The changes to Astrologian are upsetting

[QuviSae]

I had to....process how I felt about these changes. I knew I didn't like them, but I couldn't understand why that was. Now that I've let it soak in, I have opinions.

I remember chugging my way through post-arr (pre trimdown) just because I was SO excited to play astrologian. It's a space healer, what more could I want?! That's the problem, you literally don't need a healer for most stuff now. TOP was a huge sign of this. I admit, I didn't like EW's astro, double weaving felt really really bad especially when drawing and playing are separate. People have been voicing their opinions on the healer watering down since SHB's media tour. The only "interesting" thing astro gets in DT is....a post-div button. What really gets me is you know the person redesigning the class doesn't know what they're doing because the role thing is still in the cards. Not only are we losing the bare minimum of the identity we had, but we're going to lose the beautiful animations of draw and redraw. I like Sleeve's animation, but this is an imposter. I wouldn't mind the buff-slut cards from SHB if they just....did away with the seal on div system. I understand the randomness of the seals for astrodyne sucked, but they're the ones that dropped sleeve draw, a simple fix to THAT specific issue.

I LOVE playing healers, healing in late HW into base stormblood was one of the best parts! I'll never forget getting the burn and having to redo it over a few times. I am absolutely heartbroken with these changes and the lack of listening unlike other jobs. Dragoon players complain about not being able to use their big buttons in early burst? Here you don't have eye of the dragon anymore! Black mages don't care for surecast/thunder's current system? Here's a light rework! ((though nobody liked surecast.)) Their lack of listening to job changes is bleeding into summoner too! Why on EARTH does it have a fat aoe heal for solar bahamut???

I've REALLY sat on it, but I've made the hard choice not to play astro for dawntrail in hopes it'll help a bigger issue. It hurts because I LOVE astro! It's everything I want in a RPG role. These card changes mixed with....the healer issue is.....yeah.

I really wish they would just listen to healer feedback but the past 5 years has made it obvious they don't.

[Ryskim]

HW AST still remains the best version of it for me. I miss time dilation and the nocturnal/diurnal system. Everything that came after is just... pointless. They keep dumbing the job down again and again.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Just want to link this article

It's an interview with Yoshi-P about job ideas that they ultimately abandoned when making new jobs. I find this part particularly hilariously sad.

“On the other hand, we could look at the example of Time Mage,” Yoshida says. “This is a job we had considered previously, but that is known for using time-related abilities such as Haste to speed up the party or Stop to stop time.” These work fantastically in the turn-based and Active Time Battle systems of past games, he remarks. “However, in an MMORPG, we are not able to stop time. And [if it could] it would kind of overpower the job. And what would be the point of a Time Mage that could not manipulate time? So we do place some importance on maintaining the legacy from the Final Fantasy franchise – but now we have fewer jobs that we can work with. So I think moving forward, we will have more original jobs for Final Fantasy 14."

Wasn't this just old AST? Stunning Enemies with Oppression + extending buffs with Time Dilation and Royal Road. No wonder AST keeps getting screwed over since even Yoshi-P is out of touch with how the job used to be themed.

AST was/is a compromised version of Time Mage (combined with Gambler), the same way Sage is a compromised version of Chemist (combined with Sage).

In a better game that knew what it was doing, AST could still have a few more time manipulation skills that only affected its own skills or maybe a single party member's. As it stands, it still is a time mage, if only in flavor, for using time-space magic like gravity and light speed.

But no, the game will never have a Time Mage proper, and if it ever got to a point where it could, Astrologian is already that job fantasy and would likely receive the time magic stuff.

[ThorneDynasty]

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

[SeverianLyonesse]

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

There's Chemist in the names of the skills, but that's about it. What we mostly have is confirmation from the devs that it started as a chemist job and the design was pushed into Sage because chemist as a concept is (and I am inferring the reasons here) (a) too variable and (b) lacking potent weapon designs.

And the design of the job does still retain a lot of Sage-ish elements.

1. Healing and damage magick? It's the healer that plays with damage/healing conversion.
2. The costume very much resembles the original Sage, other than the headgear.
3. The weapon is basically four crystals of light: i.e. the prerequisite to unlock the Sage job in FFIII.
4. The addersting/addersgall and milpreves, as well as the default noulith shape, in my opinion feel like they could have been referencing the "fang" magical items from FFII/FFIII.

You can definitely see some sort of logical throughput of Sage being based on the FFIII version, but with the heavy condition of not using actual BLM or WHM to prevent it conceptually overlapping with RDM.

[Ramiee]

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

Cus that's meant to be Scholar. Really classical sage was just a better red mage this new sage is really it's own thing a sort of technomancer healer.

[HappyHubris]

First CBU3 rework? They sand off everything interesting about the class until it's a reskin.

[Wildheaven182]

I'm happy to watch astrodyne die. The cards is a start but that's a lot of play buttons. But really Astro is just white mage with a card mini game. Now the mini game has been pretty reduced so it just seems like white mage if you don't consider the cards. I see another card rework.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

What's really priceless is they sort of hyped this to be a huge change, considering it was first promised to be a 6.3 change but pushed back to 7.0. They made it sort of like a big deal only for... ... ... lol.

Come I clap for you, whoever green lighted these changes.

[Zaytex]

What's really priceless is they sort of hyped this to be a huge change, considering it was first promised to be a 6.3 change but pushed back to 7.0. They made it sort of like a big deal only for... ... ... lol.

Come I clap for you, whoever green lighted these changes.

Dude they needed over a year to come up with these fantastic cards with effects I've never seen people... not exaltation, not divine benison, not aspected benefit and not krasis are definitely fresh and needed time in the oven