't get the memo.

Not saying they did it right, but this was specifically mentioned back before 4.0 that SCH was going to get looked at. We expected some changes, but what we got was...Special.

"Ahh but AST got The Lady of Crowns" since we never use it because we always want The Lord, because SE nerfed our damage to the ground.

Did they really for AST? Because SCH would like to talk some about nerfed damage.

[Riyshn]

Not saying they did it right, but this was specifically mentioned back before 4.0 that SCH was going to get looked at. We expected some changes, but what we got was...Special.

Source? Because the comment I remember was that they wanted to keep SCH's power right about where it was, and bring WHM/AST up to 3.x SCH's level.

[Cupcakesu]

Nerfing Astrologian isn't going to change the fact that WHM has no identity beyond "big heals" (which generally aren't needed) or that SCH has MP issues, a clunky nerfed pet (on THE pet Healer), and no AoE. What you're doing is ignoring the real issues that make both other jobs unsatisfying or undesirable.

[Ilenya]

Source? Because the comment I remember was that they wanted to keep SCH's power right about where it was, and bring WHM/AST up to 3.x SCH's level.

Either way, we can see what exactly happened when they look at it, now can't we? Maybe they did bring WHM/AST up, but they ground SCH down in the process.

[gumas]

Whm big heal is actually pretty usefull at least when i try deltascape v1-4 yesterday, all boss has at least 2-3 attack that reduce all 3/4 party hp so i think thats the reason they make whm is the "big heal" healer class. V1 boss even bring the whole party hp down to 1 which can be scary for ast "mediocre" aoe heal (not counting earthly star)

And iam not sure if its equipment difference but when i match with whm yesterday, both of us healing like crazy and by the middle of fight, my mp is drop to half (somewhere around 9K), the whm mp also drop by half but i look her mp is still around 12K, i guess ast has small mp pool overall?

And you dont need to nerf ast, just make the spread, redraw and royalroad skill use mp instead of free skill, and maybe put card drawing skill and all card related skill affected by GCD not OGCD, that make some ast think twice when they draw a card.

[Enla]

Nerfing Astrologian isn't going to change the fact that WHM has no identity beyond "big heals" (which generally aren't needed) or that SCH has MP issues, a clunky nerfed pet (on THE pet Healer), and no AoE. What you're doing is ignoring the real issues that make both other jobs unsatisfying or undesirable.

You don't need to completely nerf AST in order to bring balance to the classes. Only a few small quality of life fixes are needed and potency increases to the others in order to prevent power creep. For example adding a cast or halving the potency of their shields would be all that's needed to put them in line with SCH. That's it.

[Verdan]

Nerfing Astrologian isn't going to change the fact that WHM has no identity beyond "big heals" (which generally aren't needed) or that SCH has MP issues, a clunky nerfed pet (on THE pet Healer), and no AoE. What you're doing is ignoring the real issues that make both other jobs unsatisfying or undesirable.

NERFING MY CLASS WON'T BRING BACK YOUR GOD DAMN HONEY

[Fernosaur]

Are you actually kidding, right?
Even with the buffs on sects WHM still out HPS AST . WHM got 2 new INSTANT heals, assize reduced its CD and now they can spam Cure 3 with Thin Air.
"Ahh but AST got earthly star" yeah we did but it IS NOT an instant heal.
"Ahh but AST got The Lady of Crowns" since we never use it because we always want The Lord, because SE nerfed our damage to the ground.

So what if WHM outHPSs AST? WHM also (marginally) out-HPSd AST throughout Midas and Creator, even while AST had no good burst healing, and AST still did perfectly fine.


AST+SCH are still perfectly capable of clearing anything even with SCH's current bad state. They were able to do it throughout all of Midas, they were able to do it throughout all of Creator, and they're still going to be able to do it now and throughout all of Delta because I don't think the dev team will make the same mistakes they did in Gordias. Plus, it's not unlikely that SCH will recieve at least some slight adjustments to make it better.

Also, the ONE big thing that held AST back throughout Gordias, which was the lack of reliable burst healing, is solved now. Earthly Star requires planning and is not easy to use through progression, yes, I know, but it's still the most potent burst AoE heal in the game.

The fact that WHM has better resource management and is safer, and this is the keyword here, than AST doesn't mean the later can't compete with the former. If you seriously believe Balance is the only powerful thing AST has you're the one that has to be kidding, because Astrologian is in the best spot right now when speaking about healers, even in the hypothetical scenario that The Balance didn't exist. The Balance only serves to make AST the best job in the game right now, and the only one that's truly and 100% absolutely necessary for any kind of raiding party.

For the record, any job being absolutely necessary for raiding is not a good thing.