Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

It's so annoying to heal with new AST. Don't want to touch it till it gets fixed tbh. It isn't even about the cards, just HEALING on it is BLAH.

Honestly I loved Astro even if its launch wasnt the best. I mained it through Stormblood, and buffed my allies to Doma and back. Now it feels lackluster, and not much going on.

Thank OP for summing up how you felt about Astro. Many of us agree with you

I'd be fine with AST lacking and being the crap healer that has to rely on their co-healer a lot end-game, if the buffs they provided remained fun and interesting, and had impact enough to off-set that and still make them worth bringing.

Well, we know the reality.

Agree. I had to switch to white mage. and white mage is more fun to play. white mage. you know healing is in a bad spot when you start to think that.

I won't argue that AST is a shell of what it was in SB. However, what it was in SB was OP in pretty much every category there is for healers. I still have to get it to max to see how the remainder of their toolkit plays out, but after two dungeons and a trial, I find myself not having all of the same issues that are commonly expressed about AST.

The issues I share are Celestial Opposition and Divination. My main issues with CO is the lore surrounding the ability has basically been written off (losing the stun), and it's lackluster heal power. I don't care about the loss of extending durations as that was one of the things about SB AST I felt was OP as durations were already modest. With buff durations being shorter in ShB, it would make more sense to have those extensions now. As an ogcd heal with a long CD, it should be far more powerful than it is now. It's an instant, but weaker Aspected Helios. They wanted to fill the gaps with healers, but only filled it half way for AST with a strong instant AoE heal. CO, Horoscope, and Earthly Star are not answers to AST need of a truly instant AoE heal that they have basically never had.

Divination is inefficient in its current state. Even with the use of Sleeve Draw, Divination sits off of CD for quite some time while the AST gathers the first set of seals to load it up. If it is going to be like this, then Divination's DPS increase should be much higher, but even if it was it would still be inefficient, but at least the payoff would be better. I don't do savage raids, so I am really concerned if AST mains are going to be able to line this up with burst windows so they are not sitting on Divination once it's ready. I would much rather AST not worry about this at all, and have Divination be an offensive ability.

The good thing is I am having fun playing the new AST. So much so, I even gave it new glamour. Most of what was taken away I don't miss in even the slightest. The play ability and having Gravity for when I am slapped in lv50 content are some serious QoL changes that helped me enjoy this job again. Just need to take care of those two issues I mentioned and I will be happy to bring this healer well into max level content.

Originally Posted by Liselsia

So I am just a casual player so my opinion means little. When I first heard about AST changes I was excited. I had it in my head that AST was playing like XI's RDM or WoW Cassic's PLD where it was a buffer job that also healed. Obviously jumping into the class it was very much not the case. With long cooldowns buffing still takes a large backseat.

So what if they removed cooldowns entirely ? If AST main job was to maintain 100% uptime on both Cards and Divination with healing in between ? Obviously numbers can be tweeked but I am more so talking about the playstyle.

The old AST was the buffer job that healed. The current AST is just worse in every regard, especially when it comes to buffs. The cooldowns on drawing cards and using them has not changed, the durations slashed in half, the effects slashed and homogenized, and the buffing takes even more of a backseat because our healing potencies are just not where they need to be to make up for the lack of passive healing boost coming from the sects. Not to mention that the cooldown of divination is stupidly long.

If they removed the cooldowns entirely then the class would be broken beyond repair. Either it would be throwing out buffs constantly and not doing DPS or healing due to all the APM required for that, or it would be doing no buffing or dps because it has to struggle to keep up with healing, or it would be doing no buffing or healing in order to actually contribute DPS. It could also result in the buffs being nerfed so hard as to be pointless with the entire system being better off removed then kept.

The old AST card system was vastly superior, actually requiring planning and thought outside of 8 man savage raids. Each of the buffs save spire had its place and felt impactful. It felt good to use those buffs. Even as a casual player myself who could never fit into savage raiding I could see that and felt that. AST was the healer that got me into healing because of that.

Can't agree more. I just got WHM and SCH at 80, and AST 74 for now. I was kinda major in AST for previous expansions, but I would say this time, changes on AST really shows that the AST designer don't play their own game....

Regardless of significantly lower potency, AST is even the worst for MP management - WHM still has assize and SCH still have aether flow to restore some MP, AST lost everything to restore the MP except for the role-shared lucid dreaming.

The new card system is boring, and actually more difficult to manage if you want to a perfect start - as seals won't be obtained if you are not in-battle. Sleeve draw just make oGCD skills spammed. In 4.X, we just need a group balance card. Now AST have to use 14 skills within the first 10 seconds to achieve a perfect start. This is just annoying and impossible to achieve.

Nocturnal selection is just stupid for light party dungeons. The shield is very weak and MP cost is further increased.

Not to mention mathematically the group DPS have to be more than 114k to compensate the DPS loss of substituting an WHM with AST, but the group DPS is now typically 50k - 70k.

No longer elegant, no longer fun to play, and probably the weakest among all healers.