How could you do this to AST?

[ty_taurus]

I always ran in diurnal anyway, so I'm not worrying much.

I also sort of wondered when this was going to happen as astro was playing dual roles for healing, and with a new healer introduced astro being be pruned down seems necessary long term.

Also has me speculating on Neutral sect and what it will be worked into. It is such a powerful buff and on a short cooldown I use this every time it's ready. With shields gone will it just be meh? Also synastry I feel this could be worked into another skill, celestial intersection maybe since shields are removed?

Just speculating.

Other then the healing I feel like we are going to get more seal skills like divination. We can build different seal combos for different effects.

Divination would stay raidwide damage increase with all three seals represented.

Where we would have an alternate seal spender on a 45 sec cooldown that interacts with the seals that you have. This would fill the gap right after a divination use so that you can still throw out cards and us your seals before divination comes off cooldown. I wouldn't mind if minor arcana system get's the boot honestly.

Seals would also play more of a role in what your choosing to play. i.e. seals have special bonuses baked in respectively. These bonuses can only be granted with the new seal spender (divination) ability.

Lunar - Incoming healing increase
Solar - Skill/spell speed increased
Celestial - Reduced incoming damage

Each seal value is 1%/2%/3%

Example: This would allow you to stack 3 Lunar for 3% Incoming healing when you use the "seal spender"

Or combine 2 Solar and 1 Celestial for 2% skill/spell speed increase and 1% reduced incoming damage

Just thinking about the gap after a divination use and filling it in with more cards and a seal spender.

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

[tikiwiki]

He has a point. I agree we still don't have enough information to know more about this pure healer direction for AST, but forcing the job into playing a role similar to WHM doesn't seem like a good idea on paper. And now with this notion that, for 8 man content, you have a separate queue for the two types of healers? That's concerning, and again, it sounds bad on paper. I don't play AST, but since its introduction in 3.x, it's supposed to be a hybrid job. This just makes healer mains even more concerned, especially what happen to the role in 5.x. Based on what we have, one could assume SE is forcing healer mains to play 2 healers instead of their preferred job.

since release ast has been a pure healer with shields tacked on because of the shield regen dichotamy and noct has been incredibly weak and flawed for most of its existance until sch got destroyed this expac

[Sqwall]

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

LOL right...but you get the idea for something they could add to AST to further it's card gameplay

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

LOL right...but you get the idea for something they could add to AST to further it's card gameplay

Probably replacing the sks/sps boost for... certain percent damage absorption from damage dealt. Dmg taken reduction would probably used to mitigate something like raidwide (yay party old bole)... definitely will add more flavor. But I’m unsure how that will translate to an actual gameplay.

[Seoulstar]

And here I am still hoping for the slight chance of getting different cards..either that or just becoming Sage main.

[IceBlueNinja]

since release ast has been a pure healer with shields tacked on because of the shield regen dichotamy and noct has been incredibly weak and flawed for most of its existance until sch got destroyed this expac

I still do not see no details exactly how is noct weak when I have put some where in like page 3/4 of prime examples how it is not and it even actually migitates better than sch shields. If so then both noct sect and sch shields are inferior to regens atm. Also while people love dirunal sect like* 70% I guess of players, you still some what hear people complain and say how it such a copy white mage its like overall nothing about ast seem to please people. Either its too much copy of a whm or a weaker sch which ofc this part I will always disagree on the migi thing all the time. ast as is the hybrid healer like how a rdm will be a mix of a white mage/blm their heals are decent but not that strong to a standard whm and their dps too is decent but not too powerful than the standard blm. Hybrid jobs always function like this and I will say both dirunal and noct is balanced I do not see the so claim dirunal stronger than noct thing. Noct can do something dirunal cant do, if something takes 0 damage that would otherwise apply some debuff effect after hit from main attack. For example those sprites who tetter healers in amarout, taking 0 damage will block that healing down ability, while ofc in dirunal you take damage get that debuff and now your in stress healing with the healing down debuff. same for many other things that adds debuff but taking 0 damage may block them from certain bosses.

[Side-Eye]

And here I am still hoping for the slight chance of getting different cards..either that or just becoming Sage main.

You and me both. I absolutely loved AST before 5.0, when I felt like we had been absolutely crucified -- not only was our card system stripped of variety, but we lost Time skill/aspects which had been staples of the class, as well as our only stun (which another heal job was allowed to keep, so let's not pretend that Squeenix didn't think healers should have it at all). For a while, I switched to playing another class as main. After several patches which boosted our heals, I started using AST again.. but the job has definitely not been as engaging, interesting, or compelling. Being able to heal sufficiently (or even more than sufficiently) just isn't what job satisfaction is about.

[Mikaeus_The_Lunarch]

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

it wasn't until i really started playing dps (mch) at the beginning of ShB did i realize how stupid it was for ast to give speed to people and i can't believe some asts actually want that back at all.

[Mavrias]

I still do not see no details exactly how is noct weak when I have put some where in like page 3/4 of prime examples how it is not and it even actually migitates better than sch shields. If so then both noct sect and sch shields are inferior to regens atm. Also while people love dirunal sect like* 70% I guess of players, you still some what hear people complain and say how it such a copy white mage its like overall nothing about ast seem to please people. Either its too much copy of a whm or a weaker sch which ofc this part I will always disagree on the migi thing all the time. ast as is the hybrid healer like how a rdm will be a mix of a white mage/blm their heals are decent but not that strong to a standard whm and their dps too is decent but not too powerful than the standard blm. Hybrid jobs always function like this and I will say both dirunal and noct is balanced I do not see the so claim dirunal stronger than noct thing. Noct can do something dirunal cant do, if something takes 0 damage that would otherwise apply some debuff effect after hit from main attack. For example those sprites who tetter healers in amarout, taking 0 damage will block that healing down ability, while ofc in dirunal you take damage get that debuff and now your in stress healing with the healing down debuff. same for many other things that adds debuff but taking 0 damage may block them from certain bosses.

shields ARE inferior to regens lol and SCH is actually worse than NoctAst in that regard. if an attack will not kill you without the shield, then spending a gcd on shield is pointless. at the very least NoctAst has the benefit of a oGCD shield ability but even then the regen would be more useful 9/10 times.

additionally most attacks that absolutely require shielding are so infrequent that neutral sect will cover them.

shielding is all well and good in early prog, and NoctAst is not inherently bad. Diurnal sect is simply more useful. Which is fine, when given two options and made to choose one or the other, one is going to be superior depending on the situation.

[KDSilver]

For example those sprites who tetter healers in amarout, taking 0 damage will block that healing down ability, while ofc in dirunal you take damage get that debuff and now your in stress healing with the healing down debuff

You can use so many ressources as AST that this healing debuff is like it doesn't even exist, DIU or NOCT, it doesn't matter, that's not really an argument.
NOCT is not weak. It's mathematically weaker than DIU if we take number alone.

Celestial Opposition for example :
Noct : 200 heal + 200 shield = 400 potency heal.
Diu : 200 heal + 100 hot for 15s = 700 potency heal.

You gain 300 extra potency heal from the regen.

Shield are strong for what they do, which is, mitigating incoming damage.
A regen will always be more interesting mathematically if damage you take will not kill you or stress you (I'm taking about big waves of damages).

That's just all really.

ast as is the hybrid healer like how a rdm will be a mix of a white mage/blm their heals are decent but not that strong to a standard whm

His hybrid playstyle doesn't make him have a "decent" healing. It's as strong as WHM, if not stronger sometimes.
The only thing in favor or WHM is Cure III spam. And this one really niche so...