The Astrologian Changes Are Crazy

[@RinBanana]

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[@empressmoni5381]

there is actually a secret larger astro that draws a card each expansion drop that determines how the astro we play is like

[@cosineaudio]

Two pints of lager and a 6-card booster pack please

[@tobialsaif3721]

Over the years, it felt like Astro went from a mystical fortune teller that can control time to a teenager obsessed with zodiac signs.

[@Tajih]

Well yeah, they started stripping a lot of the job's time magic themes away in ShB. There's AST job quests that still reference time magic spells that don't exist. They went all in on the divination magic

[@Cervarius_K]

@@Tajih Man... the WHM quests also talk about the WHM having access to magic that doesn't exist. I hate that they keep stripping things down to "streamline" it and killing the game's entire identity.

[@SamoyedSagas]

@@Cervarius_K Touch grass jfc

[@sammicopor]

​@@Cervarius_K The games identity is improvement, stop hinging on the past just because you have a bizarre obsession with it. Focus on the present, this game is MUCH better than 1.0 be grateful for that

[@Shockpoint]

give me Time Dilation back PLEASE

[@grip7777]

I'm turbo-casual in ffxiv but have played other mmos more seriously and I don't think ffxiv appreciates how much of this game is cleared before you see any talk of a job not being good enough to clear content on. Not being able to make a really bad mistake in choosing a main is honestly kind of mind-blowing to me and what scares me when something is really strong is the threat to that concept. You may ask me, as a casual, why it matters to me specificly. Because that stuff spreads through the entire game. In WoW there is stronger classes and weaker ones depending on the patch and I have seen people in low level dungeons in WoW complain about peoples classes and their gear when the dungeon is easily doable with the setup on hand, this is because the best players set the meta and the weaker players follow. If the best players play a variety of jobs/classes, then the weaker players will most likely do so as well. What is important is not strength, it's perception.

[@ethangraner7102]

Beautifully said

[@sammicopor]

Your comment deserves to be pinned. I dont play mmo to feel like im trying to copy other people, I play it how I want.

[@riddert4966]

I laugh when for example people say DRK is 'bad'. FFXIV players really don't know what it's like to play a weak class/job. I play both FFXIV and WoW semi-hardcore (cleared TOP and top 1% in m+ every season) and in FFXIV i'm a one trick pony because atleast in this game you can just play whatever you like. Meanwhile in WoW I need to maintain 6 chars to stay in the top 1% without wanting to kill myself.

[@JaeTsunFFXIV]

Astro being proactive while White Mage being reactive is a distinction between the two that I thought would be mentioned more, it's (imo) one of the biggest disparities between the two regen healers. Another thing that wasn't talked about too much is just how much more effort it takes to extract all the power of Astro while playing vs. the ease of use of White Mage, which I also think is fine in their current forms. Astro played at the top percentile should be stronger than WHM because the skill floor of WHM is just that much higher.

[@notmandy]

while I agree, it is a higher ceiling, of course it should be more rewarding, but a higher ceiling also should come with a higher floor but thats not the case right now being a bottom tier AST is still better than being a bottom tier WHM. In fact, if you have no hands, it is better to play AST than any other healer right now. And that just doesnt make any sense.

[@JaeTsunFFXIV]

@@notmandy Not sure I agree honestly, I think doing the bare minimum on WHM is far far easier (or at least simpler for the average player) than it is to do the same minimum as AST. Would be interesting to look into the actual logs and stats though.

[@blasagna1892]

i think youre trying to say that the skill floor of whm is lower (easier to start), as well as the skill ceiling being lower too (easier to maximize). in savage and such whm and all healers are played proactively too, youll start planning out when to use your cooldowns anyway. also ast having so many stacks of ED, celestial intersection, neutral sect, etc. make it have pretty strong on demand heals as well, making it "reactive", so i dont think that distinction actually exists.

[@DrCle]

Buffing Div to 20s and having less focus on card optimization does that, it’s kinda more braindead now.

[@kiretan8599]

While whm is simpler, wouldnt ast be easier to play due to its insane kit? Multiple ogcds, on demand mitigation, 2 charges of lightspeed (super fucking op), insane carrying power with neutral sect, increase rdps with div and cards. It’s just overall easier to play than whm. Especially with the new changes to the card system, you basically just ignore the dps cards until the 2 min window. With whm you have to waste lillies if you didn’t plan them properly, if someone forgets to mitigate, you can’t really compensate as your temperance is locked behind 2 minutes, you have to plan your cooldowns more carefully compared to AST, which can just pop cooldowns since you have so many.

[@Chris_Rez]

As a AST player since Stormblood i can say that AST feels really good to play rightnow. I was begging for the 2 charges on Lightspeed ever since i did DSR tho they could have left it on 90 sec. It's wide range of healing tools is what keeps me engaged with the class. A big reason why i dont like playing WHM is because of the low APM while having the one size fits all button that are your lillys. While yes ASTs tool kit on paper is overpowered, it is the most healthy version of something being overpowered i have seen in a while. Damage can always be adjusted so i dont worry to much about it. Also to throw a random thought about Dark Knight into the ring, i would love it if they would make Dark Mind and Dark Missonary be half effektiv against physical damage similar to addle and feint.

[@Lordwhizzkid]

My current thoughts on Astro are: It is incredibly strong but my god is the card system just completely soulless now. And it is a gap that was very much missing in Astro's playstyle at the start of Dawntrail since they added very little. But the lightspeed changes gave it that little bit of job fantasy again which is fantastic, although the way they've done it is absolutely insanely broken. I am very sad that the class no longer has that focus on card play because it is something I did very much love, but I cannot deny that the class is incredibly strong right now and is very worthy to play. As for the answer to your question? Yes, absolutely should fun be prioritised when it comes to job design. Limitations are okay, but how those limitations work need to be very careful. For example WHM and SCH, WHM's Lillies are a solid starting system but absolutely need a deeper dive so the system can become more complex, while still remaining a GCD focused tool. And SCH feels like 3 separate classes cobbled together that barely function but is still chosen because it offers up the absolute best possible shielding in the game. I still believe that SCH as a class needs a full rework because Fairie Gauge is used by nothing but 1 skill, and while Energy Drain is a damage gain it still feels incredibly tragic to use because of how small damage it is.

[@iPlayOnSpica]

As a SCH main, I really like the current AST. It only really has two flaws, if you can call them that, but in most high level content, you have so much healing that the healing/mit cards are easy to forget to use and I'll just use the next Draw without full utilization of the non-dps cards... and I STILL won't need to gcd heal. The other is Synastry, which is extremely niche because it requires gcd single healing to have any benefit, and it's therefore a lower priority to use than the four healing/mit cards and overall the lowest priority skill to use at all. I think because I'm a SCH main, I don't care as much about the non-dps cards generally being on the boring side because of the more important heals already available. However, I love those cards in low level sync, especially Stone Vigil in mentor roulette where AST is the uncontested best healer.

[@ShroomPig]

it's still really silly to me that whenever i want to queue up for roulettes, or any below 80 content at all, i'm picking AST purely because they are far and beyond better than WHM at low level content in terms of things to do, healing capabilities, movement, and fun. 1 measly dash every minute isn't a whole lot in level 70 content, and it can get the job done, but it's boring and not as flexible as lightspeed GCD spam if you need to heal/raise people fast in alliance raids and stuff.

[@SierenGreenwalt-wp3ub]

In a meta where Pictomancer is a job that exists, I think Astrologian is perfectly fine. I personally do not think the job needs any changes at all. Not even to the cards, tbh.

