Why is the healer class basically a one spell dps class?

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Sure they "work" but with the engine and netcode being the way they are you can probably expect some delay on certain utility. Best example for what I mean would be Rescue where it takes about a second for the ability to actually register after you pressed it.


CC did have a place for a very very short time in early ARR dungeons, then SE nerfed them into the ground because people kept complaining about the difficulty and it simply became "pull everything and aoe it down" and consequently crowd control lost it's purpose.

Did you forget Presence of Mind? Actually, making that as an aoe ability might be something they could look into as an upgrade to it. Also tanks and ranged dps have a slow in arm's length.

[Feidam]

Because when healers had many dps skills it created a very toxic player base. If you healed more then dps then you’d be kicked. If the group thought you didn’t contribute enough dps they would bash you and kick you. The toxicity was all to real. Then some healers just dps and didn’t heal much. There was so much mess going on.

New players were horrified to play healers because the veterans created this healer dps toxic community.

Since healer dps changes. The community isn’t very toxic anymore. People don’t care to jump down a healers throat for dps anymore.

This right here was a big problem for while. And then we can add on all the other elitist type things players did that led to utility removal. Enough people were requiring players switch classes to X that there were complaints all the time. So we lost utility and had nerfs to what stayed. I mean for all the complaints of AST card changes most AST just balance fished anyway. So this new system is now all balance cards.

[Azbroolah]

I mean for all the complaints of AST card changes most AST just balance fished anyway. So this new system is now all balance cards.

This is true to an extent, but only because the other cards were really just not very good most of the time. Balance and Spear (after it was changed to crit) were just straight-up better than the other choices. Spire was basically a dead draw (Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder only), Ewer was only very situationally useful (making it also Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder), Bole was not possible to intelligently play around (because if you need mitigation you need it on-demand, not RNG), and Arrow was actively bad for most classes other than BLM because it resulted in misaligned burst windows. AST players weren't Balance/Spear fishing because of "elitism" (whatever that means), but because it was the only choice that made sense 99% of the time.

[Absurdity]

Did you forget Presence of Mind? Actually, making that as an aoe ability might be something they could look into as an upgrade to it. Also tanks and ranged dps have a slow in arm's length.

I didn't list PoM because I said "certain" utility is clunky. Presence simply buffs your own spellspeed and just like AST cards (when they originally buffed more than your damage) it works completely fine.

The clunky utility is mostly related to player movement or altering enemy behaviour. You can best see this in pvp where some abilities are actually frustrating to use because most of the time they have such a huge delay that they don't actually prevent what they were supposed to prevent.

Trying to rescue a low hp player out of a zerg? They'll probably die before it activates and you just end up pulling their corpse.
Trying to use an instant heal on a critically low hp player? They're probably dead before the heal registers. This is less of an issue in pve because incoming damage is easily predictable there.
Trying to stun or silence a healer while they're casting a big GCD heal? They'll probably get the heal off before your CC registers, even if you pressed it as soon as they started casting, so you just wasted your 2 second stun for nothing and they sit comfortably at full hp now while also being stun immune.

[Sqwall]

This is true to an extent, but only because the other cards were really just not very good most of the time. Balance and Spear (after it was changed to crit) were just straight-up better than the other choices. Spire was basically a dead draw (Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder only), Ewer was only very situationally useful (making it also Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder), Bole was not possible to intelligently play around (because if you need mitigation you need it on-demand, not RNG), and Arrow was actively bad for most classes other than BLM because it resulted in misaligned burst windows. AST players weren't Balance/Spear fishing because of "elitism" (whatever that means), but because it was the only choice that made sense 99% of the time.

Your right about Balance and Spear being the notable choice form HW to SB. Was I fishing for them? Not particularly. I kind of dealt with w/e ever was thrown at me as a HW, SB astro. It wasn't ideal to wait for redraw cooldowns to play certain cards. I would royal the best fit 99% of the time and that was usually for Ewer/Spire for AOE.

For Plays? Balance was usually the go to. Spear right behind that. And then arrow. Bole was pretty useless and highly situational.

Astro's skill ceiling in HW and SB (especially SB) was so high that most just threw out Balance/AOE so to avoid Draw drift. You had to be fast as an AST or you would lose your place and maybe forget to look at the Party list HP values.

I took a different approach to ASTRO. I would build my royals and plays to the team specifically. SAM or DRG Arrow/Time extend + Time dilation. BLM, SMN, RDM Balance/potency buff + time dilation. MNK, NIN, Spear/Time extend + Time dilation.
The key here was watching the battle also.
DRG used Left eye/right eye. Play on DRG.
SMN popped Bahamut. Play on SMN
NIN used Trick Attack. Play on NIN or other heavy DPS.

