How could you do this to AST?

[artypartytime]

I feel like they could do this.
Pure healer + support
Pure healer + damage
Shield + damage
Shield + heal

This king of gives you all the play styles
Want to be a healer who blows things up- whm
Want to be a healer who focused solely on support - Astro
Want a healer who uses barriers and their damage heals with the barrier - sage
Want to protect allies from damage while providing boost to their defense and dps -scholar

This seems easy to balance to me

[Yeol]

They should change AST cards & abilities to the way they were before.
Yes AST was OP, Let it be.

The majority of people still used WHM for the world race clears back in HW. Then replace WHM with AST for speed/log runs.
What does this mean? All healers can clear content week 1. End of story.

This should be the main focus point and not speed/log runs statistics.

Casuals complained about AST because they wanted better representation of WHM in speed/log runs too.
WHM was still the better option over AST in a casual group. You needed a good group to pair AST with.

Changing a job simply because of speed/log runs is very silly. Why try to make all jobs very similar at the top 1% too?
This takes out the fun from the game. Job changes should happen to make sure that all jobs can clear content week 1.

AST had its share of problems on release. It had weaker heals compared to WHM and weaker shields compared to SCH. It also had mana issues. It explains why you needed a very good group to play AST. Over time they closed the gap between AST and the other healers in terms of heals and shields.

They made a big mistake when they kept buffing AST heals (multiple times) to compete with WHM. The only thing left for WHM was cure III. This is when people dumped WHM and took AST because you hardly ever needed to use Cure III.

[Vyrerus]

In FFXIV's 2.0 to 2.55 state there were only two healers. WHM and SCH. It was actively bad to double up on either, if your group was serious. Not just for LB concerns, but because SCH's AOE healing at the time was rather limited by comparison.

We're basically reverting to that, but with more healers to choose from. Now we'll get a more interesting spread. Will Sage and WHM be the better pair? Sage and Ast? Or SCH and the others.

As far as Noct Ast goes... I am sad to see it go. While Ast obviously wasn't designed with its shield stance being its primary function, it certainly had a leg up over SCH in this regard, since SCH had to rely on the Fairy and Aetherflow abilities to really top people. It also had the leg up that the single target shield was instant cast, opposed to SCH's having to be pre-cast for tank busters and such. It's also a shame that the playerbase doesn't really embrace shield healing, because it takes a modicum of thought and fight memorization. Meanwhile regens go Brrrrrrrr!

Like even nowadays, people literally argue that shields are irrelevant for most fights, which is true, but man, idk, to me it's satisfying to see a tank buster do 0 damage. But nah man, lemme just go back to casting almost nothing but Broil/Malefic. Top tier gameplay, top tier efficiency. Clearly the most fun, too.

[HyoMinPark]

I feel like they could do this.
Pure healer + support
Pure healer + damage
Shield + damage
Shield + heal

This king of gives you all the play styles
Want to be a healer who blows things up- whm
Want to be a healer who focused solely on support - Astro
Want a healer who uses barriers and their damage heals with the barrier - sage
Want to protect allies from damage while providing boost to their defense and dps -scholar

This seems easy to balance to me

Not quite as simple as it looks on paper to balance. The competing healers in both the pure and shield categories would need to do equivalent amounts of raid contribution (either via their utility or their raw damage) while also sharing equitable healing capabilities. Precedent is AST utterly dominates WHM when it comes to both their utility and their healing kit. WHM has no answer to the card system—their raw damage is finally good enough to compete with AST’s rDPS, but this was not the case in HW or SB. As for their healing kit, AST’s is extremely versatile with the amount of oGCD healing it has. Contrarily, while WHM has good burst healing, fight designs rarely call for Cure III spam anymore. Then there’s the issue of clipping with WHM where as AST has a shorter cast time to alleviate the clipping it experienced with cards (and, by extension, oGCD usage).

All three can clear whatever content they want. But there are still nuanced issues that could stand to be addressed that do affect balance. The healers are closer to one another this expansion that ever before—but all three also lost a lot going from SB to ShB in exchange for that.

They should change AST cards & abilities to the way they were before.
Yes AST was OP, Let it be.

Um. Why is leaving a job overpowered your solution? Just because WHM was taken for early prog in HW doesn’t mean AST should have kept 10% AOE Balance going into SB. When the developers didn’t revert that back to 5% at the start of 4.0, even raiders were like “uh....”

I loved the old card system. But Balance needed to be addressed because it was just too strong. Unfortunately the solution they chose was to simply the system down to all mini balances but there’s no way they’ll return to the old cards so... I’ve made my peace with that. Doesn’t mean I like the new system, though.