[@asatowolfe]

Lightspeed is definitely insane right now, but this tier, due to no Astrodyne boosting recast timers, Lightspeed by itself does not speed up the rotation whatsoever. Lightspeed alone is not pumping out higher DPS. But the fact that this tier requires a lot of movement, which makes casting very difficult in some variations of mechanics; Lightspeed is wild and is making the job far more viable than some of the other healers for full uptime. You figure Sage requires getting Toxikon stacks stored and White Mage needs Lilies saved for DPS positive movement. They're much more limited in what they can do, or are having to use GCD heals more to make the movement possible. Astro sorta trivializes movement now since one charge can be used for bursts, while the other is used for movement intense phases. I love the change, but it's definitely not what I expected to happen. Lol

[@AdamKafei]

When I saw the Lightspeed changes I wondered if the devs were insane, then I took it into a dungeon and was spamming gravity on pulls and the answer is yes, they ARE insane!

[@freyafanboy]

This is coming from someone who Dawntrail will be the first expansion I actually will be doing actual endgame in cuz I started while Endwalker was on the last few months of its life. I hated Astro in endwalker, there was just too much to juggle for me and I would always forget to do my cards cuz I was so much more focused on just trying to keep people alive that I wouldn't use most of my Kit, with these changes tho I find Astro a lot more fun now. It's making me actually reconsider my main healer choice of white mage now (which I started with) and I wont lie, its cuz of just how strong Astro feels. And I know there are Astro mains who are sad that the card system feels soulless, if anything it made the class feel more.....welcoming to me cuz I will admit I'm someone who doesn't have the quick reflexes and thinking that would make the older system more entertaining. Overall tho, Astro is a lot of fun to me and I really like it.

[@jamesvonderhaar2553]

FFXIV desperately needs more diversity in class design, not less. Changing DRK to be in line with the other tank classes would only further FFXIV’s classes coalescing into a featureless blob. Offset their disadvantage with a power boost somewhere else on their kit.

[@catfood4142]

Healer damage is a little unbalanced, I might have bias here but I think Sage should do a little bit more

[@taleril5815]

I've been playing AST lately myself, and I feel that it is strong. I'm glad to see a high-end conent perspective here.

[@MugenAeternum]

I appreciate that AST is halfway back to where it started. It's fun again

[@Argalium]

as someone who was a whm main for the majority of my time playing ffxiv, i will be honest in saying that the disparity in the amount of changes astro underwent in comparison to whm in dawntrail felt really disheartening and influenced me to switch to scholar, a healer i previously had very little experience in using practically. its a hard problem to tackle, as astro in its current state as you said is very fun to play and feels incredibly rewarding to play well and nerfing it would more than likely ruin that, but at the same time whm as it is now feels like the lesser choice in many aspects by comparison. generally, i am very interested to see how square enix responds to this and the complaints regarding dark knight, and the issue of job homogeneity that have been brought about on the whole as a result

[@TheScreamingIdiot]

I decided to try healing this tier, and overall I've had a fun time. I decided on Whitemage because I just don't vibe with astro for a myriad of reasons. I think my biggest issue with Whitemage is that I MUST spend lillies even if there is nothing to heal, just to keep that clock rolling at to get the blood lilly. And a lot of Whitemage's heals feel really slow. There's a single ogcd heal and that, is a tool I "must" use for damage. I know I'm a small minority here being a European playing on NA servers. but my static has many many times died because I simply couldn't heal fast enough for a multi-hit stack marker for example. Many many times have we checked the.. funny calculator. And noticed the same thing, the heal came out after the damage that killed us already hit, no doubt this is a ping issue, but if I had an ogcd heal, that wasn't tied to damage output. And wasn't a heal over time like asylum, Whitemage would feel so much better to play. On the other hand, astro kinda has the opposite problem for me. There's 'too many' ogcd things to do. And while two stacks of lightspeed certainly makes weaving a lot possible. the amount of re-targeting between allies and the boss just, really doesn't suit me at all.

[@Fa1nTy]

It really feels like the dev team doesn't test shit doesn't it? They had to know, just by pontecy per minute data, that current AST is overpowered and would lead 4-7% in damage over hte other healers. This game is spreadsheet-able. They have calculator that tell you how much damage you will do, and you can program how much that will be increase by AST cards. Yet, here we are, AST is mobile, strong as hell, has the most broken healing tools in the game outside of critlo spread, and jobs like VPR and PCT are 2-3k ahead of other jobs while not being much harder to play (VPR being easier than most melees). It's either they are now "planning" for certain jobs to be overpowered for certain timeframes, or they are just entirely incompetent, which is sadly what I more lean towards. It's not like potecny adjustments need to take 8 months to figure out, or even more than a few weeks, but they refuse to ever do it on a regular basis.

[@Aranexorsist]

I’ve said it before and ill say it again, they NEED to make afflatus misery work like pitch perfect, 1 Lilly cost to use for 1 gcd instant cast for 330 potency, that can be powered up by up to 2 blood lilies for the full 1320 built up only by afflatus solace/rapture. You can also tack on heals that spend blood lilies but are weaker then their counterparts to get some returns on a bad call where maybe switftcast would’ve made more sense since you were low on Lilies

[@idgie534]

Astro was by far the healer I struggled with the most in Endwalker, and I had been kinda dreading levelling it to 100, but I started on it the other day and have actually been having a lot of fun. The DPS card system feels much, much better to use now, even if the mit/heal cards feel a bit pointless, and it's so fun to be able to pop Lightspeed almost whenever I want and just run around (or use it for mass scraping of sprouts off the floor in the ARR trials roulette always seems to give me).

[@K3fka_]

I do think Lightspeed changes are definitely the right idea, but they probably went a bit too far by reducing the cooldown AND giving it charges. Keeping the 90s cooldown while having 2 charges would have been enough, in my opinion. It's shocking to me that it took them this long to finally give us a buff to Lightspeed. But I think AST has a larger problem in its overall "flow" of playing cards. Honest question -- does anyone actually find it fun to draw a card and then just...not play it for an entire minute? In Endwalker you at least got to play one card outside of the burst because you'd generate 4 charges of Draw every 2 minutes, and that already wasn't great. I think AST is one of the jobs most negatively affected by the 2min burst meta in terms of how it feels to play. Being pigeon-holed into saving the cards for this brief window every 2 minutes sucks. Sure, you can play your non-dps cards basically whenever you want, but as you said yourself in the video, they really are quite boring so it doesn't really feel satisfying to use them. Another thing that I dislike is that Lord of Crowns is part of the starting hand. If they made the simple change of swapping Lord and Lady, that would relieve some of the pressure of the intense weaving during the 2min. Right now you have a VERY tight window in which to weave Lord of Crowns because it NEEDS to be played between Divination and your next Draw. Were they to simply swap them, you could instead just Draw and overwrite the Lady of Crowns you'd be holding (or you could use the Lady earlier if this is a burst window outside of the opener) and you would have a lot more freedom to choose when you weave the Lord. Overall there are still fundamental issues for me with AST in Dawntrail that I commented about on your video regarding the most recent Viper changes because what you were saying about them removing the decision-making from the job really resonated with me and my feelings about this iteration of AST. I won't rehash those same talking points again here, though. I'm just hoping that they can smooth out the experience of current AST for those who enjoy it, and I hope that the inevitable 8.0 rework of the job goes in a direction that makes the job more engaging for me to play.

[@K3fka_]

Oh, and the MP economy of AST feels very strange now. It was just plain bad in 7.0, and while the 7.05 changes addressed that, it's very "swingy" now. You get a big MP deficit and then recover a huge chunk of MP all at once when you draw. It's not necessarily bad, but it feels very odd compared to the other healers.

