Having played the expansion.....

[Ootarion]

I have to honestly say I am still not at all impressed with the class changes, specifically the changes to Astrologian and White Mage, ironically I have no complaints about any of the DPS classes.

The issues I have as far as Astrologian are.

1) Cards virtually all do the same thing now, which is boring and unimaginative.
2) Seals for Divination cannot be gained unless in combat, which is also bad because sometimes even when I am in combat and it just started, I will use a Card on myself or another party member who is in combat and no Seals will be gained. Either which way, this effect should work in and out of combat.
3) Astrologian healing feels unnecessarily weak compared to how it was in Stormblood.
4) Draw was split into Draw and Play when that is totally unnecessary when letting Draw start it's cooldown while a Card is held in it is perfectly doable since Redraw can start it's cooldown without all three charges needing to be used. This alteration just causes unnecessary button bloat.
5) I miss having Royal Road so that I could make one card improve another card in some manner, that was neat and intuitive. But since all the Cards all do the same thing now.....yeah....:/
6) Astrologian damage potencies are to low.
7) MP management due to improperly tuned MP costs is bad. While WHM on the other hand has AMAZING mp management and unlike my AST never has an issue with running out of MP.
8) Divination's cooldown is like....a lil to long....
9) Horoscope is confusing in that you have no idea if it has been upgraded to Horoscope Helios or not, I mean sure you would know if you use it then cast Helios or Aspected Helios then yeah in that light it would assuredly have its upgraded effect, but it would be a nice Quality of Life adjustment if we saw some buff or change in the Horoscope icon that it indeed has been changed.

The issues I have as far as White Mage are.

1) The loss of Aero III.
2) Holy damage nerfed.
3) Lilies take to long to gain when they should be gained like they were before, when someone is healed with Cure I or Cure II.

Would also be nice if Protect came back.

[Bacent]

1) I do miss the AoE DoT we could use, did help a good bit when we had to focus on healing after
2) Yeah, it's nerfed on enemy groups that are under 9 enemies, otherwise after that it's a 'buff', but that won't happen much and if you're the only healer you go more important things to do then, but you can use it a bit more before MP runs out it feels
3) That would be broken if they made lilies back to whenever you use a single target heal. You'd get too many lilies and your healing would be Cure I/II -> Afflatus Solace -> Cure I/II -> Afflatus Solace -> ad nauseum - Only using blood lily when it pops. Multiple skills rely on lilies and giving them out like candy would make the job too simple feeling.

[RyuDragnier]

AST 2: That's because you don't have any aggro on the enemy. You need to be on the enemy's aggro list to get a seal.

[CazzT]

The change to AST cards makes them feel meaningless now. I find myself just slapping the card on the tank, or not even bothering with them at all, far too often. Before, I would have the cards running every chance I got.

[Vahlnir]

This expansion is amazing...if you aren't a healer. I feel bad for healers.

[LunarEmerald]

This expansion is amazing...if you aren't a healer. I feel bad for healers.

No need to feel bad for white mage. White mage is amazing this expansion.

[LiteBrite]

It's funny their excuse for not coming out with new healer was " balancing the healing classes" and that was a fail. They used that excuse in stormblood and now in shadowbringers. Four years to balance healers and it still didn't happen. For some reason they need 6 years to balance the healers, before we get another healing class. It would've been better for everyone if they left the healing classes as they were and just buffed the white mage a bit.

[Kazrah]

So I'm gonna go through these one at a time.

1) Cards virtually all do the same thing now, which is boring and unimaginative.

So the general argument behind that particular change is basically because everyone playing Astrologian was always fishing for Balance cards, so devs figured that they would just cut the middle man. Yes, it makes the card game not as fun, but how the system works now means less distraction on the card mini-game and you can't blame bad card play on RNG, meaning that the job becomes more accessible to players who were originally confused by what cards they wanted to prioritize on the spot when people are dying because they're not healing (a.k.a. the primary purpose that Astrologian should be brought in for in the first place).

2) Seals for Divination cannot be gained unless in combat, which is also bad because sometimes even when I am in combat and it just started, I will use a Card on myself or another party member who is in combat and no Seals will be gained. Either which way, this effect should work in and out of combat.

I kinda agree with this, but it's more of just a trifle that you have to get used to. I think it was intended so that you can't pre-load for a Divination right at the start of a battle, which is a lot more understandable. I recommend starting with a heal because, you know....Astrologian kinda does that.

3) Astrologian healing feels unnecessarily weak compared to how it was in Stormblood.

So hate to say this, but welcome to being somewhat balanced. Astrologian has been far too powerful for the past expansion and a half, practically cementing itself in metas for the past couple of years because of how broken card buffs were. I'll definitely admit that they still need better adjustments, but for now, they're still unfortunately a lot closer to where devs want them to be.

