4 Paired Threads: AST - How do you feel about it?

[Zeastria]

☆Like:
- Strong HoT Healing.
- Strong Burst Healing.
- Versitile Toolkit.
- Buffs (Cards).
- Don't have to worry about MP.
- Aesthetics

☆Dislike:
- Minor Arcana
- The Astro-sign buff effects(Astrodyne)

☆ I'm for the most part quite content with how job work atm.
I just hope they dont ruin the job in 7.0...

[Scolarus]

AST is my secondary go-to healer if my raid partner progs on a shield healer.

AST iconic card system takes advantage of my natural talent of pattern recognition for associating ranged vs melee cards quickly. Recollecting who on the team has received cards, paired with distributing cards in between GCDs weaves while dodging mechanics makes for a very active gameplay experience both physically and mentally.

My only complaint is not so much the card system, but rather the secondary seal system associated with playing the right variety of ‘Oops, all Balance Effect’ cards.

Applying and utilizing the full Astrodyne benefit is simply not as rewarding for the effort and RNG required to obtain all three different seals. The self DPS increase is a drop in the bucket with ‘Fall Malefic’ having the lowest offensive GCD spell potency across all healer jobs. As for the +5% Healing potency, the remaining healer jobs can apply the same effect but with higher bonus and not have to rely on RNG drawing and redrawing three different cards to apply. Neutral Sect alone completely renders the passive healing bonus moot.

I am glad that as of EW, ‘Divination’ is no longer tied to drawing three different seals for best results, but now there really is no benefit to the seal system except if you are in a pinch for MP or if you have at least two-of-a-kind to use for marginally shorter GCDs during raid buff windows.

Now is when I’ll make a mental note of “careful what you wish for” as we await AST likely card and seal system redesign for the upcoming Dawntrail expansion.

[eldritchAvatar]

As an AST main ride or die, this is what I enjoy & am looking for.

The Theme
I like their association with time, space, fate, and all sorts of celestial stuff. The visuals are all some sort of artist's revelation of astrophysics. I like the glitter and glam, it's the most visually appealing class in my honest opinion. It has the history and world building of the class imbued in the appearance of the abilities. It's full of cosmic looking animations and that's my aesthetic forever.

The Gameplay

Current version of AST

Delayed Activation!!
I like how, consistent with the time motif, they have certain abilities that you can set up in advance to activate or leave until the duration expires. It is perhaps my favorite aspect of playing this class. I would love for AST to be the time bomb healer. In this group you have:

1. The ICONIC Heal Bomb: Earthly Star
2. The Healer Down Insurance Policy: Horoscope
3. The "What Damage?" button: Macrocosmos

You wouldn't believe how often these have come in clutch. It's like having a bomb that heals. I think the mechanic is so unique and satisfying because it feels very strategic and prudent. This is thematically consistent because you have to predict situations, part of me is like I ~ called it! Sometimes the spell just naturally goes off when I need it. I would absolutely LOVE more of this.

I think something that'd be cool would be echo effects added to spells. Something that happens again 5-10 seconds later without cast time. Stuff that explodes later. You give me more things to emphasize delayed activation of heals or damage and I'd lick it off the ground. It would fill a unique strategic niche as something to make use of empty time to consolidate cast time in a before period, or during more idle moments, to useful maneuvers that can allow for more urgent repositioning while also healing. There is so much possibility here.

Past Versions of AST

Celestial intersection and time dilation used to increase the duration of buffs and regens for like 10 extra seconds. That was JUICY. I MISS that so much. I would be happy if that were to be introduced as an offensive mechanic. Say if it were somehow tied in to uses of malefic or gravity. A proc based partial buff refresh would keep things lively.

Things that I think need improvement:

Haste AKA Spell Speed/Skill Speed I wish it affected DoT & HoT tick rate.

I miss CC. Nowadays it's not used as much, which sucks because it used to be a vital part of kiting and survivability. A moment's reprieve from an onslaught. But tanks take all the aggro these days and if they die, too bad you're F***ed, start over. Emergency versatility is part of adventuring, right? NOPE it's barely a thing. Wouldn't wanna subtract from the identity of other classes after all. No slows, or roots, or stuns, or knockbacks, or stops, just eating hits.

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

What do you like about it?

At the moment ast is my favourite healing job for just how busy it is. The healing feels most of the time nice.


What do you dislike about it?

Unnecessarily simplified minor arcana. Damage too low. Few of the actions are weirdly still on the kit.

What would you like changed about it?

Kind of missing nocturnal sect. More variety to the minor arcana cards so I might care what I draw.
--

All in all good job. I'm a bit scared of the rework and how much Square is changing the job. The cards must stay just change what they do!