[@DracoMetorHD]

I started playing White Mage in SB until Promise where I swapped to SCH, and throughout I was constantly told how broken AST is and how its better than WHM, so back then I always lowkey disliked AST since I was kinda mad at myself I couldn't play this super big brain job to its full potential, just 5.3+ in some content, now in DT I've picked up AST as a main, I really really enjoy it (good riddance Astrodyne I hated you), feel like I'm making a huge impact on the raids I'm in and - I feel kind of sorry for WHM now: back then as WHM I'd at least think "wow at least I deal big deeps even though I don't have a broken kit" and now WHM has ended up as the lowest DPS healer in the game :( I think SE wants to reward complex healers like AST and SCH which is great! But at this point it's a bit unfair to WHM and I hope it gets buffed in some way, maybe a new ability (looking at collective) or more dmg, since I've never stopped loving it ever since my first EX Byakko

[@AetherStar]

Sure it is soulless, but has more utility value on main tanks that don't mitigate and being able to buff a scholar apreadlo

[@selesiars420]

one thing to add is that whm still has 25% more parses than AST, because WHM is far easier to pick up than last, so AST being better at skill-ceiling is ok. AST's massive big boy parses also require optimal play from the dps in your party in a parse group, because if your dps are performing mid, your cards aren't going to do as much. WHM does its 12.500 ish damage by itself, while AST needs a bit of a push from getting good cards and good damage from the team during raid buffs. (not something you can guarantee in pf) checking my own logs, I got a grand total of 2800 dps added to my number, just cause the other players in my team were performing well too. and I definitely struggled when I picked up AST to pull them big clutch/healing/triage moments out of my bum in panic moments, where I would have had zero issues to do the same on whm. (the complexity) Edit: it is the summoner to black mage scale: should black mage do more damage than summoner, because it is harder to play at the skill ceiling where you see this difference?

[@MrRamo14]

I think the changers are fair because AST has always been the healer that needed the weaving space. They were the first healer to get the 1.5 cast times and that combined w/Lightspeed gave them the identity of being a mobile healer and being able to use lightspeed to move kind of brings them back up into that identity in addition to the time mage stuff. I would have rather got something like the innate double cast from pvp since that feels super time mage-ey

[@machinaeZER0]

Double cast healer would be siiiick. I agree that it would be super flavorful!

[@reiswindy]

Random Thought: Replace The Spire's shield with a doublecast effect.

[@Noah-gn2gu]

About DRK, it never ceases to amaze me that people genuinely see TBN having risk and are saying "okay, so the issue is TBN having risk" and not "TBN being risky is fine but they need a higher base line healing so TBN can go back to being a bonus like it used to be." Like, no one says PLD should have clemency removed. Imagine if PLD had no healing and clemency was its only healing, I bet the community would think the job was awful for having opportunity cost. Oh wait, that was ShB PLD! And back then people said tanks couldn't sustain without a healer and that DRK's TBN was a huge bonus and great! But now no one cares about Clemency being opportunity cost healing because it's a cherry on top of free heals. And TBN should stay as it is but be like clemency via increasing DRK's free heals. Or, you know, fixing the whole "healers are useless because now tanks can solo sustain all the content" issue and bring the other tanks down to DRK. And then half the suggestions for DRK involve bringing back Dark Arts. Which was... DRK's opportunity cost system lmfao. "Why can't I spend some MP on Dark Arts to change Dark Mind to a physical buff? Wouldn't that be great?" Complaining about opportunity cost situations like TBN MIGHT (not even a guaranteed loss) be and then suggesting more opportunity cost situations to "fix" it. The issue is not and never has been HOW TBN works. It has always been the relative base line healing. Duties are adjusted around TBN being NECESSARY right now which is why people dislike it. But how TBN works is just fine, it's just that it should be a bonus instead of necessity. People used to genuinely think TBN was so cool and powerful and worth bringing DRK for. But even as is, why is it bad? Why can't DRK have a higher skill ceiling to reach the same effect? No one looks at BLM and says it needs a complete rework because it's harder than other casters. Why can't DRK be harder? "But there's no reward or reason to bring DRK into content!" Double DRK is still the top pick for speedruns. DRK has the highest actual damage potential with raid buffs. Optimal play on DRK is rewarding. DRK's base play is more punishing. Wow, sounds like a certain other job that uses MP. And yet DRK is bad for it. The tank main mindset of thinking they have the right to enjoy all 4 tanks and main them all and be able to just swap at will is so entitled. It should be obvious how that leads to homogenization. If you want to be able to just swap without thinking then all the tanks are going to be the same. It's boring and unfun. It's great that we have a punishing tank. Just play the other tanks if you don't like it. No caster main whines about "Oh no BLM is too punishing why is it not easy like other casters?" Why are we trying to ruin a job with an existing fanbase instead of... asking for a new tank? We no longer have a disease mage because of the SMN rework, and so often I think about how awful that is. Is new summoner decent and does it do what it was meant to do? Yeah. But now we don't have a disease mage. Now the people who loved that job can never play it again. And that's sad. I'd rather we keep jobs having some difficulty than constantly give them reworks and gut what makes them unique. AST is a perfect example of this. People are getting fed up with the job being reworked. It doesn't matter which version you liked best, everyone is sick of it getting reworked and people are starting to not care to get invested because it's going to just get reworked again. The community is setting a bad precedent by encouraging this with DRK. That said, DRK can be improved. But this is not it. A rework is not it.

[@ArcanistJimmy]

ascended take my liege

[@silasisawesome]

Agreed. I've always found the way TBN works interesting, and whenever I hear people complain about it, it always feels like attempting to treat a symptom rather than the underlying problem. Why is TBN tying into your DPS a bad thing? If the problem is that DRKs kit is inadequate compered to other tanks and needs to play into the oppertunity cost of TBN just to keep up, then it sounds to me like the real problem is the kits over all inadequacy, and fixating on TBN's oppertunity cost as the load bearing issue is just weird when there are many other ways of adressing the problem which don't involve removing the one interesting interaction between tanking and DPSing in the game. I am reminded of how often people would complain about GNB's cartrege economy and the tightness of thier 2min burst, and suggested as a fix to extend No Mercy to 25 seconds. To me that seemd like sort of a band aid solution, like, just because your personal buff is 25s does not mean you won't still want to cramb as much into other people's 20s raid buffs, and now you're in burst-mode for almost half of your rotation? What about next expansion then, if they give GNB an extra GCD to use in burst, then we're right back where we started, and if they get an extra OGCD then we're exaspirating the weave-slot problem. In DT they adressed the problem in an entierly different way in giving GNB a whole new set of GCDs to use in their 2min burst that do not have continuations and do not cost carteges. All of a sudden, you don't need max carteges to 2min burst, and you don't have continuations landing outside of buffs, with the added bonus of some free burst strikes to pepper throughout your rotation, and people generally seem very happy with the change.

[@DrakeWurrum]

The biggest problem with TBN is that it costs mana. No other tank has to deal with a cost on their special mit buttons. If it's off cooldown, we can use it, that simple. But with DRK, if you Edge too hard, then suddenly you can't use your tank mit. This doesn't become an interesting trade, either, because DRK isn't very busy on buttons right now. If they made it so that the shield is *free* and then if it breaks the way you want, then you get an *extra* DPS button, that would be way more fun. Incentive is better design than punishment. The second biggest problem with TBN is that it's not really been changed since being introduced, while other tanks got new buttons that then got UPGRADED, and now TBN is just mediocre by comparison. So it needs to have some kind of addition to how it helps the tank survive. An Excog effect would be fun, but stale. A lifesteal effect would match Living Dead (and thus the power fantasy of DRK), but then feel reminiscent of Bloodwhetting (and if you're shielded, you're NOT getting hurt). A regen would have similar problems. They could give it a Haima effect (multiple shields that break in layers, basically), but that has limited situations where it's useful. I feel like maybe when the shield *ends* (breaking or not) it could give both a free Edge and an *upgrade* to the next Edge you use similar to NIN with Kassatsu, so that it's a different ability, different animation, and then... maybe it has lifesteal. Then the DRK gets to both do more damage and choose when to use it's new mit/sustain effect. DRK needs more work than on just TBN, mind you. But TBN needs to feel special.

