The changes to Astrologian are upsetting

[PercibelTheren]

Every single fight in the second tier of this expansion requires heavy use of healing ogcd's. If you are using your GCD's to heal the tanks then ofcourse you're not going to need your ogcd's as much because you are overhealing the content... you can and should handle about 90% of single target healing requirements with healing ogcd's and not a regen or aspected benefic.

But just to give you some solid examples, proto-carbuncle had some heavy to heal single target mechanics, so did p8s phase 1 and phase 2. so did p7s. But Yeah, if you're stopping dps to single target heal GCD then you are invalidating the use-cases for your abilities. GCD heals are for when you have nothing else left to press.

Alright, then I don't play optimally. That was, however, not my point. My point is that this whole "heavy single target damage" could be solved with pressing ONE button. If not Aspected Benefic, then Essential Dignity. No change. Still not a whole lot of big single target healing going on anywhere.

[Aravell]

Yeah I uh... Think this guy just had really shit tanks and was gaslit into thinking single target healing is necessary bc his tanks wouldn't do their job. The sage did more healing than me, but like... the amount of GCD and oGCD casts we had to do was quite low. And the amount that were *actually* needed, and not just padding numbers... no idea. Definitely less than the total.

So I finally have time to check in detail:

WAR DTPS 2977 STHPS 1345 (no mit) 1803 (mit)
DRK DTPS 2302 STHPS 817 (no mit) 1940 (mit)

My HPS on WAR with AoE 1499
My HPS on WAR ST only 409 (126 minus Embrace/Seraphic Veil)
My HPS on DRK with AoE 1254
My HPS on DRK ST only 238 (56 minus Embrace/Seraphic Veil)

WHM HPS on WAR with AoE 1163
WHM HPS on WAR ST only 321
WHM HPS on DRK with AoE 1204
WHM HPS on DRK ST only 439

My top heals on tanks including AoE:
WAR: 1. Embrace 2. Excog 3. Soil
DRK: 1. Soil 2. Dawn 3. Embrace

WHM top heals on tanks including AoE:
WAR: 1. Rapture 2. Asylum 3. Assize
DRK: 1. Rapture 2. Assize 3. Aquaveil

Look how little single target healing we have to do on week 1, look how much the tanks can cover themselves for. They'd have to massively increase the damage over Abyssos to actually use all the new tools they shoved into our kit in DT.

[Loggos]

Even as a casual player I can say I do not want these changes. They do not make my experiences more fun.

What I loved about AST was that I had something to do outside of healing. Even though it's not much, playing my cards, having to use half a braincell to assess whether it goes to a mage or phys DD, perhaps pressing another button to change it, selecting a party member, playing the card and getting do press astrodyne as a mini reward (even if it's just for morale) was a nice break from the single button spam. It felt like a makeshift dps rotation of sorts because I would do something else than pressing 1 to contribute to the damage.
You could also make it your personal challenge to get perfect astrodyne even though it's not needed to spice up your time with some fun little shenanigans. (Yeah I know how desperate it sounds to call this fun...)

This honestly made the role more exciting than healers with more damage because at least in terms of pressing buttons it was more engaging.

It's a terribly low bar, I know.

It wasn't super deep. I have never played SB or HW ast so I'm sure that little experience I have pales in comparison but the little bit dynamic game play that was left still kept me entertained enough to main the job.

I know this is not a hardcore gamer's experience and I don't have the indepth knowledge of a raider. But since these changes are also there to get more casuals to try out healing I thought this kind of feedback could still be helpful.

So here is at least one casual that's very bummed out and I'll probably switch to maining my other healer, PLD. At least I get to press 3 buttons now. :/
(Sorry but I needed to be cynical for a second because man, I really don't like this.)

[Marxam]

Should have kept SB cards but change effects ex:

Draw - changes to play when card drawn
-Balance/Arrow = crit 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; increased duration
-Bole/Spear = mitigation 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; increased potency, reduced duration
-Spire/Ewer = direct crit 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; reduced potency, aoe effect

Royal Road = removes currently drawn card. Applies effect of RR to next drawn card.