Causal players also never complained about the percentage of ASTs versus WHMs in speed runs because the vast majority of casual players ignore that kind of stuff. They simply don’t care. So I don’t know where you’re getting that idea from.

Even if all jobs can clear Week 1 Savage or Ultimate doesn’t mean you should let some remain overpowered while others feel like garbage—and have garbage damage to go along with it.

[ForteNightshade]

They should change AST cards & abilities to the way they were before.
Yes AST was OP, Let it be.

The majority of people still used WHM for the world race clears back in HW. Then replace WHM with AST for speed/log runs.
What does this mean? All healers can clear content week 1. End of story.

This is primarily because Astro was complete garbage until 3.2, being the only job to date that straight up wasn't viable. You literally couldn't clear Gordias until geared due to its underpowered heals. It was buffed adequately enough in Midas to be decent, however White Mage remained the best healer. Granted, Astro had an enormous stigma. Hence why the devs, in a desperate bid to convince players to give Astro another chance, overbuffed it to kingdom come. This didn't make Astro the speed/log healer, it made Astro the undisputed best healer. So much so, that when Stormblood released and those buffs weren't rescinded, there was real consideration of dropping Scholar not White Mage. The latter only retained its prog status after Astro's nerf.

It didn't last, as by arguably 4.3 but undeniably 4.4, Astro was once again considered the best healer. With CU instantly applying, buffs and free mobility, White Mage had almost no answer to Astro's kit. The sheer dominance of Astro can be noted on that website as it remains the only time where White Mage's appeal to less experienced players was barely enough to keep its numbers above Astro and Scholar. Speaking of...

Casuals complained about AST because they wanted better representation of WHM in speed/log runs too.
WHM was still the better option over AST in a casual group. You needed a good group to pair AST with.

This is straight up wrong. First and foremost, casuals raiders couldn't care less about speed runs. As for logs, the community as a whole practically enforced a "meta". White Mage mains were usually asked to switch, and weren't recruited to statics if they weren't willing. Samurai, Monk and, to a lesser extent, Black Mage all suffered this same problem. You'd see PF constantly locking out spots because bringing a White Mage meant you couldn't parse. Admittedly, this is less of an issue nowadays since that website no longer ranks based on pDPS, but if they allowed Astro to remain overpowered, it would continue to plague White Mage. Case in point, when Ninja was underpowered despite being viable, PF once again locked it out. Hell, the Physical Range were in serious danger of being dropped entirely due to how weak they were in 5.0.

Purposely allowing certain jobs to be overpowered is bad design. You pigeon hole the remaining. Plenty of White Mages don't want to be the "prog healer" who is expected to switch once the team clears. They want to main White Mage.

Now to quote myself from another thread in regards to Astro's cards.

Speaking on Astro, specifically. While I have my issues with the current system. The old cards simply wouldn't work nowadays. Let's review!

Balance - Best card without question
Spear - Weak Balance
Arrow - Will cause a DPS loss to several jobs due to them wanting no increased speed. Ninja, Machinist, Monk, Samurai, Dancer, Gunbreaker and Paladin are all jobs that would want to slap you if they ever saw this card on their bar.

Bole - Inconsistent mitigation is useless since you can't plan around it. Furthermore, with the sheer amount of mitigation tools we have. Bole just... doesn't have a purpose anymore.
Ewer - The last thing healers need nowadays is more MP
Spire - TP died

The cards always needed a complete overhaul due to the direction Shadowbringers took. While the system they landed on is, admittedly, boring. Going back to the old cards would literally be "balance or nothing" without massive changes. Simply put, damage and mitigation can never share a slot in this game because damage will always reign supreme.

[IceBlueNinja]

In FFXIV's 2.0 to 2.55 state there were only two healers. WHM and SCH. It was actively bad to double up on either, if your group was serious. Not just for LB concerns, but because SCH's AOE healing at the time was rather limited by comparison.



As far as Noct Ast goes... I am sad to see it go. While Ast obviously wasn't designed with its shield stance being its primary function, it certainly had a leg up over SCH in this regard, since SCH had to rely on the Fairy and Aetherflow abilities to really top people. It also had the leg up that the single target shield was instant cast, opposed to SCH's having to be pre-cast for tank busters and such. It's also a shame that the playerbase doesn't really embrace shield healing, because it takes a modicum of thought and fight memorization. Meanwhile regens go Brrrrrrrr!

Like even nowadays, people literally argue that shields are irrelevant for most fights, which is true, but man, idk, to me it's satisfying to see a tank buster do 0 damage. But nah man, lemme just go back to casting almost nothing but Broil/Malefic. Top tier gameplay, top tier efficiency. Clearly the most fun, too.