[@7evan]

I mean..... I swap between all 4 tanks depending on my mood all the time lmao but I agree with your sentiments for the most part. The only rework I would want is having tbn be a 25 second cooldown with no mp cost and available a little early on because doing lvl 57-70 content without it is kinda rough. Like I can manage but my struggle doesn't exactly feel like "wowie I sure played my job real good!" Yknow. I guess if we want tbn to remain as it is then If Dark Mind just mitigated like 5% physical damage or some shit I guess it'd help. We shouldn't get some free-heal button like any other tank tho but maybe being in dark side gives you self sustain which incentives you to keep always be in it or something Not a game dev tho so don't @ me

[@DaviGri]

@@DrakeWurrum Having TBN cost free will create another new set of problem where player will deliberately take vul stack or try to hunt themself more just so they can break their TBN every off-cooldown. Instead I suggest sqenix give DRK more ways or increase mana gain on skills which will solve sustain, OOM for TBN, and the job feeling less busy now.

[@pavfeira]

On 12:57 in particular and you inviting the comparison with DRK... I don't think that such concerns *necessarily* lead to homogenization, but they are *very very likely* to lead to homogenization. If the complaint is how SCH has opportunity cost whereas SGE does not, so you either remove ED from SCH / give ED to SGE... Congrats? You've actively made the jobs play more like one another. You've removed something unique because you hated mild inconvenience harming your parse by less than 1% It feels the same watching all these "how I'd fix DRK" videos out there. Like, I acknowledge that lifelong DRKs would have Opinions about the jank. But then these content creators put out a list of 8 requested changes, and nearly all things that PLD has, and it's like... "At what point should you just play PLD? Is DRK allowed to be unique from PLD?" So, yeah. When removal of specific quirks leads directly to homogenization, I'm against it. Let jobs have quirks.

[@reiswindy]

Here's another DRK idea to add to the pile. - Living dead now prevents all healing, instead it stockpiles it. If the effect runs out, you heal the stockpiled amount. If it procs, invuln will proceed as normal.

[@pythiusplaysgames]

I feel VERY conflicted about the current placement of Astro in the Healer ecosystem. On one hand, as a WHM player who really loves the job, it's definitely disheartening to see the other pure healer cement their place as "best healer" so firmly with no contest whatsoever. And it doesn't help that WHM seems to just have a lack of tools in comparison, and when given tools, less interesting ones at that. But at the same time, it's difficult to assert that Astro shouldn't have been given these updates. Astro is fun to play and its kit just flows so seamlessly in a way that it didn't before. Maybe it is a tad on the overpowered side and it could be toned down a little, but some part of me wishes that instead, the same treatment simply be given to the other healers as well. To bring them in line with that same level of power and to make those players have fun and feel impactful as well. Fight design would probably need to change greatly to adjust, but I just want to feel powerful and have fun as well.

[@Astralmess]

I genuinely feel there's no problem here. both are still competitive. best astro requires a lot of effort which majority won't achieve. nothing to be disheartened about.

[@pythiusplaysgames]

@Astralmess it's definitely not an urgent or pressing issue, but I wouldn't say it's not problematic. It's true that both can clear content, but WHM and AST are not really competitive. AST in its latest iteration is the best pure healer no questions asked. And with the changes to the card system and Lightspeed, it isnt even meaningfully more difficult to play. AST can ignore entire mechanics while doing damage and healing with nothing to trade for it.

[@TheAssirra]

@@Astralmess This video proved that in fact they are not competitive. That would mean they trade blows but AST is better in every single aspect.

[@GrandGobboBarb]

I think Astro is where a healer should be, and we need to be seeing how to bring the other healers up to its level. It's so fun right now, and I would hate to see it made less fun

[@NotTheWheel]

I'm glad Astro players have something they like. So hopefully as a Whitemage I don't have to be the awkward healer in the room sitting in the corner while people complain about how boring their healing jobs are. Only to utter "Y-yeah I miss Aero 3... It was pretty good..." (Because nothing much has changed for us in the last decade)

[@Gralysin]

in my opinion its totally fair that a harder to play job deals more damage and or has more healing capacity than an easier job

[@ikeaira8701]

This and I wish more people thought this way in XIV. But too many ego driven WHM's out there crying for AST to be nerfed.....rDPS AST does a great job, BUT guess who's at the top in a/nDPS? WHM. But NO ONE is talking about that and only hyperfocusing on rDPS with a job that provides (r)aid buffs.

[@sagethompson7038]

I disagree. AST has more healing, damage, and movement capabilities than WHM. Why should it have all three? With the new changes, it really is not that much harder to play than WHM either. WHM needs to be buffed to be more in line with AST in some way.

[@guffels]

I will never stop talking about how much I miss Astrodyne. The idea of Divining the future and reading the cards has been entirely lost in the processes of seeking less variable gameplay and it loses a lot of what made the class unique. I enjoyed the choice between the consistent healing of WHM and the slightly random higher skill gameplay of AST. They let Dancer continue to be a casino so obviously they don't mind the RNG. Just feels like a bad trade for how interactive Astrodyne was. The feeling of hitting it big and getting 3 seals during the pot window was so good and I miss it alot. Macrocosmos used to be the coolest button in the game but the other healers now all also have interesting buttons so Astro no longer feels unique there either. I find the current card system to be an excessive amount of bloat for almost no payoff. An Oblation stack, a bad regen, a bad Krasis, and a mediocre shield every 2 minutes does not feel worth the extra 4 button presses. I do like that we only have to play cards during 2s. It does open up a lot of design space so maybe in 8.0 COPIUM

[@StraytheSkies]

same

[@unamite3762]

Same same it kept the job interactive and required focus but now it’s just an easy as piss job which sucks Cus we used to have the easy pick of whm and screwed over ppl that wanted more difficulty

[@quintinrussell6591]

"What is to be done." So interesting. I agree astro is maybe a little too strong, and that it is incredibly fun to play. It does kinda require a second brain, but once that kicks in, you're soaring. I think it could nearly solo-heal anything at this point. I do think fun is the most important thing, and I'd like to see a little less restriction on some of those jobs that feel a little left behind (DRK, SCH, ect). They're fun to play, but the new additions are watering down their core, usually leaving them behind another more-fun job. Love your content! 💯

[@churchren3899]

from a high-end healer's perspective, i'm glad that astro is busted again after how poorly it was represented in NA for EW. That said, I do think it should have less overall contribution to its rDPS value given the lightspeed changes. % values of DPS cards should either be lowered, or changed in such a way that creates an opportunity cost as you've said, similar to ED or WHM's afflatus. I personally would prefer to see some more raid utility cards that are not directly tied to DPS, such as movement increase, single-target macrocosmos-type cards, or bringing back their buff extension ability, to name a few

[@kman6004]

My favorite idea for lightspeed I had is thus: Turn lightspeed into a job gauge meter. You slowly generate stacks over time (a few ideas for how specifically you generate the stacks is below), and then the "lightspeed" button turns into a toggle, kind of like tank stance. You activate lightspeed, and all of your casts are 2.5 seconds faster until you either reactivate lightspeed (ending it) or you run out stacks. This allows granular usage of the mobility at the cost of a few extra weaves. If you only want a single instant cast, lightspeed is now just another swiftcast that takes 2 weaves. However, if you want 2 instant casts back to back, it still only costs the SAME 2 weaves - they are just more spread out. Burst windows remain almost completely unaffected, you just need to end them with a light speed weave as soon as you are done cardslinging. Ideas for how you gain stacks: 1. Just a boring generation over time. Lets say, you gain 1 stack every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 8. This would be a substantial nerf from 7.05 AST, so it could be increased to 1 stack every 15 seconds if they thought it would be necessary. 2. You gain a stack every time you play a card. This is kind of equivalent to the first option, but it requires you play your cards. They could even decide to include or exclude the crown cards depending on if they wanted to buff/nerf it. 3. You gain 3-4 stacks simply by pressing draw. This turns draw into even more of an aetherflow clone, but hey they could do this if they wanted. My personal wish is for something like option number 2 to be implemented, along side a modification to the useless cards to make them feel more impactful. I think it would be AWESOME to have full control over exactly which gcds I get to be instantcast, rather than being forced to either have none of them, or all of them for 15 seconds.

