Question to AST mains:

[IceBlueNinja]

Did anyone ever redo ast story to find out if it was changed? Cause HW =used dirunal sect and stormblood used=noct sect for plots and what not so with them gone.. how did that work out?

[IDontPetLalas]

Synastry isn't useless..it has saved many tanks from dying on lower level content xD
It almost dobbels your healing (Benefic II and Aspected Benefic // when you heal the same target you place it on.

I'd agree, technically you could use it, I have but it's used so infrequently I qualify it as "useless in most content/if your team is undergeared/if your team is not yet competent (skills, mechanics issues)/are in relevant content/there are no better skills available to use"

I have left in on my bar for my "just in case" scenario, but it's left in a dusty corner just like cure is.

[ty_taurus]

The thing about Synastry isn't that it's a bad tool, but that it's been severely power crept. The thing about healing is, we keep getting new healing cooldowns every expansion, but the amount of healing required isn't really changing. What this means is that even though we already have enough healing tools to get through all the content in the game, the new tools being some combination of stronger, more frequently available, easier to use, and DPS neutral has gradually devalued tools that used to be very important resources. And it's not because they no longer are important, but because there aren't enough reasons to use them.

Great examples of this would be spells like Succor and Regen. Both were very important to Scholar and White Mage in the past, but have become largely irrelevant because there are just better resources to heal with, and any decent healer is very infrequently pushed to use them anymore.

We cannot continue to just add more and more healing resources unless you increase the demand for healing to match, or we're just going to balloon this power creep more and more. Look at tanks. The demand for personal mitigation has not changed very much across the lifespan of the game. Tanks acquire about 3 extra mitigation cooldowns after level 50. Healers acquire about 10 healing cooldowns after level 50. And I didn't include actions that received upgrades, just new actions altogether in that.

Not every new healing action (or tank mitigation action for that matter) is a bad thing. There is something that can be said about the QoL that certain tools provide, but to the degree that healers get new heals without upping the demand for heals just creates a lot of dead weight on the healer's hotbar. And that's not to say that those dead weight actions are badly designed, or that you don't ever use that at all, but that what they accomplish is now done with something new instead. Why Succor when you can Sacred Soil? Why Regen when you can Afflatus Solace? You could merge some actions, or cut certain unnecessary ones and do a better job of ensuring every action has a place on each healer's hotbar.

[IDontPetLalas]

It depends upon how you define a bad tool. If I have at kid sized shovel that I used in a playground to fill a pail , but now I need to excavate a plot of land, and I have now have 4 pieces of industrial machinery designed for that- well that kid sized shovel isn't going to be used.

That's how I view synastry. Sure, it does what it needs to do but I now almost never need to do as I've outgrown the playground. I just keep it around on the odd chance that I need to babysit someone's kid AND they forgot their own shovel, in which case sure- it does the job it needs to do.

[Gullis]

Yeah Synastry isn't a bad spell by itself. Its just very niche at higher levels, as you rarely need to gcd single target heal, unless the tank decides to ignore all of his buttons, or dps is slacking so hard, you run out of cooldowns during w2w pulls in dungeons (happens sometimes)

Would be nice if it got uppgraded so you could use it for Celestial Intersection or something

[ForsakenRoe]

If Synastry was changed to work on singletarget OGCDs too, then it'd affect Essential, Intersection and Exaltation (only passing along the healing, not the additional effects like the mit or shielding presumably), that'd still bump it from 'only used in sub60 content' to 'used pretty consistently in all content', they love their double hit tankbusters (P10S stomps/akh morn, P9S duality, P11S Dike, P12S Glaukopis if you don't immune it), so being able to hit the MT with an Essential, and have 40% of that transfer to the OT as well, would be very nice. Maybe shields could transfer too, at 40% rate, but I don't really think Exaltation's 10% mit effect should/needs to

[elioaiko]

The aesthetics and the memories of 3.2-3.5

Don't remind me. AST at its most creative IMO.

