Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

**NorthernLadMSP** · 06-03-2019 08:35 PM

After watching many videos, my personal feeling is that only WHM looks like it feels good. AST and SCH (my favorite healer since I began playing in 2014) look awful. They've destroyed both jobs in terms of the variety and fun factor they have today.

**Elamys** · 06-04-2019 12:43 AM

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Judging from how few cards outside of Balance I've seen just from roulettes alone the past few days, he may be right in that a majority of the playerbase only uses that card. Or it's confirmation bias, no way to tell.

It's hard to tell without actually taking solid numbers but an AST who only uses Balance to the point that they're discarding still useful cards like Arrow and Spear because they're too busy fishing for Balance is not a very good AST.

In my personal experience, most ASTs don't use any cards.

**Elnidfse** · 06-04-2019 06:05 AM

I'm. I'm pretty sure I hate these changes. Not to healing and the dps ratio I'm actually 100% on board with that. But with the changing of the cards you've removed a lot of the flavor that came with the job I feel. But I didn't exactly want to state my particular feelings until the job came out. Generally with changes in any game for good or bad I can just go with the flow and see how they rock and either reaffirm or rebuff my previous worries. But this is probably the first time a change has happened that I just can't stop thinking about in my daily activities.

This might get a tiiiiiny bit wordy for something just talking about some cards but...
And feel free to disagree with me.

Class Identity

I mean why did people come to AST to begin with? What drew you in? For me when I saw that they were adding it I immediately renewed my subscription towards the tail end of HW (by which I mean starting over again for reasons) and blitz WHM all the way up till the end of ARR just so I could immediately and easily slide into AST. If you couldn't tell, my naming convention was partially influenced.

So I see the trailer and:

The AST draws the cards and deals them out
There's an element of randomness here (one of my favorites)
Each card had a unique effect.
It's motif is based around the stars, divination, and readings? With a small portion of time manipulation

Well consider me sold. The randomness and unpredictability of just exactly what you were drawing but how in theory every card could potentially have it's place was right what the doctor ordered. I had thought with everything said and done the existence of any card was good enough for taxes to certain aspect of our kit.

The Balance

I'm pretty sure an AST would be making a liar out of themselves if they didn't say it was a somewhat cathartic experience pulling this darn card. Especially in HW where your options, while varied did not include something called Spear in it, which would annihilate the dps you threw it on.

And I've seen to death the arguments about "Balance fishing" from here and elsewhere

DPS is all that matters on speedruns
Bole isn't that useful after progression
Those other cards are only used in dungeons
AST needs consistency

Frankly AST was conceptually designed around it's nature of randomness and use of our skills would help us assuage some of that while not eliminating it.

Personally I think if consistency in increasing damage was so important they could have just allowed for reverse readings of the cards you draw which flips their effects and applies a debuff on the boss.
Ewer provides magical vuln
Spire provides physical vuln
Bole is just balance but maybe weaker.

Problem solved. Right?

Divination

So this skill might be the best thing ever since sliced bread. Like maybe the reduction of our cards to basically 3 versions of itself will be made super exciting when attached to this skill.
I'm not sure. I don't think "various effects" are easily replaced with "the same effect but spread" when it comes to satisfying the fantasy of divination in play. Not to mention that with the changes to our cards they're technically "harder" to use well conceptually since now they're just dps centric and rotation dependent.

7th dragon VFD has a similar effect with it's duelist class but in that game there were more combinations of "colors" you could use and the actions themselves had different properties and uses.

I think this ability could work well if there were various effects depending on the combination of seals you had. Wouldn't that have been fun?

Conclusion
Not sure I have one to give. Just a wordy post about how against I am to the new changes. There's something real and tangible about job identity that feels like it's being lost here. As always I'll defer judgement until release. I'm sure Yoshi and his team went through more deliberation than we are doing right now. And realistically I don't know why I'm so against the new direction our cards are being taken. While this has indescribably dampened my desire to play the job to a very large degrees, I'll put my faith in Yoshi and at least try it out.

Maybe it plays and feels the same owing to divination?

TL;DR
I'm still "wait and see" but this kind of bums me out.

**Mortex** · 06-04-2019 09:09 AM

Originally Posted by Mrmcgyver

I commend your analysis but the issue isn't the mathematics but the application, a large proportion of people which play FF14 do not have as stable ping to double weave consistently let alone deal with Expanded arrows. Although it may appear that increasing your skill speed/spell speed increases your dps to a greater extent, will clipping your gcds do an inverse effect which is why balance is much more favoured. As there is no risk.
Keep in mind that giving healers spell speed is dangerous as mana economy is fairly flimsy and in prog content where res is required can this also be unfavourable.