[@cosineaudio]

Can we get you on the phone to yoshi-p? This is good

[@kazwyrm]

Im fine with jobs that have a downside to some abilities. former DRK main here, the issue i see is if the job hasnt been balanced properly around it or hasnt been properly looked at for years with the same line ability being the only new skills we get ( DRK specific ). if the job is slightly different like SGE and SCH to give a different flavour of healing or WHM and AST, i think its a good thing and if a job is more effective then the other needs to get balanced to that job. The only issue with this sort of thing is if a job isnt fun and isnt balanced and also is underperforming then that is a HUGE issue that needs changes to it. PCT and BLM as another example should be roughly the same amount of dps over all fights, then if a fight is better for one or the other by a small margin where mastery of the job is the factor between the 2 doing more for the situation, i think its ideal for someone to learn all the jobs on a role and be able to pick and choose for themselves what is best for the situation. The jobs just need to all be looked at in the context of the other jobs in that role and adjusted accordingly. back in STB i classed DRK as an inbetween of WAR and PLD, not as defencive as PLD but doesnt change HP like a WAR did on top of having a unique kit that made it shine as a tank. Imma wrap this up by just saying, downsides good if balanced correctly with a good payoff.

[@leo_theSable]

I like cards having effects again but i honestly miss the rng. I used to enjoy the snap decision making that came with drawing and playing cards. Now you always know exactly what you'll get and it's kinda boring. More consistent, sure but less fun to me. I also hate how the card changes hurt our mp economy. If i die in raids/trials i really struggle to get back to high mp values for the rest of the fight especially if i rez when draw and lucid are on cool down or people are dying a lot. I understand that AST's mp regen was busted in EW but to go from practically infinite mp to starving in intense scenarios is quite jarring.

[@tenroy6]

The cards are part of the core of the job. I would recommend playing 4 man dungeon content more to actually see that. The Arrow buffs The Spire, and all healing and shielding things in the kit. Its a healer. Literally synergies The Spire, a shield that can be increased with healing potency. Outstanding tool for pulls, tank busters etc paired with the Arrow as just a FREE take this. The Bole, the only card that I dont think fits amazingly but its one of the strongest things in the game for tank mitigation. Tank pulls first pack? Bole them. They no longer need to pop a single CD till the 2nd pack is fully pulled. The Ewer, paired with the Bole the tank wont die in any dungeon to pack and stack the mobs correctly till you get into proper placements and healing / dps. Then obviously the damage cards. Also if you didnt know. You can use an ability, and "que up" your cards. Will vary on ping but, ive learned that all the cards can almost be qued up as soon as you press any skill and its channelling and it will go off. Astro right now literally feels like a "no you" uno reverse card. The cards feel AMAZING. so I disagree completely with your take as someone thats been levelling the job and finally playing it since they reworked it to actually be a fun job. EDIT: Come to think of it as a support player, I find the damage buff cards the most boring and I could care less about them. EDIT 2: I do see a lot and too much bias on raiding rather then overall gameplay.

[@TheKarishi]

I have a soft spot in my heart for Dyne version Astro in spite of knowing it's objectively a bad idea. It's like having to play dancer but faster and for less reward; Looking at your card and - while maintaining your healing and general rotation - deciding whether taking a second or even third of the same symbol was worth it, if it guaranteed you were giving the 6% buff to the Samurai instead of the Bard, then handing it off to that player without clipping your next GCD...It was wildly skill-intensive with almost no payoff. If you played optimally you got to Presence of Mind with Astrodyne 55% of the time, with a 90 second cooldown on attempts. Removing it was the right call, because it ate a disproportionate amount of brainpower that could be used on timing Horoscope or Earthen Star. But I'm still a sucker for card games, and minigames, so a card minigame in the middle of my rotation was really enticing.

[@LaBlueSkuld]

I think White Mage is running into a similar problem that Priests had been dealing with in WoW for decades and that's that the Dev Team recognizes them as the Defacto Healer of their respective games they make really sure they're not the best. Over multiple expansions of tweaks, changes and adjustmenets that mentality will leave the class/job a bit anemic and not as tightly tuned as other classes that got necessary overhauls to fix glaring problems made from filling a niche.

[@axelmiller2087]

I think there's an argument for bringing the other healers up to Astros level. I don't know enough about sage and scholar for how to do it, but what about bringing stoneskin back for white mage and tying a water themed spell (I know cure is technically water themed but white mage doesn't have offensive water spell) and make it so white mage between casts, while still being a primarily gcd healer, can weave different mitigation. Then add some extra water spells as an ability to use between glare 4, blood lilies, assize, and such every 30 or so seconds. I have thought for a while that water element of conjurer/white mage was heavily under utilized, and once you upgrade to Dia and glare, you have nothing on your kit that even is reminisce of the earth and wind elements that you've trained since conjurer

[@CRXII]

I’d like to see Astro and another healer being hybrid and adding another pure healer so now we have 3 categories but unlikely

[@roease6674]

I’ve only ever played healers in xiv and Astro is my main. This tier I switched to scholar for my static and Jesus Christ do I miss Astro. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving sch (it actually reminds me of Astro in many ways) but I really felt the lack of “free” tools and mobility once I changed. That for me makes sch a harder healer than Astro when it comes to higher difficulty content and in my opinion if a class is more difficult to play, it should have more reward but right now that isn’t the case with the healers. With all the Astro changes it feels like it is a net gain in almost every situation over white mage, to the point that our white mage is thinking of switching. However, I don’t think it’s a matter of lowering Astro, but it’s about raising (ha!) the other healers to be on the same level as Astro. It’s incredibly potent, but that’s in relation to the other weaker healers. I just wish the other healers felt as “fun” to play regardless of difficulty. Of course fun is relative but I think levelling the scales would make all the healers a bit more unique rather than how it is now where Astro can pretty much do everything the others can but 10x better.

[@Spookybluelights]

I've been leveling AST from scratch on an alt to re-learn the card system, and while those non-damage buff cards may seem like useless extras at the high end side, for me, a filthy casual who never does any of that stuff, they are a _wonderful_ expansion of the AST kit that adds so much flexibility and adds back the unique identities of the cards, even though it removes the RNG. I cannot tell you how many times The Arrow+Essential Dignity has saved my tank from dying on an ambitious pull they weren't geared to handle without me having to stop DPS-ing. And having another HoT to layer on is so nice (not to mention they changed when you get Aspected Benefic to level 40 from 42 so now it's helpful from earlier on). I'm actually pretty excited to get back into AST now that Astrodyne is gone.