[Shurrikhan]

Likes

• Novel non-healing agency.
• Feels at least a bit busier than the rest, making it (at lower levels, especially) a bit less painful to play in content that isn't especially healing intense and/or has already been mapped out.
• Rewards knowledge and tracking of (expected/optimal and actual/likely) party actions.

Dislikes

• Especially filler-spammy.
• Redraw being only 1 attempt per Draw, instead of having multiple charges, unnecessarily limits agency.
• The Card system itself feels underwhelming and underutilized.
• Some actions (e.g., Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, Exaltation) feel pretty uninteresting or just barely too redundant. I wouldn't want to outright trim any of them, but I'd gladly replace for something better.
• More generally: AST feels a bit bloated with separate actions where fewer actions, used more integrally/interactively, could have offered more enjoyable gameplay (related to the two prior comments).

Desired Changes

• One or two more considerations/optimizations available to AST's offensive loop, ideally without requiring any new buttons.
• Replace the buttons currently spent on some of the, imo, least interesting actions with a rebalanced and repolished version of the Stormblood-era Cards system that carries over the Seal system in order to further incentivize the use of situational cards (Bole, Ewer, etc.).
• Gamewide: MP actually mattering due to abilities variably costing MP, accordant revisions to GCD MP costs and greater availability of certain weaker oGCD actions to help take up slack, MP ticking per GCD and at a higher amount but with Lucid Dreaming pruned, and MP no longer being so bimodal (rather than enough MP to cast X or not enough to cast X at all)... and Healers' Maim and Mend trait removed (attack potencies increased directly, instead of relying on its +30% damage and healing buff) so that they'd actually have to GCD heal sometimes.

[Connor]

What you like
- Supporting party with cards
- Flashy heal aesthetics
- Delay / Time theme for healing gives it’s healing kit a bit more flavour than the other jobs
- Healing skills are interesting in that they require forward thinking, like placing Earthly Star to time the second detonation with an AoE, or accounting for phases with high / persistent damage with Macrocosmos

What you dislike
- Supporting party with cards ends up being boring because they’re all the same card
- Divination is just there lol, it’s one of those 120s cool downs that may well be a passive trait
- No interactions with buffs, i.e duration extension, consume buff for X effect, potency scaling based on buffs applied etc
- Cards are oGCD which means ultimately they’re just something you slot between Malefic casts and not an actually interesting aspect of the job.
- Astrodyne. A job designed to fulfill the ‘support’ role should not have their sole job mechanic revolve around personal dps , it’s so weird lol


What you want to see changed
- Cards having varied and interesting Support effects. In an ideal world cards would be GCDs with no cool-down but I don’t imagine that would ever actually happen.
- I think making cards AoE by default like PvP would facilitate giving them varied effects, as you’d no longer have to play favourites with cards.
- Divination to feel less like it’s an auto-buff
- Remove or Adjust Astrodyne, maybe make it instead give it’s effects based on buffs applies to the party
- Lord and Lady changed to give damage increase to melee or ranged respectively, so Astrologians can always contribute to dps regardless of draw luck (assuming cards have differing effects)
- Disable, deals damage over time and reduces enemy strength by 10%. Gives Astrologian another damage spell whilst still feeding into the ‘support’ role concept
- Stella, single-target attack that deals less damage to the enemy than Malefic but inflicts Slow. It’s weird that the Time Mages of FFXIV can’t use Slow lol (or Haste)

[Renathras]

[*]Some actions (e.g., Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, Exaltation) feel pretty uninteresting or just barely too redundant. I wouldn't want to outright trim any of them, but I'd gladly replace for something better.

I've refrained from commenting in these threads, because I really just want them to be collections of what people think, but I really want to ask about this one.

How do you find those abilities uninteresting?

Neutral Sect is, to me, one of the most powerful and most interesting abilities in the game because of how it works by altering some of your GCDs and giving you distinct functionality. It would be akin to if a DPS like MNK or DRG had an ability that let them be an off-tank or off-caster for 20 seconds or so. It basically lets AST be an "off-barrier healer", and it's one of AST's coolest abilities to me.

Exaltation is a better Taurochole, and I like how it works and what it does a lot, especially when considering it doesn't require being used on a tank but can be used on anyone you need to survive a hit. It also doesn't work like any other ability in the kit.

Intersection I'm a bit more mixed on - the barrier is smaller than Benison and the heal much smaller than Dignity - but I feel like being a hybrid barrier/heal makes it interesting. Much more interesting than stuff like Celestial Opposition or Essential Dignity itself.

And Horoscope feels interesting to me as a party heal that can be stocked for use at the most opportune time. It's a far more interesting variation on Plenary (though perhaps that's not saying much...), and it can be used to first heal (with one of the Helioses) then stock the second heal for after a following attack with a 30 second window to do so. It's like Earthly Star but with more direct involvement and even more control. And like Neutral Sect, it effectively modifies GCD heals.

