Goodbye Astro

[Greywolfamakir]

AST is fine, I really like new cards system. I just activate my sub to play AST, so...Thank you SE for new AST

[BahamutxD]

I stopped playing it aswell. Leveled to 80 but it feels bad. It's a hot mess mostly because of the card system and the high amount of oGCDs. Sure those oGCDs are awesome to have but it feels you are forced to heal just with them or you are wasting DPS time.

[Brandedblade]

Snip

I'm sorry bad tanks gave you a biased experience. Even in 5.0 when gravity was a full cast time I still found moments to cast it when the tanks taking a beating, especially when Lightspeed was up. Use your cooldowns. If the tank is still taking a beating after you've used all your cooldowns that is either on them for not properly mitigating or the group not having sufficient aoe dps.

Energy Drain wasnt brought back for the mp sustain. It was brought back so SCH's had a way to dump excess aetherflow. You have Lucid on a 1 min and Lightspeed on a 90 sec cooldown. You have the tools to restore mp, maybe throw a bone and give ast another mp restore? Ok fine, but an rng card that you would rather burn to enhance a dps card most of the time is too unreliable, sure you could save it, but most people would've rather save that balance so they can use it at the best time.

[TankHunter678]

I'm sorry bad tanks gave you a biased experience. Even in 5.0 when gravity was a full cast time I still found moments to cast it when the tanks taking a beating, especially when Lightspeed was up. Use your cooldowns. If the tank is still taking a beating after you've used all your cooldowns that is either on them for not properly mitigating or the group not having sufficient aoe dps.

Energy Drain wasnt brought back for the mp sustain. It was brought back so SCH's had a way to dump excess aetherflow. You have Lucid on a 1 min and Lightspeed on a 90 sec cooldown. You have the tools to restore mp, maybe throw a bone and give ast another mp restore? Ok fine, but an rng card that you would rather burn to enhance a dps card most of the time is too unreliable, sure you could save it, but most people would've rather save that balance so they can use it at the best time.

Bad tanks good tanks did not matter. Good tanks lasted a few seconds longer but would still go down. Even with Lightspeed and Synastry. Unless we got good DPS that will clear fast wall to wall pulls with an AST are a no go. All of my tank buddies agree on that. Though even with WHM or SCH some of those pulls are dicey and if the healer makes one wrong move trying to DPS the tank drops with the snap of a finger. Hence why I call them crazy tanks which they take as a badge of pride.

[gnatters]

If we continue holding these discussions and making sure we prod them about it for every live letter, then I feel we might inevitably get somewhere. Even if our cards were reduced to three unique effects (MP regen, DMG buff, DEF buff), that alone would still be better than the boring thing we currently have.

[xxvaynxx]

You know that for a fact because you've done the numbers. Please share.
.

I too wanna see this data.
And no, using savage numbers don't count because not everyone does Savage.
Though Eden normal is a better use since even causal players can beat e1.
Not accurate number but it's an idea.

If you're just going by the amount of complaining on the fourms, that's also not an accurate amount since only a small amount of players use the fourms.

[xxvaynxx]

If you want hard numbers just go watch the abysmal growth of AST parses on FFlogs. If it truly was in such a good spot then its numbers should have spiked these past 4 days. Except they have not, while the WHM and SCH numbers regularly increase by 200 every other day.

Oh and when I see complaints about AST in game, it is always about the cards. When I see people say they are dumping AST they always cite the cards. Weaker healing could be put up with if the cards were worth it, but people do not feel the cards are worth it. Even the healing changes did not make AST any more prevalent because those changes were mainly aimed at EX Trials and the Savage Raids. The AoE healing it did have was sufficient for dungeons.



So you are saying that I should watch my BLM like a hawk to know what stage of the rotation they are in just so I can precisely time throwing my buff out. Which means I will be lacking in paying attention to the rest of my party and doing my job worse. I should also at the same time be counting the shots my MCH party member makes and how long it has been since they used wildfire so I know precisely when they are about to enter a burst window so that I have a card ready to slap on them when they are about to wildfire burst.

For incredibly tiny potential gains.

If that is your nuance in the system then its pretty pathetic and takes away from doing your job of keeping people alive. Must be why AST only functions for the most elite of elite of statics who call for this kind of stuff. Though you get better benefit out of just having your Dancer perma buff the BLM (or Monk). Though hey, perhaps that nuance is just so required that its little wonder the cards feel like they have no impact. Throw them in at the wrong time and the buff is squandered, which means 90% of AST players are screwing themselves on a regular basis. Nice to know. It just makes the new card system even more worthless.

To be fair, astro has always had the least amount of players playing compared to whm and sch ALSO with the change to fflogs.
You don't need an astro anymore because your DPS is now rdps which is what you're ranked on now instead of your padded dps.

So now that whm does tank DPS and sch is really powerful in healing...
Our poor astro.... Astro is my favorite healer so I'll still play it.

[Lola_bunny]

My personal experience on the effect the changes have had was I personally started playing when Heavensward was new and fell in love with the Astro class. These changes have completely turned me off to the class and I play white mage now, healing is my favorite role even if they've felt somewhat neglected as of late. It probably doesn't matter to a large percentage of the player base but I happened to really like the lore and story of Astro, part of what I fell in love with, and these changes sort of walk all over it. It's not just the cards for me either but the whole effect, I have not level'd up Astro to 80 yet but having gone through as WHM they just feel in a better place for me. I wish I could be more constructive in this regard but I don't know what exactly could be done to "fix" this problem, I was much more of an rp gal as apposed to the savage raiding business but it's looking like this is the class for some time.

If you enjoy or like or approve of the new system I don't want to take that away from you, enjoy what you enjoy but realize for some of us we not only didn't get a new heal class but lost an old one.

[xxvaynxx]

AST currently makes up 16.6% of the healer parses on E1, or 4897 out of 29247. If you go E1S then it is 13.4%, or 4624 out of 34360. If you go up through normal it stays consistent in that for every 1 AST there will be 3 WHMs and roughly 2 SCHs. If you go up Savage then the amount of ASTs drastically drops to where you have up to 14 WHMs or SCHs per AST.

Seems about right but it has always been like this, whm and sch have always out numbered astro.
Only reason astro had many parses back then was manly due to balance/padding.
But with whm being stupidly strong and the fflogs change, bringing them over astro is just the better choice, doesn't help most astro in Savage wasn't even full time astro, they were flex.
Noct astro sucks and HoT astro can't hold a candle to whm and what whm can do now.

Now I won't say people stopped playing astro because the card system but you and I know astro has never been popular to begin with compared to sch and definitely whm.

[Mesarthim]

There would be plenty of people who disagree. Anyways didn't you say you were done?