[@mukakruda8474]

That's the funny thing, I find them really nice in Savage. While you have shitty gear the first week or so of Savage, casters tend to get trounced by stuff no one else is- what works amazing to stop that? A quick Spire or Bole. GNB using their invuln for a TB? Throw them an Arrow and an ED and you won't have to do more to top them off, or a Ewer and an ED. Brute Bomber is a perfect example, before you have BiS his Tank Buster's near the end in Savage will rock both of your tanks, but you don't have to use all your EDs and can keep them for emergencies if you toss Bole, Ewer, and Exalt on one of them it'll get em through the whole thing healthy, and the other can get just 1 ED Are they *necessary* in savage+ content? No, but they're still very useful and will save you other resources and such if you're using them well, I think it's disingenuous of this video to claim they don't seem useful in Savage content just because they personally don't like using them

[@TajinQ]

On DRK, since you mentioned it : the 10s difference between TBN and the other short cooldowns has never really mattered. In the few cases where you can use it on cooldown, it doesn't make a valuable difference. And now that DRK MP generation sucks, it can even be a dps loss if you do it. PLD's short cooldown is the way to do it.

[@anthonyseverino8292]

I was wondering what savage gear is best in slot for astro? The Icy Vein page for astro doesn't seem updated at all and I have gear boxes of 730 gear that I would like to put on my ASTRO but I don't know which is best. Anyone can help?

[@mxdusza]

I've gotta say, astro is still by far the least popular healer. Because of this, I don't mind it being slightly overpowered for the time being as long as it means that more people are willing to give it a chance. I've always felt like AST is the least approachable healer because it card system 'seems' complex and unintuitive.

[@sagethompson7038]

Should it really be as strong compared to WHM right now though? Much better damage, healing, mitigation, and movement for not that much more complexity?

[@mxdusza]

@@sagethompson7038 1st of all, complexity should never be a reason for a job being overpowered. 2nd, yes I think that for the time being it's completely fine.

[@sagethompson7038]

@@mxdusza I agree, which is why I feel WHM should be buffed to be as good damage/healing/mitigation wise.

[@vajra6888]

I really enjoy astro, i decided to start healing savage for the first time this expansion and chose ast before the lightspeed buff. its super fun but in the end I still prog on sage because its more comfy lol

[@zaytex5000]

I'm a ShB/EW AST former main and absolutely hate the rework and current state of AST. It's funny how its become the strongest healer by far, yet I don't want to touch it and will play WHM instead simply because its more fun, even though there are times where if I was an AST, I could've saved a prog pull or smth. I miss the former iteration of cards where it was mechanically demanding for you to optimise them - having to pull the card, assess what it was, consider a redraw, target someone, give it to them, and repeat 2 more times whilst weaving other stuff like star, lord (x2), astrodyne, etc. All of these cards were RNG too, which was the FUN part of the burst window since you weren't able to just learn a scripted rotation - you had to actually be quick enough to react to what you were given and make instantaneous decisions on what to do with the card. It felt good and satisfying to pull off the burst perfectly, not because I learned how to press my buttons correctly, but because I was quick enough in my decision and mechanical skill. Now that's all gone, replaced with a non-rng rotation that can be essentially macro'd and done in 5 weaves with not much thought - very boring IMO. Astrodyne while hated, was mechanically interesting and something that shouldn't have been taken away - as the seal system was something which gave kit interaction to consider and play into for a little mini-game (again, fun). A form of uniqueness not found among the other four healers, but people somehow bitched very hard about the third seal which ended up not being impactful enough to care about. As for Lightspeed, I oddly enjoyed AST having almost no mobility as its sole glaring weakness in comparison to the other healers because it challenged the player to perfect their movement and the limited tools they had (slide casting, swiftcast, macrocosmos, combust usage) in order to negate this weakness as much as they could. It was not only optimising cards, your pre-planned/timed healing, but also your movement/uptime. Now with 2 lightspeed charges, you can essentially just not think about movement or uptime nearly as much. Does it feel better to play? Probably. But I really enjoyed overcoming AST's glaring weakness in EW through my planning/skill rather than just pressing Lightspeed. I think objectively if you looked at statistics and at a spreadsheet, AST is probably in the best state its ever been - it's more approachable to newbies and to more people, its so strong atm with essentially no weaknesses, and it's got a pretty aesthetic. But on a human level, it's so fucking boring to play with the new cards essentially being useless, leaving you with no cards to manage outside the burst window (which as I said, are still boring and non-thought provoking), movement requirements are essentially done for you now via Lightspeed, and while it healing kit is still enjoyable, its not enough to save the job as a whole now and it's not like every encounter is even fun to heal anyway (M1S, EX2). I played AST because it was the difficult healer with so much room for optimisation and mid-maxing potential. The card system allowed me to still have fun with my job if actual healing wasn't required, or was boring in a specific fight, but with the cards gone and replaced with this, and other aspects of AST simplified/homogenised down to make the job easier... it's just so boring. SE will probably stay with this going forward sadly, since on paper/stats its the best version of AST they've ever released even if its the most awful one to play fun wise.

[@K3fka_]

Exactly how I feel. I can sum it up as saying that playing Dawntrail AST, I feel like I'm no longer making any meaningful decisions with the cards. It all feels very static because you know exactly what you'll draw and exactly where you're going to play your cards. There's still stuff that I love about AST (ED, Earthly Star) but the main draw of the job for me was definitely the cards, and that has been completely gutted. I'm mostly playing WHM when I heal now, or sometimes SGE. Hoping the inevitable 8.0 rework will move AST back in the right direction, but who knows...

[@leo_theSable]

Damn I wholeheartedly agree with everything you mentioned. It wasn't just about learning an opener, it was about how quickly you could adapt to the cards you were dealt which imo played way more into the class fantasy than always knowing what you're getting (because irl, who ever knows what cards fate will hand them?) I was so bitter at DT's release because I felt the job was simplified just to appeal to those who never played it and probably still don't. Like, we have simpler healers, not every healer has to be as braindead as WHM. I still play the job because I love the aesthetic, but I mourn its previous iteration.

[@zaytex5000]

@@K3fka_ The healing tool kit is still enjoyable but the glaring rot of the current cards just completely overshadows it. It's not as if macrocosmos and star were the main appeal of AST anyway, since they're long cooldowns - it was the cards. Ironically WHM having to consider their movement with lillies, mitigations with their limited wings/divine carress, and having a slightly more interesting burst rotation with misery/glare IV has made me prefer it over AST. It's barely anything more or better to mid-max or optimise, but at least the job mechanic isn't 4/6 useless or only to be engaged with every 2 minutes LOL.

[@zaytex5000]

@@leo_theSable Yeah I feel the same, bitter and angry. I spent two expansions and half of EW's life time dedicated to optimising and becoming better and better at AST, just for them to scrap the job and rework it for people who never touched it to begin with. There's no other healer for me to turn too now - they all practically feel the same with little nuance. I can't believe SE listened to them either, to the people who complained the RNG healer having... RNG. Or that the difficult healer.... was hard to play. FF14's community will shit on homogenisation and complain about it yet the overall reception to the AST rework is positive - everyone is happy the difficulty has been removed, the RNG and astrodyne deleted, even though they were a form of unique job identity to AST. Seems as if it's beloved yet the people (a minority) who truly enjoyed AST for what it was, are angry and upset but get ignored. I could rant all day, but my love for healing is basically gone at this point. If I had to pick a role to main and love it would be casters at this point with PCT/RDM (god I love PCT), but I'm stuck on healing with my static (irl friends) which is fun/okay in prog but boring in reclears. I beg for the day the caster player in our static leaves LMAO

[@Noah-uo8zb]

While my fav version of AST is from Stormblood, I absolutely agree with what you're trying to say As a result, I've moved to scholar, until we see some changes next expac (hopefully)

[@kirigherkins]

It was my main in shadowbringers, then it changed completely in EW so I dropped it. Then it changed completely again in DT so I thought "ok the devs have no idea what they want to do with this job, so if I learn it again now, they're just going to overhaul it again anyway so why bother" This is also why I'm not super excited about the fabled job identity rework. A lot of these jobs are really fun as-is, I'm not confident they can completely redesign them without ruining them.