Minor Arcana = removes drawn card, MA changes to lady/lord
-Lady = aoe hot
-Lord = aoe heal

Celestial Draw = allows you to choose which card you want. Action rotates through each card as each button is pressed starting with Balance, Bole, Arrow, Spear, Ewer, Spire, continuously while active. First drawn card is random but will always go through the list in the same order.

This emulates SB cards while minimizing the RNG. CD is effectively a searcher allowing you to look for the card you want in your deck. MA replaces undraw and prevents you from messing up a desired effect while getting a heal. RR is another way of removing a card while still gaining positive effect for the next drawn card. Draw and Play share the same button.

Regardless of my copium AST is proof of wasted resources. Spending so much time reworking a job every expansion, only to gut it again means that they never have a foundation to build on. It's going on five expansion with AST and we still don't have a skill that lets you set cards on the field face up for a ground aoe effect of said card, or placing a card face down, only to flip face up (after timer expires) for an aoe effect of that card with its max potency. Underwhelming to say the least.

[Valmaxian]

Should have kept SB cards but change effects ex:

Draw - changes to play when card drawn
-Balance/Arrow = crit 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; increased duration
-Bole/Spear = mitigation 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; increased potency, reduced duration
-Spire/Ewer = direct crit 10% or 5% depending on if melee or ranged respectively, RR effect; reduced potency, aoe effect

Royal Road = removes currently drawn card. Applies effect of RR to next drawn card.

Minor Arcana = removes drawn card, MA changes to lady/lord
-Lady = aoe hot
-Lord = aoe heal

Celestial Draw = allows you to choose which card you want. Action rotates through each card as each button is pressed starting with Balance, Bole, Arrow, Spear, Ewer, Spire, continuously while active. First drawn card is random but will always go through the list in the same order.

This emulates SB cards while minimizing the RNG. CD is effectively a searcher allowing you to look for the card you want in your deck. MA replaces undraw and prevents you from messing up a desired effect while getting a heal. RR is another way of removing a card while still gaining positive effect for the next drawn card. Draw and Play share the same button.

Regardless of my copium AST is proof of wasted resources. Spending so much time reworking a job every expansion, only to gut it again means that they never have a foundation to build on. It's going on five expansion with AST and we still don't have a skill that lets you set cards on the field face up for a ground aoe effect of said card, or placing a card face down, only to flip face up (after timer expires) for an aoe effect of that card with its max potency. Underwhelming to say the least.

Oooooh….I *love* your Celestial Draw idea - it would be super cool to get to choose a specific card.

It’s just my lil’ ol’ opinion but I feel like losing Royal Road was the biggest loss our job has experienced. That FEELING of passing out an AoE buff that you drew on pure chance is incredible…That to me made the RNG worth it AND gave every card value.

[Ultran]

The most upseeting part of it is: Where is our mana going to come from? If they leave it as it is we seem to be in a 2000 Mana per Minute negative.

[PriklyMena]

These new AST changes are terrible, our healing kit with 3 Essential Dignities, 2 Celestial Intersections, Exaltation, and Synastry are MORE than enough for single target mitigation and heals. Together with massive tank buffs, there is very little use for any more healing up, 10% mit, and whatever else these cards are giving that are not DPS cards. Because dear god, as a AST I'm about to have 6 single target mit/heal/buffs now?

Also how did we walk a decade back in game design from dealing cards with 1 SINGLE BUTTON to 4 DIFFERENT PLAYS (Play 1,2,3, and Minor Arcana). What is going on, did we not agree we need LESS button bloat not more? And please don't compare the 4 Draws to Undraw, Redraw, Astrodyne, etc... Replacing 4 different skills with 4 skills that does the same thing is 10 steps back from where we were and is incredibly clunky on the hotbar and gameplay.

Similarly to what others have brought up, we were given mana changes to Astrodyne and Draw in order to FIX our mana issues. Now we only have Lucid Dreaming + Draw every 60 secs to regen mana? Do the AST devs not play the game or are they not learning from their past mistakes. (similarly to other classes, GNB having a 800/100/1200 potency burst and SMN having a 1600 potency skill without guaranteed crit or direct hit, did we not agree with the Samurai changes this is bad game design?)