Exactly, regens to me honestly is overated, you can throw both regens+cu on a tank in trash pulls, and base on what dungeon it is the tank can really take alot of damage still even with their top notch gear, bardam mettle are one such few examples I love using, something about that dungeon put a major dent on tanks no matter how much you spam regens cause idk some of these dungeons seem a little too bad ilvl sync , while you have dungeons like the current matoya dungeon that the mobs feels they barely even do damage. Also to point out the 0 damage tank buster thing yes aint nothing nice when I see my tank(Specially dark night using blackest night) tank a fat 0 to the fact on a tb when i add noct field em or when aoe is coming i pop celestial+helios to see a fat 0 on entire team. Savage content especially when warrior shake it off and pld divine adds with it and another ast in diru applied their neutrual and intersection effects to stack with mine lovely 7 regen and 4 shield + constant card and divination buff? Am honestly surprised why double ast is not more common because all the abilities as long as each ast in 1 sect each all stack effect wise except cept cards stack. Finally when you take a 0 damage to thing that add a debuff say those things i hate in amarout who teter to you and drops your healing spell, if you shield yourself and take 0 damage that annoying debuff will never work thus ill dps it down as my tank and dps handle the other mobs.

[Yeol]

Causal players also never complained about the percentage of ASTs versus WHMs in speed runs because the vast majority of casual players ignore that kind of stuff. They simply don’t care. So I don’t know where you’re getting that idea from.

casuals raiders couldn't care less about speed runs. As for logs, the community as a whole practically enforced a "meta"

Then remind me why were the forums filled with WHM and AST topics during HW?

Even if all jobs can clear Week 1 Savage or Ultimate doesn’t mean you should let some remain overpowered while others feel like garbage—and have garbage damage to go along with it.

Others did not feel like garbage at all. This is how people felt when their Job was not taken into speed kills and they did not see their favorite YouTuber/streamer playing their job.
I remember when someone asks which healer job should they pick, and the answers were mostly AST or SCH.

Even if you look at the number of clears on healers during HW. WHM had the least number of recorded clears. It did affect peoples' mentality.

This is primarily because Astro was complete garbage until 3.2, being the only job to date that straight up wasn't viable. You literally couldn't clear Gordias until geared due to its underpowered heals.

This was the devs mistake with both Goridas design and AST.

It was buffed adequately enough in Midas to be decent, however White Mage remained the best healer.

No problems here, This is where AST should be.

Granted, Astro had an enormous stigma. Hence why the devs, in a desperate bid to convince players to give Astro another chance, overbuffed it to kingdom come.

And this is where the Devs went wrong. Thank-you.

It didn't last, as by arguably 4.3 but undeniably 4.4, Astro was once again considered the best healer. With CU instantly applying, buffs and free mobility, White Mage had almost no answer to Astro's kit.

In 5.0 this is no longer an issue.

Purposely allowing certain jobs to be overpowered is bad design.

Answer in color blue above. AST power was supposed to be buffs.

The cards always needed a complete overhaul due to the direction Shadowbringers took.

This I agree with. We no longer have TP and MP so card effects must change. But this still doesn't mean we shouldn't have damage buff cards. At the moment all AST cards give a damage buff but they card system is very poor.

[Rilifane]

In FFXIV's 2.0 to 2.55 state there were only two healers. WHM and SCH. It was actively bad to double up on either, if your group was serious. Not just for LB concerns, but because SCH's AOE healing at the time was rather limited by comparison.

We're basically reverting to that, but with more healers to choose from. Now we'll get a more interesting spread. Will Sage and WHM be the better pair? Sage and Ast? Or SCH and the others.

As far as Noct Ast goes... I am sad to see it go. While Ast obviously wasn't designed with its shield stance being its primary function, it certainly had a leg up over SCH in this regard, since SCH had to rely on the Fairy and Aetherflow abilities to really top people. It also had the leg up that the single target shield was instant cast, opposed to SCH's having to be pre-cast for tank busters and such. It's also a shame that the playerbase doesn't really embrace shield healing, because it takes a modicum of thought and fight memorization. Meanwhile regens go Brrrrrrrr!

Like even nowadays, people literally argue that shields are irrelevant for most fights, which is true, but man, idk, to me it's satisfying to see a tank buster do 0 damage. But nah man, lemme just go back to casting almost nothing but Broil/Malefic. Top tier gameplay, top tier efficiency. Clearly the most fun, too.

