Feast Class Feedback: Astrologian

[Koltik]

[Updated 8/22/2017]

First some background: I played AST up to R1 Primal Diamond at the start of S3, and off-and on throughout S3/S4. I have played it in custom matches, and in Unranked - Platinum games on Aether and Primal in pre-season, and up to Platinum so far in S5 on Primal with an 83% win rate. With all that out of the way, on to the feedback.

Astrologian right now is the weakest of the three healers. The last round of buffs helped, but it's still not enough. Their biggest issue is related to having no way to protect themselves like the other healers, and having such low healing throughput / no damage mitigation that they have to spam bene 2 to keep anyone alive. These two combined turn into MP problems, even with the new changes to Draw, which now gives +1k MP. They also suffer from lower survivability than WHM and SCH due to having no self-peel abilities and high susceptibility to silence / kb / pull.

As an AST you are either going to be starving for MP the entire game, or have more than you need depending on literal luck of the draw with Ewer. More often than not you are starving. You are mandated to take Mana Draw, Recast Reduction, and MP regen trait, or else you will not be able to sustain at all in the Feast.

For survival, they have Disable, self procs, and Lightspeed but that is the limit of their CD's. Deorbit is friendly-only, and Synastry does not benefit you when being focused. Even if you do survive, good Astrologian's are punished by the MP issues noted above and you or your team dies due to not as much MP regen as other healers.

Disable: Great, but way too long of a cooldown considering how often you actually need it. Reduce the CD to 25s, then it would be much more reliable, however as it is right now it's too long to be used as Astro's sole defensive ability.

Benefic 1 Instant Proc: While this is very helpful in kiting and survivability, it is extremely unreliable since it does not proc off of itself. For example, if you have the proc, cast Benefic 1 again then you lose the proc and do not regain the instant cast buff. If this didn't happen, and you could gain the proc again, then it would be reliable and help a lot with AST survivability. If you further enhanced the proc to not only make your next heal instant, but also reduce the MP cost by 30%-50% (balance pending) then it would also solve MP issues.

Lightspeed: This is basically required to use on cooldown for the AST to not run out of MP, so it eliminates it as a kiting tool and defensive ability. It is solely used as an MP reduction tool.

Deorbit:
1) It does have its uses once you get used to it, however the cool down is far too long given how minimal the benefit it gives is. Reduce the cool down to 30 seconds.

2) It's another ability that you can use to save your team, but does nothing for you if you are being focused. Make it usable on self, and if used then you jump backwards 15 yalms.

3) Optionally, just remove it and give AST something better. This is the preferred option - perhaps a minor KB and very brief stun.

Synastry: Allow Astro to cast Synastry on self.

Ewer: Remove this as a random draw, or give AST the ability to manually draw it and still trigger the cooldown of Draw. Either that, or the Benefic 1 proc MP reduction noted above.

[Graci]

I agree with pretty much all of this, and especially want to emphasize how much of a problem the RNG for MP aspect is!

I personally would really love if we could have Spread in PvP again, as I feel like the ability to hold a card for a specific moment was really useful for AST and gave it another strategic element for PvP. If we could hold a card indefinitely then it would maybe help with both MP and survival as we could hold a Bole card to use as a more reliable defensive cooldown for when we're being focused or Ewer for when MP is low, etc.;I'm not sure if it would be balanced or how it could affect how Draw currently works, but that's the part of AST's former arsenal that I miss the most! With how Draw works now, we can hang on to a card for 30 seconds, which is nice, but I feel like often we still end up having to dump a card on someone that we'd rather hold onto for later.

I really like your idea for Benefic! It would be nice also if, we happen to use Benefic 1 while Lightspeed is up, if it would hold our instant cast proc until Lightspeed wears off (unless it does already and I haven't noticed) since it just gets wasted while we're already casting instantly!

I agree 100% about Deorbit, I feel like if it were on a shorter recast then it'd be a lot better, I'd also like it if the "pull" was as snappy as Aetherial Manipulation! I could be imagining it, but sometimes it seems to drag someone towards me really slowly and others it feels pretty fast, so I'm not sure what's up with it exactly; I am coming around on this ability more now, though, so I'd love if it could be on a shorter recast!

I've played AST to gold in preseason and also WHM and SCH (nearly, 1 win from gold qualifier) with alt characters and I definitely feel like AST is the weakest healer as well. I think a lot of your suggestions could help a lot; I think we'd be pretty balanced with the other healers if the MP regeneration were better, especially, so that's definitely the thing I most want them to address.

[Sunako]

All rng mechanics have removed from all classes, but astro still have cards. I think cards should just spawn in same order so it would not be rng.

[KusoWat]

MP issues would be fixed if the instant cast proc also have reduced MP cost. My initial thought it to reduce it by a flat 250mp.

Benefic 1: 100% reduction
Malefic: 50% reduction
Benefic 2: 25% reduction

[Korihu]

Yes! These were the same things I was concerned about when I made my thread about AST back when this xpac dropped. I'm glad people have turned around to see how AST is in its current state now.

[Areic]

Yeah, AST is really fun in frontlines, but for feast they're just a pain. No incentive to DPS like a scholar unless you're not having to heal for whatever reason which would never happen. The mana regen part is the worst of all, RNGesus hates me as it /loves/ giving me the TP card. And honestly, de-orbit should've been an additional pvp choice, not given to AST as one of their "big tools"

[Korihu]

Deorbit needs to be removed from AST if it is to be on par with the other healers in Feast. Yes, Deorbit is fun to use and useful in Frontlines, but I feel that they should focus more on balancing around their self proclaimed 'competitive mode'. Put Deorbit in as a healer role skill so people can still use it in Frontlines and give AST a proper cooldown they can use. I propose a shield similar to the WHM's Divine Benison. Make it Aspected Benefic, but on a cooldown. Since the other healers have a shield.

[BloodRubyXII]

Never saw this.

Disable

Agreed, I think this should be as accessible to us as CS is for SCH. On that note also, with a name like Disable I'm really surprised it doesn't have a snare baked into it. I'd rather it was a 10% debuff that we had up more often than a 20% one that lasts for a few CDs and doesn't bring much uptime.


Benefic 1 Instant Proc:
This. It doesn't double dip and I find myself at times actually trying to time a B2 instead because it doesn't double dip the proc, so often you can follow it with a B1 then find yourself hardcasting a b2. Personally I'd like to see this proc from B2 as well.

Lightspeed:
Think the actual CD itself is fine especially with the malefic change, but I don't feel strong enough without it and find myself holding it for Culling. That is largely linked to the unreliable benefic procs.

Essential Dignity:
Unpopular opinion - this isn't strong enough. I'd rather have a longer cd on it and it heals for more (akin to benediction) or some kind of useful proc. If someone is low enough for this to heal for a significant amount, it's probable they'll die before the heal lands. Or if you use it when they're on 6k hp and they fall to 2k hp, it takes the potency from when they had 6k hp into account (I think?). Overall, a very underwhelming instant. The only obvious benefit is it's free.

And yeah, deorbit is practically useless outside of 8s, I don't see it being used in 4s because I doubt I'm going to have a melee who insists on doing a sprint to the opposite end of the pit regardless of where I am. And on that note; is it too much to ask to have our offensive spells 30y?

[Flowroro]

Should this thread be updated now that Malefic & Draw got buffed?

[Koltik]

Should this thread be updated now that Malefic & Draw got buffed?

Yes, but 4's haven't popped at all since patch so not much I can say at the moment. Need to wait until I can actually test the changes to change my feedback =P

I wish SE reset ratings with the update. 4v4 has been dead on every DC.