It's so infuritating to see all these changes for AST. I honestly wouldn't care about the complexity of the class if any of these game design changes make sense, but none of it does. These changes on top of healer homogenization and boring gameplay is the real dealbreaker at this point.

[Dagny]

I wish SE would be more willing to commit to their job vision that was originally for AST. I'm fine with Oracle and Sun Sign, but cards really need another pass through. As it stands, I feel like they have focused too much on those that complain about the RNG element of the class, when in reality, that was always the vision behind AST. You had an RNG element to it, and while luck was involved thanks to Balance being the best card far and away, you could get pretty creative with how to use cards sometimes and it felt satisfying when something funky paid off.

I've been playing AST at a savage level off and on since it's release in HW and while I agree that cards (mostly) as they were through HW/SB would not be tenable today, I do think that it would be beneficial to go look back at cards as they were originally and try to find some ways that they could incorporate their original 'spirit'. I am glad cards have a variety of effects now, but I am not excited about what those effects are, nor that they are on a set rotation. I know some of these options below would probably not be possible for a variety of reasons, or have already been discussed...I'm just adding my two cents here, and hoping Yoshi-P is serious when he said 'we'll address job identity in 8.0'. Some suggestions I have thought of, while keeping in mind some things that the dev team will probably not budge on (AOE cards):

- Bring back RNG for cards while also giving one way to manipulate the RNG. The easiest way to do this would be Redraw, but I think Royal Road could also be an option, with a caveat: only the duration/potency buffing potential of the card should stay, cards cannot have an AOE option (I say this because I suspect this is a non-negotiable for SE). I would also suggest that this only could be done with every other card, and not every card, to add in an element of 'risk' and rewarding creative play.
- Get rid of a flat damage up card entirely. I think Crit/DH and SPS/SKS are the best options for replacements of this. While I acknowledge that Crit/DH would universally be the best card for most anyone, SPS/SKS would still have its niche uses among certain jobs and roles.
- Keep Bole as a flat damage decrease card, along with one of the other curing/defensive cards they've added. If I were to pick, I'd probably say the buff to healing received card (Arrow), I think that has the most potential for interesting play options, depending on how they judge 'healing' actions. Another shield/regen just isn't exciting to me. I do admit these are still not the most 'exciting' card actions, but I suspect that SE is super committed on having some cards having some sort of direct healing/mitigation element.
- As for the last two cards, I'd suggest looking at getting a little creative with the utility of them. One option I brainstormed was to have a movement speed increase card (and I see this was mentioned in the thread already), much like scholar's Expedient, but only for one party member. Another card option I considered would be a Time Dilation type card, where it could extend the duration of set buffs cast by the AST on one party member. Conservatively, I'd say it should only apply to healing like regens and shields, more liberally (and ideally), I would say it could extend the duration of an existing card applied, but it shouldn't extend the duration of certain abilities like Divination.

Yoshi-P has mentioned he is wanting to return to more unique responsibilities for tanks and other party members in battle content, so that's part of the reason I came up with a movement buff card. Being able to walk a little faster would be handy for these types of mechanics, like Panto2 in O11S for bard, if you want an existing (if dated) example. Having a card that could extend the duration of certain buffs would also let AST lean partially back into that 'Time Mage' fantasy that was originally part of its identity, along with Royal Road, if the dev team wanted to go with that instead of shuffle.

I really (naively) hope part of the 'working on battle content' promised for 7.0 is how the dev team approaches encounter design for healers at the higher level. If they are able to make healing more interesting, then the cards would have their uses, but I think there has been an over-reliance on them to help with healing that simply isn't needed at the moment.

[heynowjose]

i remember switching from white mage to astro the second it became available and that was the most fun I had as a healer. then the changes started and i dropped it and switched to sage. i still look at ast as my dream of one day getting back to those early days of of fishing for your cards to double the power of an AOE balance lol

[Silver-Strider]

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.