[@akatsuki20113]

Also, with the way the card system was in endwalker with its mixmaxiness, it conflicted with their stance of not having dmg meters in the game because someone playing on ps5 is just gonna put the cards on whoever the classes that in theory does the most dmg, but they have to hope that those people are playing correctly. I have no idea why they would put a system in a game that heavily relies on seeing dmg meters while they don’t want to put dmg meters in the game, like……….what?. 😐

[@mapleXIV]

I honestly feel that more difficult jobs or jobs that require more practice and thought to fully utilize should afford the player greater potential output/freedom. I know that incorporating job difficulty into balance is a nightmare and SE has tried to avoid that, but having more tools or utility seems like a reasonable reward for proper planning on astro. I hope they go the same route as picto and slightly buff the other healers rather than nerfing astro.

[@Auronffx777]

How do i put those ability buttons next to the cross bars?

[@Auronffx777]

This would be very handy for me, to see if other abilities come off cooldown

[@Dragonite955]

How do you add skills to the bottom left of your screen?? Is that just to see their recast timers?

[@K3fka_]

Yes. Go into your HUD Layout and you'll see some hotbars that are unused and invisible by default. You can move one to wherever you want and place skills on it without setting up keybinds for that hotbar.

[@chickennugget6684]

I miss Astrodyne giving the feeling of limitless mp. Though i've never understood why specifically people don't like it, is it because you can't guarantee 3 signs? Is it because it replaced a previous Astro that most people liked more? (well, i understand that one), or was it the weirdness of weaving in bursts? Which felt a bit bad since it interrupted card flinging.

[@FlamingBeefCat]

Idk about pure healers, I never really liked them, but I did love it when it had it's regen or shield stance. I play sage, and It feels a little unfair that a sage gimmick of being a healer that heals by doing damage needs to have 100% up time to maximize its potential and can't out damage the support healer

[@ZeldaFan2004]

All I am going to say is, I am so glad the Devs blessed WHM with a dash this expansion. Because if they hadn't, and still gave AST their second charge of Lightspeed, I would be very loudly crying foul. I do feel like AST got the better Christmas present here for sure. But, I like my dash. I do feel like it should have a shorter cooldown though. 60 seconds between being able to use my dash feels too long. Maybe 40 to be in line with Swiftcast would be better?

[@KaedysKor]

Unrelated to Astro, but what I find most annoying about Dark Knight's opportunity cost is that it's strictly pass-fail. If you have even a single point left in the shield, it's the exact same loss as if you hadn't taken a single point of damage into it. This is most visible on dungeon trash, where there's a point where sufficient numbers of the trash pull have died that your shield won't be broken anymore, and thus you must stop using it entirely. Where that point is is very hazy, and fluctuates a bit depending on when you pop the shield relative to the auto-attack timer of the various mobs, and whether they're going to stop to cast something during those next 7 seconds, both of which are difficult at best to judge. Overall, I just don't like how binary it is. I feel like Dark Knight would benefit from having some consolation prize on the shield. Perhaps not something that's straight proportionate, so there's still a notable reward from breaking the shield, but something so it doesn't feel so horrible when your shield expires with just a tiny sliver of the barrier remaining. I should be clear here: I'm a rather casual player, and I play DRK essentially precisely as much as required to level it to the new cap each expansion. But a large part of the latter there is _because_ I find the shield mechanic, and Darkside as a whole, a rather annoying mechanic. And the drastically reduced amount of self-sustain (especially compared to WAR and PLD, my preferred tank jobs) really just feels a lot worse.

[@MetroidMarioOfficial]

Good video and good points, but a small correction. While you're right about WHM getting 10 seconds of free movement from banked Lilies, there's also Presence of Mind on a 120 second cooldown. It lets you cast 3 Glare IVs for 30 seconds, meaning they don't need to be spent in the 15 seconds of faster GCDs, and that gives you another 7.5 seconds of free movement every 120 seconds.

[@machinaeZER0]

I don't think you want to be holding those casts for movement though, right? In theory you should be using that on cool down. You also get glare IV fairly late into the leveling process. It definitely is helpful for movement, but it might not always be up when you need it. WHM does have a dash now too though, so definitely way more mobile on several fronts this expansion!

[@yeoldpubman]

​@@machinaeZER0 You use PoM on cooldown, but you have 20 seconds during raid buffs to choose when to use your Glare 4s.

[@MetroidMarioOfficial]

@@machinaeZER0 Yeah, you use PoM on cool down and try to fit the Glare IVs into the 2-minute buff window, just like you try to fit Blood Lily in there. It's nice to have the option to use them for movement, like if mechanics happen at a bad time, or if party buffs are misaligned.

[@TheAssirra]

You don't use Glare IV for movement though. You use them in your 2min window damage burst. If it lines up it's nice but you would never use PoM to scoot around for free movement.

[@MetroidMarioOfficial]

@@TheAssirra Por que no los dos? I use PoM on cooldown, but during the 30 seconds of Sacred Sight, I use those Glare IVs to make sure I don't drop a GCD.

[@Scerttle]

The cards are incredible for the casual experience

[@marfur9]

I think i commented this on one of your other videos but the other cards makes the need to do active healing almost 0 in up to level 60 content (im just above 60 with ast so dont know how long that is true above 60) the shield or HoT card + slapping on a few normal HoT every now and then is enough for most normal content. But I guess it doesnt scale well to level 100 then from what you are saying.

[@ThePanfle]

I think your explanation on the movement options of AST and WHM make sense and are pretty fair, tbh. The choice to split up movement on WHM is strong and you can use your resources to more effect that way if you can greed a slidecast here and there. I would be interested to hear more about job disparities within roles and how the game can make those more healthy.

[@itsmeowlee4407]

I think it's good to have variety. the way DRK plays is what draws me to it personally, I like a bit of a challenge with lining up my TBN perfectly and the rapid pace of both it and AST. I would never play mnk bc it's focus on positionals and ect is too hard for me, and I hate playing war the same reason I hate playing smn, but other people enjoy that aspect of it. Having different difficulties in playing the jobs is what's fun imo. I'm not a super hardcore gamer or anything yet, (only savage tiers regularly and planning to try and do ultimates) But those are just my two cents. The super mobility ast has now is awesome, but I'm biased. The only time I really think it gets problematic is when pf decides to just ban jobs entirely which is...gross. sorry for the probably incomprehensible ramble.

[@MrJammers]

Ast feels easy to me because it feels like you have everything you need when you need it which is really good, whm feels like I have to plan around when and what to use and then just the same old. Whm needs 2 assize stacks and new glare needs to nourish the blood lilly. Two new skills Misery which just consumes a lilly for dps but is OGCD when used and also nourishes the blood lilly🤣 Misery Metastasize consumes lilly for Aoe bleed. Basically like astro but instead of cards its your lillies and is direct dmg.

