How could you do this to AST?

[Ultimatecalibur]

They tried this "MT/OT roles" to try and split the tank and it did not work so they reverted it. They're trying the same thing with healers now. Admittedly I don't know how this problem could be avoided with 4 healers besides having another healer that could do both but we absolutely know that this is going to be problematic.

The MT/OT sub-role split doesn't work due to the nature of fights being designed with tank swaps in mind as all tanks end up doing MT and OT duties. If their were no tank swaps and OTs were expected to spend a fair amount of time out of melee range a 2 melee centric MT/2 ranged centric OT split could work.

Healing on the other hand works better with a separation of duties one healer being proactive (barrier heals) and one healer being reactive (regen/pure heals).

[Heilstos]

In times of ARR, I was always annoyed when, as a SCH, I had to heal with another SCH. It was green that the shields weren't stacked. So I played WHM because medica II stacks. When the AST came up with the promise to bring Yoshida a flexible healer into play, I was happy and still am. But now my fears are back.

What does it mean for us:

1) Story-relevant content MUST be able to be created without shields. Because the DF can put together an AST with a WHM. We now have a case where you just don't have any shields with either healer in place. (Except for neutral stance here)
2) For the raid scene it will say that a healer player is forced to choose a healer from each column. So to be more precise you have to choose a "shield" healer, ie SGE or SCH. And in order to use the "pure healing" you have to go for AST and WHM. For many high-level players, this won't be a problem. At least that's what I suspected. But for the people who have a MAIN job. It's a slap in the face, because the healers don't have the freedom to choose the job that the tanks have because of these "pure" vs "shield" thoughts. This makes me a little sad for the moment.
3) I read in some threads that the balance of the two stances is difficult to know. The current status of the AST showed that this could be done well. And both stances could feel their job to a great extent. And I think the balance team did a good job here. So it didn't feel like a nightmare. Instead, we had more problems with the time extension capabilities in HW / SB, which completely disrupted the balance between Noc and Diu. (Here I have to say in favor of Diu!)
Every stance feels its demands at the moment.

All in all, SE doesn't make friends among the AST players. Special for the nocturnal players, because the dev finally managed to conjure up a strong Noc AST with SHB. And I'm speaking from years of experience. I think it's a shame that the AST's flexibility is being sacrificed for the SGE. But if this sacrifice has to be accepted so that one can have a 4th healer, I am happy to accept this.

And for the Noc Ast players: I know it feels like the AST had to bleed just like the DRK to SB. If you enjoyed the "shield" aspect of Nocturnal so much, try the SGE with the hope that you won't have an annoying card game. But of course with all the positive things that made the Noc AST so special.

[Awha]

Bye Astro

[Gojin]

monkeys paw you asked for another healer you got it! lol

[Leidolf]

Let's not pretend healers haven't gotten screwed over throughout the expansion cycles. Scholar got its DPS nerfed hard at the start of Shadowbringers, and every patch they make some kind of change that kills part of the Astros before to make room for the upcoming patch: removing the time elements, changing the cards, etc.

I really can't say I'm surprised since they originally wanted it to be a third healer that could go between the two, but so that things could be perfectly balanced (as all things should be), either they'd have to introduce another healer that can straddle the line or they were going to screw over Astrologians.

Pattern recognition wins out.

[Ayer2015]

Personally I think it is a good thing. 5.0 AST was underwhelming. With the removal of Noct sect a number of skills will need to be reworked. Hopefully the devs use this rework to focus more heavily on the card system.

[Leidolf]

Astrologian was meant to fill in the balance, with an edge in that it offered support with the cards. But as the game has changed going forward, they've steadily removed things they felt was strenuous under the need of balancing (lore or not). That's the crux of the problem. They're going to have to do something to adjust the classes to try to keep things in check so that no class overshadows the other, but they keep hitting walls every step of the way and solve that by either a massive rework or gutting certain features. People were complaining about Job Identity when they messed with the cards, now they're removing an entire aspect of the playstyle.

I can understand why they need to do it, but I can't say I'm happy about it.

[Jirah]

AST has been drowning in mediocrity since 5.0. Loosing cards mystique, the audacity of wth they did with Sleeve draw, and now Noct sect being removed and im assuming some of its shielding. But who knows it might be good but the devs haven’t handled healers well


And why isn’t anyone scared for SCH? It may lose a few tools to compensate with SAG

[RyuDragnier]

And why isn’t anyone scared for SCH? It may lose a few tools to compensate with SAG

Because SCH is already nerfed like every expansion before being rebuffed. It's sadly the norm at expansion launch at this point.

[Leidolf]

AST has been drowning in mediocrity since 5.0. Loosing cards mystique, the audacity of wth they did with Sleeve draw, and now Noct sect being removed and im assuming some of its shielding. But who knows it might be good but the devs haven’t handled healers well


And why isn’t anyone scared for SCH? It may lose a few tools to compensate with SAG

What more could they take? Selene is a reskin of Eos (and in hindsight that should have been the first clue). Shadowflare is gone entirely, along with most of the other DPS tools. The only healer with its Job Identity intact from 2.0 is WHM and I guess SAG considering they just came onto the scene.

Unless they take away the fairy itself, they can't do anything else to hurt it.