But i could agree skill speed meta is comming into play with classes like DRG outputing significant dps gains with these builds

To be fair I told about people clipping but if you play a class that is fairly arrow friendly or doesn’t get big problems with the speed aka monk,Sam and in my static even your nin that loves arrows u will deal in the long run a lot more dmg then with balance

**Mortex** · 06-04-2019 09:12 AM

And People can tell me what they want but the most broken card you had whas the old spear if you know how to use it. Whas a shame that they changed that one

**Zolvolt** · 06-04-2019 11:07 AM

There are 2 things I will miss in shadowbringers as AST:

1.) Card Juggling
Having to juggle multiple cards (drawn/held/royalroad effect/crown) was fun. Its a fun part of the cards under the current system. Probably one of the only things that make it fun currently. This game is directly replaced by managing seals which has a lot more player choice in it though. So Theres not a lot to complain about here, but I will miss it.

2.) Extending buff durations. Probably one of coolest parts of Ast especially in 4player gameplay. Doing big dungeon pulls and pulling an Asp.Bene/Asp.Helio/CU/E4E -> Time Diulation -> Light Speed/Cleric Stance -> CO -> Gravity Spam is one of the most satisfying combos to pull off in 4mans with really really big pulls.
This hasn't really been replaced by anything so much as its just been flat out removed. A sad thing for the sake of balancing healers but it was quite fun.

All the other AST additions and changes are very good though.

*friendly reminder that balance changes (potencies/mpcosts etc) shouldn't even be a thought in our minds at this point. Job actions are about the gameplay.*

**Lola_bunny** · 06-04-2019 01:42 PM

I switched to astro from whm after what happened at the beginning of Stormblood and fell in love with the class, I was worried back then that I wouldn't like them and maybe abandon healing all together given I just couldn't swing the pet management with SCH. Now I'm leaving astro back to whm not because I want to but because these changes are so disheartening. I guess I may give SCH another chance since they're pet is so afk now (sorry SCH mains truly sorry) and SCH seems like they might have the strongest overall heal kit, Sacred Soil has a HoT now -_-

**Lordfurious** · 06-04-2019 02:58 PM

I knew there was going to be a lot of complaints from astrologians in regards to the recent planned changes. The changes Were Meant to balance the healers so that all healer classes are played equally. And now astrologian are basically replaced by the new class dancers with the beneficial Buffs they will provide. I play all three healers and the number one requested healer right now is astrologian simply for the cards. That is not fair to the other healing classes that wants to run the high end content. All classes should be given equal opportunities to play all content. I know for a fact my opinion here is going to upset a lot of you. But the simple fact is balance needs to happen. I play all three Healers and while I agree that the nurse will not make a lot of people who main astrologian happy it will balance the healers and make all three healing classes equal. Basically the argument boils down to this: Astrologians will no longer be the only class that people want in high-end content. I am very very happy for that fact because a lot of people have spent time in the other healing classes trying to be the best that they can only to be excluded from that high-end content. Hopefully this change will balance that and all three classes will be equally utilized. Sorry to those I upset but I'm happy for these changes.

**LashL** · 06-04-2019 03:25 PM

Originally Posted by Lordfurious

Basically the argument boils down to this: Astrologians will no longer be the only class that people want in high-end content..

Expect for all those you know prog teams using whm which was a ton. Lets be honest here in ZERO way was your healing class the reason anyone was excluded from savage save from a high end parse party.

**Mansion** · 06-04-2019 04:41 PM

Originally Posted by Lordfurious

Basically the argument boils down to this: Astrologians will no longer be the only class that people want in high-end content. I am very very happy for that fact because a lot of people have spent time in the other healing classes trying to be the best that they can only to be excluded from that high-end content. Hopefully this change will balance that and all three classes will be equally utilized. Sorry to those I upset but I'm happy for these changes.

Not sure. Let's go quite roughly:
Every 30 seconds, someone gets 6% dmg up.
When you have your 3 seals, you can switch to Crown cards, so it's 8% dmg up every 30 seconds.
(i'm assuming you use redraw and sleeve draw to make sure the proper person has the proper card)
Every 3 minutes the party has 6% dmg up.

WHM : has wings.

you see where I'm going? Sure, it seems AST cards have a lower potency than the 4.0 version, but any buff is better than no buff at all. And healing potencies of AST have nothing to be ashamed of, compared to WHM.

I'm pretty sure "meta comps" will still be AST / SCH

Thread: Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

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