What do you think makes Astrologian so strong?

[YusiKha]

Personally, I believe it's access to some of the best heals in the game (only Cllective Unconcious is worse than the other healers) and the ability to use them at 0 cost while White Mage and Scholar have to spend a weave slot and/or an aetherflow stack.
The free healing, which is enough to cover most damage instances alone, empowers their cohealer to spend more time DPSing, leading to more damage overall. (I don't think it's a secret that SCH performs far worse alongside a WHM than AST)

I'm curious about others' opinions as well. Thanks for reading.

[inhaledcorn]

Collective is better in some scenarios. Unlike SS or Asylum, you don't need to be under the dome to get the effects, just to apply/refresh them. This allows you to pass a lingering Regen or defensive buff, which lasts a decent chunk of time, good for taking a radewide (better for Diurnal) or having a defensive buff for a group of mechanics (better for Nocturnal). The only way to make CU better is to add a boost to healing on the Noct defenses.

But, in addition to above, movement doesn't really hurt AST as much as the other two. Part of this is due to their reduced cast time on their main damage spell, but they also have a buff that temporarily allows them to remove cast times on most spells (save res). This is on top of their decent personal damage and really good party buffs. AST is in a crazy good spot, so it's weird people aren't really playing it.

[Crushnight]

Few things

1. The same reason all 3 healers are so strong that we can spend 60%+ of gcds on dps, content design is not tailored to healer output very well, reason Ast's healing is strong is due to how you can script uses of everything in a fight, Shiva Savage you can pop most every cd pre pull and it will be up before you need it later.

2. It has DPS boosts, this scales far better than just raw damage as ilv increases especially party wide ones.

3. Weaving, this is necessary with the card system but when not using it as on cd etc, this allows easy usage of ogcds without dps loss, something both other healers suffer from a little bit

4. It recieved potency buffs, it was the weakest out of all 3 healers in every aspect on 5.0 launch but SE buffed it twice, 1st time was a page long list of healing buffs/skill changes, 2nd time was pDPS increase, Whm has barely been touched since launch, and Sch got Energy Drain back but not touched since, it was the 2nd wave of buffs that pushed Ast to be the strongest healer before then it was Sch 2nd and Whm 1st.

[Side-Eye]

What's ironic, is that most AST mains didn't want to be the "strongest" healer -- we simply wanted our buffing (and buff extension) abilities to be versatile, interesting, and engaging. Making all cards a scaled-down Balance buff not only killed the card system's enjoyment, it also smashed all the lore and questing advancement on astro. And as if destroying the card system and its buff enhancement wasn't enough, they also killed the ONE stun (time stop) ability the class had, while another heal job kept theirs.

I'm happy for the hardcore proggers and min-maxers who can eek out an extra hps, but if we're gonna call this a game, shouldn't the top priority be.. well... fun?

[Mortex]

Way more ogcd heals: new opposition being reworked from a cool ability too a rather (strong) ocgd aoe heal, collective being a 5 second dmg reduce and a strong hot just for pressing the button once and it has a min cd and 2 essential dignity’s that all is extrem easy too weave with the 1,5 sec cast timer on malefic. And earthly star in competent hands is a ogcd that heals the entire party full and also more dmg in extrem movement heavy phases with Lightspeed and malefic.

[ItMe]

AST is best because it has a glam that makes you look like an Owl.

[Jimmymagic]

AST is best because it has a glam that makes you look like an Owl.

lmao owl for life

[Heilstos]

It's a very interesting question. I think the strength of the astrologer can be justified by the flexibility of the healing forms and the pure support in the form of a damage buff through the cards (which, however, is called an unimaginative idea by some of the community).

Let's take a look at Diuanalfrom:

Because of the possibilities that hots can put, there is a high HP for the astrologer, although this health output is influenced by OGCDs.

Thus, these OGCDs enable the astrologer to ensure a regulated healing flow. The problem with the story, however, is that players need to understand how these OGCDs pack together. e.g. let the bubble be stacked with CO by the astrologer and therefore no aspected Helios has to be used.

Now look at the Nocturnal form:

This healing form is underestimated by many players! Because in the first place this form should not catch up with HPS output. Rather, this form should negate damage as best as possible (so that it hardly needs to be healed). In this case, too, the nocturnal field (created by asp. Helios) and CO are both stacked together and a larger shield can be built up. If we look at the bubble astrologers it is so that they keep in line for 20 seconds (!!!) there is a 10% mitigation buff (which can be extended up to 40 seconds) on a 60 second CD additionally a healthy AoE heal with Helios.

Flexibility has its costs, doesn't it?

