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.

[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.

[Bobsmiaw]

What I like:
- a lof of healing/mitigation option
- smooth use of ogcd (thx to 1.5 sec malefic)
- the only healer that can put dmg buff to other party member

What I hate:
- too much on switching target for card (especially during opener)
- no variety of card effect
- lost time magic aspect

What I want for 6.0:
- card system change --> less tarhet switching and more card variety. I rather combine different card before play it (can we set it like dnc step or ninja mudra)
- return of time manipulation skill

[Recon1o6]

Ast is strong because of 3 reasons

Devs are buffing its potencies through the roof because they are trying to stop people from leaving the job
Its overloaded on ogcd healing now because they removed all its utility, time magic etc and its got endless windows to use them
its got damage buffs which is all raiders care about instead of fun so they percieve it as strong because it boosts them in the one area they care about. Even though you can't see it without a parser because its so tiny

in addition, like all healers, there's bugger all to heal in most content because its infrequent and weak and healers have excessive healing potencies and buttons

[Jimmymagic]

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

lmao owl for life