Follow up with arcana if RNG is bad after play.

I was surprised how well things would line up and my cards would be ready for the next burst phase after I started playing that way.

The current AST is literally a 50/50 hip fire playstyle now which is due to the previous expansions building up DPS as the main focus, and SHB doubling down on DPS hard.

AST now only cares about Ranged DPS or Melee DPS as it's quite literally all the same now card wise. 1 Draw/Play, 1 Draw,Redraw,Play, Sleeve Draw, Divination. Rinse repeat. No thinking...No strat....just DPS leading up to more AOE dps buff.

I miss Split and Royal Road as it really added a lot to the class, AST is still insanely easy to play, but now I don't have to think on my feet as much. Sad

[Feidam]

This is true to an extent, but only because the other cards were really just not very good most of the time. Balance and Spear (after it was changed to crit) were just straight-up better than the other choices. Spire was basically a dead draw (Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder only), Ewer was only very situationally useful (making it also Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder), Bole was not possible to intelligently play around (because if you need mitigation you need it on-demand, not RNG), and Arrow was actively bad for most classes other than BLM because it resulted in misaligned burst windows. AST players weren't Balance/Spear fishing because of "elitism" (whatever that means), but because it was the only choice that made sense 99% of the time.

Was speaking about the idea of specific buffs leading to the exclusive practice of those or else. Not anything specific within the AST community. While the other AST buffs were niche it does not change the fact that balance and to a lesser extent spear fishing contributed to the “X” or go home attitudes that part of the ffxiv community held in terms of stacking utility.

Personally I liked the original AST card system. Was really enjoyable. But it was a bit over powered in comparison to others. I wish they had taken the utility and spread it around but unless everyone had the same potential for utility as their role counterparts it wouldn’t have fixed the issue.

[Dzian]

This is true to an extent, but only because the other cards were really just not very good most of the time. Balance and Spear (after it was changed to crit) were just straight-up better than the other choices. Spire was basically a dead draw (Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder only), Ewer was only very situationally useful (making it also Royal Road/Minor Arcana fodder), Bole was not possible to intelligently play around (because if you need mitigation you need it on-demand, not RNG), and Arrow was actively bad for most classes other than BLM because it resulted in misaligned burst windows. AST players weren't Balance/Spear fishing because of "elitism" (whatever that means), but because it was the only choice that made sense 99% of the time.

Ewer wasn't a bad card. It just didn't work on the jobs that could have used it..

Had no affect on blackmages in astral stance for example. Or even darks if I recall. That's a card that could potentially have had a nice impact on a blm letting them squeeze out an extra fire 4 and getting some extra oomph with that extra mp. Something similar with drks. I cant remember what exactly all I remember is being told my ewers didn't work on dark knights when I tried.

Bole had the same problem all defensive stuff has in that defence is a joke everything is deliberately
so incredibly forgiving that it makes defence useless.

Spire could have been decent but again resource management was almost a non issue at that point with all the changes they'd made you literally never ran out of tp outside of aoe..

[Beddict]

Ewer wasn't a bad card. It just didn't work on the jobs that could have used it..

Had no affect on blackmages in astral stance for example. Or even darks if I recall. That's a card that could potentially have had a nice impact on a blm letting them squeeze out an extra fire 4 and getting some extra oomph with that extra mp. Something similar with drks. I cant remember what exactly all I remember is being told my ewers didn't work on dark knights when I tried.

Yeah, didn't work on Dark Knight. The tooltip for Darkside was:

Increases damage dealt by 20%. MP regeneration stops during battle and Refresh statuses granted by others have no effect.

Ewer did nothing for them, sadly.

[Azbroolah]

Personally I liked the original AST card system. Was really enjoyable. But it was a bit over powered in comparison to others. I wish they had taken the utility and spread it around but unless everyone had the same potential for utility as their role counterparts it wouldn’t have fixed the issue.

I liked it too. It definitely felt nice being able to put out a spread Balance at the right times, and it was fun to try to put one together. I really liked Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition as well. But, I think it's easy to see why they changed it. The design philosophy in this game doesn't really lend itself to utility options besides Damage Up or Vulnerability Down buffs, which is sad. I still like playing AST (though mostly because SCH and WHM just feel kind of bad...) but it's definitely not as interesting as it used to be. Can only hope they have some nice changes up their sleeves for healers in Endwalker.

Ewer wasn't a bad card. It just didn't work on the jobs that could have used it..

I mean, in the end that's kind of why it was bad, right? It was designed with some pretty big limitations in mind that made it really situational.

[Dzian]

Yeah, didn't work on Dark Knight. The tooltip for Darkside was:



Ewer did nothing for them, sadly.

Yeah it would have been a great card if it did. But alas..