Since Shadowbringers and the neutral sect. the astro completely breaks through the force of the stances. (Only 20% boosted for 20sec and every 120 sec). So that the disadvantage "your stance influences your healing form" is no longer as important as ever.
In Diurnal there are shields that are welcome and in Nocturnal there are hots that support the Co. Healer in both forms.

If you feel you can do everything, where is the disadvantage?

The card system is stressful to play, which is also okay with the strong heal output from the GGCDs.Another weakness of the astrologer is the lack of a second mana regeneration effect the functionality of this spell is so enormous that the mana cost reduction cannot be taken as an integral part of this talent. This could be avoided by the piety of Marteria, which makes much of the community reluctant. However, it is noted for new players.

[Rilifane]

Several reasons:

1. very mobile thanks to fastcasts, almost completely negates uptime loss even while learning fights; you can even ferry mechanics so others can move less and keep better uptime
2. free single weave every Malefic cast, making our oGCD heals 100% free while WHM and SCH have to pay opportunity costs outside of dot refresh or ED Ruin II for SCH
3. least dps loss and more gain from GCD heals thanks to Neutral/ Horoscope/ Synastry IF you actually have to hardcast - which doesn't happen at all in most fights
4. free mitigation from CU on relatively short cooldown (although timing and placement in Diurnal is admittedly more difficult than pushing Temperance)
5. wide array of oGCD heals, some of them extremely strong like Earthly Star
6. cards and Divination are % bases which are prone to power creep and outperform raw dps extremely early; escpecially if said raw dps is prone to dps loss from moving/ healing

AST combines powerhouse free healing with easily sustained dps uptime and least dps loss from GCD heals.
If not for the annoying "targets both healers" mechanics you would see a lot of solo heal parties with AST pop up.

The only minor drawback AST has is the MP economy which can be easily circumvented by melding some Piety or switching to Piety gear and buff food for prog.

Now look at the Nocturnal form:

This healing form is underestimated by many players! Because in the first place this form should not catch up with HPS output. Rather, this form should negate damage as best as possible (so that it hardly needs to be healed). In this case, too, the nocturnal field (created by asp. Helios) and CO are both stacked together and a larger shield can be built up. If we look at the bubble astrologers it is so that they keep in line for 20 seconds (!!!) there is a 10% mitigation buff (which can be extended up to 40 seconds) on a 60 second CD additionally a healthy AoE heal with Helios.
.

Why would you chose to hardcast before the damage just so you have a shield and have less to heal afterwards when you can simply eat the damage (provided that the shield isn't absolutely vital for survival) and let free, strong regens heal it afterwards? Unless you need the shield to survive, it's less efficien and costs you time and MP you could've spent elsewhere.
CI in Noct is crazy good for tank upkeep but the shields from Asp. Helios are probably the least interesting thing about Noct. Not to mention you can plan Neutral IF you absolutely need a shield.

[elioaiko]

Because SE spends all their SFX budget on their spells so we forget the what nightmare they did to it.

TL;DR: AST suffers from SE's decision to make a hybrid healer in HW and it's too late to delete one of the sects.

Jokes aside. AST's design is actually quite problematic. While I love the job's overall aesthetic and job mechanics. The fact that it originally exists to fill in for WHM or SCH, makes it either too weak or too strong. There really is no inbetween. Similarly, BRD is currently suffering from the same problem but that's a different matter since AST is a bit different.

They have to design AST's kit around two different sects, a shielding and a regen one. It borrows from the other two. It's healing GCD spells literally mirrors most of WHM's save for the lillies and Cure 3 while it has many oGCDs like SCH. Since they wanted to break the dichotomy this xpac, hopefully they'll find better moldings for all the healers in 6.0, but considering that they have already buffed AST into the best healer slot and somewhat likely SCH come 5.3, who knows if they've learned their lesson.

But to add to why they're so strong, it's their card system. Their cards provide straight buffs along with Divination and this is problematic for one of many reasons: it provides an edge in parties that take advantage of it.

Overall, AST is so strong because if it isn't, no many would play it. It's current card system is a chore and if it's utility and rDPS didn't reward you for how much effort you need to put in than the other two, then people would complain and thus SE will buff it to high heaven.

Personally, I don't really see it as too much of an issue but rather that SE believes that continuously changing and buffing AST is the answer to getting more to play it is why some mains have swapped to DPS or the other two.

The job feels so inconsistent especially with how thy view the card system and why they keep changing it.

I do believe that adding a fourth healer with a ease of use but rewarding playstyle would help balance out the 3 we have now because having 4 rather 3 to fight for the 2 healer slots in a party would lead to better design compositions.