One thing that some people here don't seem to understand is that if you're talking about efficiency and toptier gameplay, feelings, fun, personal preferences and "that one time in DF" aren't part of the equation because else you can't stay objective. Balance is not done on a feelycraft level. It needs to compare hard numbers and facts, not what something feels or perceives.
This is not saying that you aren't allowed to play the way you prefer nor that balance and fun have to be mutually exclusive or that anyone adressing balancing concers is automatically against having fun or doesn't sometimes knowingly plays suboptimal because it's more fun.

And shields in general are objectively weaker than regens in their current design. Period. Unless you need them to survive a hit at full HP with mitigation up there is no reason to use them over a more efficient tool that has higher potency and thus gets more done for one weave or, at worst, one GCD.

Optimised regen healing takes much more thought and coordination than you give credit for because you're working without the comfy eHP buffer shields offer while avoiding GCD heals at all costs, meaning you need to carefully map the fight aswell or else you are forced to GCD heal and lose dps instead of gaining it. It's not uncommon to see people drop very low (like low 4 digits low) and staying there for a bit until natural regens and healer regens did their thing. That's not done by braindead freestyling a fight, that's calculated.

If talking about optimised gameplay, the top priority is keeping your Broils, Glares and Malefics rolling while only healing the absolute bare minimum with oGCDs above all else and GCDs only when absolutely neccessary and every other option has been exhausted. Is it fun? Obviously not, else we wouldn't have so many complaints about current state of healers with people begging left and right for a more complex dps rotation because spamming one nuke for 90% of your GCDs and the rest being dot refreshes it not fun for anyone.

It is satisfying to watch a buster do zero damage as it is satisfying to watch shields not even break after doing the full triple shield Neutral preopener, which is why I still did it at e7s even though I knew perfectly well it was unneccessary. The latter doesn't interfer with your dps but if you were to do something like that infight, it would be a waste of dps and unneccessary. Period. There is nothing to argue about, it's inefficient because it's not neccessary and could've been solved in a way that's not losing you dps.

That said, it's fine to play however you want in content where it doesn't matter; I spent my fair share of timing messing around and definitely playing suboptimal and I know it. Nothing wrong with having fun if it's not to the detriment of the party. If your preference is playing a shield healer and shielding busters to the point of shields not even breaking, that's fine. But don't confuse it with efficiency.
Preferences and feelings are not the same as being objectively efficient.

[Bright-Flower]

It's probably better this way for the game overall, but I do feel bad for ASTs that enjoy noct.

In particular any NOCT ASTs that preferred the pre SHB card system this has got to feel like a one two punch.

[ForteNightshade]

Then remind me why were the forums filled with WHM and AST topics during HW?

Because Astro was initially terrible, then incredibly overpowered? We're talking about a period with some of the worst healer balance in this game's history. Which is saying something since healer balance has always been a crapshoot. Naturally, you're going to see a lot of complaints in general.

Few, if any, of those topics had to do with AST's speed ranking and more to do with how grossly imbalanced it was throughout HW.

No problems here, This is where AST should be.

You're misunderstanding. White Mage wasn't the best healer in terms of heals. It was simply better than Astro in 3.2 despite several buffs the latter received.

And this is where the Devs went wrong. Thank-you.

They overbuffed Astro because so few players were willing to give it a second chance. It was literally them begging people to play it. Had they night made such a desperate decision, Astro would have gone an entirely expansion as effectively being worthless. Considering it was a new job, they wanted it to at least finish strong.

In 5.0 this is no longer an issue.

Actually, no. Astro was underpowered until 5.1. From that point onward, it is generally viewed as having the much better healing kit due to its sheer abundance of oGCDs. White Mage leans more towards being the DPS healer.

Answer in color blue above. AST power was supposed to be buffs.

Which didn't work. Partly because, at the time, FFlogs ranked based on pDPS. Since people care about their percentages, Astro was always preferred. Had their ranking system not changed to rDPS, White Mage would continue to live in Astro's shadow.

This I agree with. We no longer have TP and MP so card effects must change. But this still doesn't mean we shouldn't have damage buff cards. At the moment all AST cards give a damage buff but they card system is very poor.

What do you purpose they change it to? Of the six cards, five would be worthless nowadays. Even if they split Royal Road to have an offensive and defensive card slot so Bole no longer competes with Balance. The devs still need a system where Balance, Spear and Arrow aren't just "Damage, less damage and even less damage."

Unfortunately, this game lacks in the way of interesting gameplay when it comes to numbers. Bard used to interact with Crit, however they removed all that due to its immense power creep. Haste buffs, as noted in my previous post, cause a myriad of issues with far too many jobs. This doesn't exactly leave many options for card expression without fundamental design changes.