[Zolvolt]

Likes
Cards & Divination- fantasy+, support roles+
OGCD Layering - Astro has so many OGCD's that you can layer to give a lot of HoT or burst healing. This excels best in dungeons
Macrocosmos - What a fun multi-use tool
Earthly Star - This ability is wonderful as its the kind of multi-use tool that does better and better as Astrologians understand the content they are doing better and better
Neutral Sect - Its nice retaining some shield ability despite being a pure healer now. This single ability allows whitemage and astrologian to still co-heal encounters that require shielding big mechanics
LightSpeed - This spell is so perfect. Its unfortunate that it's ideal use is for burst windows, but the feeling of popping it and rezzing 4+ people really fast is amazing. It really makes you feel like astro is the MVP job for prog or recovery

Dislikes
Minor Arcana - The only version of Minor Arcana I have ever enjoyed was sh.b where you could turn cards into bigger DPS buffs. I don't mind RNG abilities but the lady card can't be relied upon in 8man content and is not necessary. I don't think any iteration of lord/lady that deal direct damage/heal have been good
OGCD Layering - This works less well in Savage if your co-healer does not allow your OGCD's to do their job. With astro being the least used healer in savage, it can be hard for other healers to even know how to heal with Astro though.
Astro Dyne - Astrodyne feels really bad because it creates rotations where you must hold your dps cards for buff windows and you have to hold your minor arcana without being able to see it's CD, in hopes you can double lord card in buffs. It's a type of gameplay where astro's really need to be on top of where they are in the fight to remember when to hold and when to not hold. This is espcially true because there is always a part of the fight where you get an extra astrodyne that is not paired with divination. This means you have to be actively aware of which astrodyne that is. Requiring seals for divination just felt so much better to play even if you got RNG'd into 2-seal divs on pull
Removing Nocturnal stance - My Main job since Astrologian was released was Noct-Ast. I was almost always paired co-healing with whitemage through all my PF-Savage experiences. This has never been an issue outside of the end of Eden when double regen became best and so I was running Diurnal Ast w/ whm co-healer. Now, whitemages are far more plentiful than any other job in PF. The amount of times I've had to flex to shield healer this expansion has been so high. I'm not complaining about this because I dislike shield healing, its my preferred way to heal, but Ast is my main and my favorite job so it feels really bad to have to swap to shield healer because none join the PF after 45+ minutes. I believe this is due to ast/whm combo being something more difficult to pull off in a prog environment

[Szylver]

The stars spells and buffing friends. Always liked that about supports.

[Supersnow845]

The thing about Synastry isn't that it's a bad tool, but that it's been severely power crept. The thing about healing is, we keep getting new healing cooldowns every expansion, but the amount of healing required isn't really changing. What this means is that even though we already have enough healing tools to get through all the content in the game, the new tools being some combination of stronger, more frequently available, easier to use, and DPS neutral has gradually devalued tools that used to be very important resources. And it's not because they no longer are important, but because there aren't enough reasons to use them.

Great examples of this would be spells like Succor and Regen. Both were very important to Scholar and White Mage in the past, but have become largely irrelevant because there are just better resources to heal with, and any decent healer is very infrequently pushed to use them anymore.

We cannot continue to just add more and more healing resources unless you increase the demand for healing to match, or we're just going to balloon this power creep more and more. Look at tanks. The demand for personal mitigation has not changed very much across the lifespan of the game. Tanks acquire about 3 extra mitigation cooldowns after level 50. Healers acquire about 10 healing cooldowns after level 50. And I didn't include actions that received upgrades, just new actions altogether in that.

Not every new healing action (or tank mitigation action for that matter) is a bad thing. There is something that can be said about the QoL that certain tools provide, but to the degree that healers get new heals without upping the demand for heals just creates a lot of dead weight on the healer's hotbar. And that's not to say that those dead weight actions are badly designed, or that you don't ever use that at all, but that what they accomplish is now done with something new instead. Why Succor when you can Sacred Soil? Why Regen when you can Afflatus Solace? You could merge some actions, or cut certain unnecessary ones and do a better job of ensuring every action has a place on each healer's hotbar.

Synestry is like dissipation, a good, well designed tool from the era of skills having downsides that has been powercrept by endless oGCD’s that are just an entire essay of benefits with no downsides

People are always like “ugh why does synestry not affect oGCD’s” or “why does dissipation buff GCD’s only when it gives aetherflow” but that was exactly the point, tools had upsides and downsides