4) Draw was split into Draw and Play when that is totally unnecessary when letting Draw start it's cooldown while a Card is held in it is perfectly doable since Redraw can start it's cooldown without all three charges needing to be used. This alteration just causes unnecessary button bloat.

Usually whenever something like this is done, it's because of some "spaghetti code"-related reason. In this case, I think it's not just the Draw cooldown, but also the ability to keep a card held indefinitely.

Also after playing the button bloat incarnate job that is Gunbreaker, Play and Draw don't feel as bad. It's also a welcome change for a button masher like me who messed up cards before because of spamming my button for Draw one too many times.

5) I miss having Royal Road so that I could make one card improve another card in some manner, that was neat and intuitive. But since all the Cards all do the same thing now.....yeah....:/

So this goes back to your first point in that less thought on cards means more focus on your main purpose of healing. I also think that card seals may come into play at some point in the future to work similarly to Royal Road, but I think for now, it's just testing the newer card system to see how well it works from a developmental standpoint.

6) Astrologian damage potencies are to low.

So I think that's intended to factor in the damage bonuses granted by cards to other people, so even if they did get buffed, they might still be seen as too low. Gravity I know is lower because it's a ranged AoE compared to AoE's of White Mage and Scholar, which both require being in melee range.

7) MP management due to improperly tuned MP costs is bad. While WHM on the other hand has AMAZING mp management and unlike my AST never has an issue with running out of MP.

So that's because White Mage has two things going for it: a 5% MP generator every 45 seconds (Assize) and more reliance on healing abilities that don't cost MP.

I'd expect something to change for that pretty soon, whether it be a change for Astrologian (likely buffs to ogcd heals and further reduced MP costs) or White Mage and Scholar brought down to Astrologian's level in terms of MP management.

8) Divination's cooldown is like....a lil to long....

This I definitely agree on. Maybe shrink it down to two minutes to match up with Dancer's two-minute damage buff.

Overall, Astrologian is in fact in a pretty bad spot right now--hell, I'm not looking forward to leveling it--but I ultimately know that it's really nowhere near the end of the world for them. Just what happens when you go from being the most broken raid asset in the game to being slightly closer to balanced. Yes, they could use more adjustments (some of which were brought up at press events), but all you can really do is just adapt or switch to something else.

The issues I have as far as White Mage are.

1) The loss of Aero III.
2) Holy damage nerfed.
3) Lilies take to long to gain when they should be gained like they were before, when someone is healed with Cure I or Cure II.

Both White Mage and Scholar got a lot of their AoE damage frontloaded to tanks and DPS, because shockingly, devs actually want healers to heal. I know, crazy, isn't it?

As for lilies, I don't mind it mostly because I almost never had lilies gained when I played White Mage during Stormblood. I almost never used Cure I or Cure II because between tank strength and a plethora of oGCD heals, they were never necessary. If they reversed the change now, it would just promote poor gameplay due to overhealing to speed through getting lilies and using them for using Afflatus Misery as often as possible, meaning the damage from that would get nerfed drastically to offset for that abusive playstyle to the point where that whole system would be more ineffective than just spamming Glare.

Would also be nice if Protect came back.

Protect was actually pretty useless (no more than 3% damage reduction compared to what bigger buffs we had), and devs had been wanting to get rid of it almost since Heavensward. While it was a convenient green light to start pulling stuff in dungeons, I'm glad that it's one less thing I have to think about as a healer.

[Schan]

It's funny their excuse for not coming out with new healer was " balancing the healing classes" and that was a fail. They used that excuse in stormblood and now in shadowbringers. Four years to balance healers and it still didn't happen. For some reason they need 6 years to balance the healers, before we get another healing class. It would've been better for everyone if they left the healing classes as they were and just buffed the white mage a bit.

What i find hilarious is they're "working on healers" yet did a better job at fixing tanks which was not their aim. I can't decide if i should laugh or cry

edit: actually thinking about this does that mean i should be worried if they ever announce they are going to work on tanks?

other than that i think every role has a few issues. I believe nin is in a rough spot when it comes to dps. drk is arguably the weakest of the tanks. healers.. the only okay one is whm... and i feel like this expansion has made a lot of jobs clunkier. i mean we used to have like 2 or 3 jobs that were clunky. now it feels like we have more clunkier jobs than before. i could be wrong.

[CazzT]

So the general argument behind that particular change is basically because everyone playing Astrologian was always fishing for Balance cards, so devs figured that they would just cut the middle man. Yes, it makes the card game not as fun, but how the system works now means less distraction on the card mini-game and you can't blame bad card play on RNG, meaning that the job becomes more accessible to players who were originally confused by what cards they wanted to prioritize on the spot when people are dying because they're not healing (a.k.a. the primary purpose that Astrologian should be brought in for in the first place).

Yea, but you don't fix the unique aspect of the job by making that unique aspect meaningless.