In general, I like stuff like that (I like things like Emergency Tactics because they give you different ways to use various tools), and so Neutral and Horoscope I find very interesting.

.

So I'm not being antagonistic or saying you're wrong, I'm just curious why you find what I feel are some of the most interesting buttons AST has to be "uninteresting". Or, rather, trying to understand what you find uninteresting about them. Especially when AST has abilities like Celestial Opposition and Essential Dignity which are much less interesting to me (not uninteresting - I find them to be interesting, too - just LESS so.)

[ASkellington]

I've refrained from commenting in these threads, because I really just want them to be collections of what people think, but I really want to ask about this one.

How do you find those abilities uninteresting?

Not the same person but here's why I personally don't:

Celestial Intersection stopped being interesting when Nocturnal Sect was removed. Its a shield now. Hooray. It doesn't interact with any other part of AST's kit (Neutral/Synastry) and got straight up replaced by a better and more thematic version of itself in EW (Exaltation). I personally would not mind for its removal. Its quite literally Divine Bension now. I'd rather it not be.

Neutral Sect not only invalidates AST lore (having to chose between each Sect as befits the job by combining the two) they also didn't think to make it work on the oGCDs that Nocturnal Sect changed once the sect was removed. Nocturnal worked on Celestial Intersection by making it a HoT instead of a shield (since all your buttons would be shields). Celestial Opposition would also be a shield. Collective Unconciousness also worked differently but the differences were so miniscule to me that it felt unchanged (it'd have made sense if Diurnal was HoT only and Noct was Mit only but CU ended up having both in both stances so... ???) And yet Neutral doesn't work in this way. Neutral I'm just infuriated by. Of the abilities I'd remove from AST in a heart beat this is first in line after Undraw and Astrodyne. I'd rather have a stance dancer healer than this cop out of an ability.


I want to like Horoscope but it feels like a wasted slot on my bars. I can run most content without it. Anything I would use it for Macrocosmos, Earthly Star, Collective and Opposition are right there. I'd find the skill more interesting if, like Synastry, it worked with more than just 2 buttons on my kit that I rarely use outside this one instance.

Exaltation I like, but I can see why it feels redundant (see Celestial Intersection). We don't need both. And of the two, I'd rather have this one (please for the love of Nymeia keep it at 60 seconds and no charges).

[Supersnow845]

Not the same person but here's why I personally don't:

Celestial Intersection stopped being interesting when Nocturnal Sect was removed. Its a shield now. Hooray. It doesn't interact with any other part of AST's kit (Neutral/Synastry) and got straight up replaced by a better and more thematic version of itself in EW (Exaltation). I personally would not mind for its removal. Its quite literally Divine Bension now. I'd rather it not be.

Neutral Sect not only invalidates AST lore (having to chose between each Sect as befits the job by combining the two) they also didn't think to make it work on the oGCDs that Nocturnal Sect changed once the sect was removed. Nocturnal worked on Celestial Intersection by making it a HoT instead of a shield (since all your buttons would be shields). Celestial Opposition would also be a shield. Collective Unconciousness also worked differently but the differences were so miniscule to me that it felt unchanged (it'd have made sense if Diurnal was HoT only and Noct was Mit only but CU ended up having both in both stances so... ???) And yet Neutral doesn't work in this way. Neutral I'm just infuriated by. Of the abilities I'd remove from AST in a heart beat this is first in line after Undraw and Astrodyne. I'd rather have a stance dancer healer than this cop out of an ability.


I want to like Horoscope but it feels like a wasted slot on my bars. I can run most content without it. Anything I would use it for Macrocosmos, Earthly Star, Collective and Opposition are right there. I'd find the skill more interesting if, like Synastry, it worked with more than just 2 buttons on my kit that I rarely use outside this one instance.

Exaltation I like, but I can see why it feels redundant (see Celestial Intersection). We don't need both. And of the two, I'd rather have this one (please for the love of Nymeia keep it at 60 seconds and no charges).

Honestly while it would further invalidate WHM in mitigationwalker I agree when when nocturnal was deleted they should have changed neutral to affect oGCD’s rather than GCD’s or even do like a charge system like new thin air where neutral affects the next eligible oGCD

Neutral makes no sense at all anymore but if they insist on keeping it I would much prefer it affect oGCD’s, I also agree exaltation should just supersede celestial intersection

[Renathras]

...

Hm...not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to clarify:

It sounds like you are (jaded?) strongly opposed to Neutral Sect not because it's a bad ability itself, but because you're upset about what AST used to be vs what it now is and are angry at the ability as almost sorta mocking that in some way?

For lack of a better way to put it, that is.