[@alexlore438]

I would like to see all dmg cards disappear from astros kit tbh. I am already contributing to party dmg with divination. I wish we had cards with more interesting effects like a sprint or a card that give you +2k mp etc. Also they made you draw 3 major cards at once to make it feel less busy but in reality the reopener is busy just like before but now you need 3 hotkeys to play cards instead of one

[@Nightwolf739]

If they added spread back to the game these new cards would feel amazing, but I understand that they didn't want to make the gap in quality between whm and astro that much larger. The difference in ability quality between the two is already ridiculous. Horoscope is just better plenary indulgence, collective unconscious is just sacred soil with a minute cooldown, whm has no real equivalent, and neutral sect + sun sign are leagues better than temperance + divine caress. Spammable shields that buffs your healing gcs for 20 seconds plus a free 10% mit, or a 10% mit that buffs your healing gcds + a single 400 potency shield (that isn't buffed by the temperance healing magic increase). Horoscope is just better plenary if you only have to use 1 gcd since it's 400 potency after a gcd heal. And all of this is without even mentioning macrocosmos! Whm feels out of touch with how xiv fights are designed. our fights aren't like wow's where there's constant damage going out on the party and they need to keep being topped up. Which, even then, would be a struggle for whm since they only get 1 lily every 20 seconds compared to astro who has 4 ogcd aoe heals before getting into their gcds. Mitigation is king and whm is has seemingly been left out on that reality.

[@Dyxid]

Even if it's over-powered, I still never found AST as fun to play as the other healers, and I'm counting before and after the Dawntrail changes. The card system just feels clunky to deal with properly for me, so I just dumped all of them on myself most of the time.

[@mai88sara]

I think it's fair still considering that astro have to do actual rotations and multiple clicking and planning to get their desired heals. Whm also resived a dash that is among the best in the game too, so idk they feel balanced to me on that regard.

[@kuwaghost]

I'm kinda glad AST is where it's at right now. I'm still baffled as to why it's the lowest DPS out of all the healers when we buff the party consistently. IMO, WHM should have good Personal DPS, but it shouldn't be stronger than a decent AST considering the difference in their playstyle.

[@shaunperron7080]

With its rDPS so high, maybe it's time to bring cards and divination down to 5%? I always thought it was weird that it was 6. Especially Div, since the cards can make sense with the half effectiveness on opposite roles.

[@Dndstories]

I think it's a good tradeoff for higher skill ceiling job(s) to have better dps/rdps

[@Thundawich]

Astro didn't actually lose much dps they give to others. You are missing 1 card inside burst and 1 outside burst. That sounds like a lot, until you remember that you still effectively have 10 cards you are using during burst. 1 melee, 1 range and 8 divination. (Div gives 6% so may as well count it as a card here too). It amounts to about 15% of their shared dps overall as a loss, which isn't that much. To your question though, yes its fair. Its fine to have classes that are better than others in certain scenarios, providing that all classes still have the tools to clear. Specific damage numbers don't matter to me so im not worried about astro doing the most dps at present, but lightspeed is fine. DPS checks in this tier aren't super tight, so its perfectly fine for a caster to drop a GCD to do movement if they need to a couple times in a fight. If healers *needed* 100% GCD uptime to clear the fights we might have more of an issue, but as it stands now off-burst lightspeed is just a luxury, not a necessary tool.

[@sammicopor]

I unlocked the astro but i still need to get used to what each card does & how the class plays. I think I spent about 4 hours on ast & found it to be a complex class I will save for a different time.

[@DrakeWurrum]

I don't like having 4 different cards (including Lord/Lady) tied to a 1 minute cooldown together. I would rather it be that each individual "play" button we now have each have its own charges (2 of them, 1 minute recharge?) and it plays a random card from its pool (e.g. damage boost for play 1 for ALL allies in the party, randomly better for melee or ranged to help reduce its business; play 2 and play 3 needs some serious work to be interesting.. maybe make play 2 tank tools and play 3 raid tools?) And then the actual Draw button could be... I dunno. A button that boosts the effectiveness of a random card? Or else fishes for a certain one?

[@reiswindy]

The random card effect sounds like one of the Blue Mage spells, that gives a 50% mit, either from magic attacks or physical attacks. But because it's unreliable you will rarely see it used at all.

[@DrakeWurrum]

@@reiswindy - I think at least as a raid-wide damage boost that is 6% for one role and 3% for the other could be somewhat more reliable. It's not *particularly* interesting, but it's hard to make RNG mechanics that are both interesting and balanced for a raid. The only other way I could see card RNG working is if playing a card onto a player gave them an extra Duty Action button, or something similar to that, but that feels kinda invasive and would disrupt the rotations of other players.

[@Garbagevideoplatform]

I was under the impression WHM did comparable dmg to SGE (more than AST)? lol I guess if you minmax the absolute hell out of it. Which is something I don't really feel like doing, and not because it's complex (I've played AST since HW) - but because its utility still isn't fun enough. SE overcompensated with its healing potential, and I'm still absolutely baffled we now have cards that offer mitigation/healing - as if that were something Astro needed. I sincerely doubt they think extensively about its strength in old ultimates to justify this change. Alternatively, WHM gets kinda screwed if you run out of lilies, I find myself needing to meld a *little* more spell speed than I normally would for prog or PUGs to ensure I can get my Cure 3/Medica 3s in a raidwide emergency. I can't just hold my lilies, or I lose dmg. Astro virtually has no drawbacks in terms of healing or dmg at all, even if its potencies are not as high as WHM. 2 Lightspeed charges is the best I've felt on AST in a long time though, and it ostensibly takes away some of the brainpower I'd otherwise use trying to manage my positioning while throwing out malefics and weaving. (I play on controller so...hard mode.) If you ask me though, they made this job HARDER to minmax. I know RNG is contentious among those of us who have played this job pre-DT, but it is a pain in the ass trying to plan around my dmg up cards now, and even if I perform well with them, it feels...unsatisfying. The healing is a banger, the cards are NOT.

[@xxJing]

If the game ever reaches a point where you ask someone "can you play X job instead, it will make this infinitely easier" then at that point the game is broken. Incidentally this is the case with most MMOs. I remember times in GW2 where I wouldn't play any form of thief in a fractal and was tempted to kick people from a group if they played thief because thieves not only did extremely subpar AOE DPS, but they constantly died. They were only useful on bosses that had no melee-unfriendly mechanics.

[@aaronhallett6488]

Are we getting an AST Dawntrail guide soon?

[@RinBanana]

Very soon!

[@aaronhallett6488]

@@RinBanana very excited! Your guides are top tier and have improved my play so much. Love your work!

[@peppermint7152]

Job strong, but I miss having a gauge with an identity. I'll play it when my group needs a "carry" healer, but it just won't be the same to me.

[@MastermindRidendo]

It just feels depressing being WHM sometimes. The job maybe simpler, but it lacks all the tools every other healer has. Our big CDs are Liturgy and Temperance, two abilities that are good, but every other healer has like 3-5 of those exact same CDs that they can rotate between for the frequent big aoe damage coming out. If I've used plenary, Temperance, and Liturgy for the giant aoe damaging mechanics that came out. I'm kind of left with hoping I have a lillie up, hoping asylum is up, and or relying on hard casting or swiftcasting a heal to try and top everyone off before the next instance of damage that could potentially kill them. It's frustrating because there have been instances in savage I wasn't fast enough or didn't have a tool for the incoming damage and it feels ass cause in my head I know it's my fault because of what I'm playing. Is WHM bad? No. Can it clear high end content? Yes. Is it more frustrating to clear high end content on compared to all the other healers due to a severe lack of mitigation tools? Yes. The way to do stuff in savage is Mitigation > Healing. AST has so much mitigation and free healing thanks to Neutral Sect and Light Speed it feels like what's the fucking point of my class? I don't particularly vibe with AST, I've been playing WHM since ARR and I always loved it more than the other healers, but over the years they've stripped away everything WHM has had leaving us with like several buttons that mean jack because if the damage is gonna one shot the raid what are you gonna heal? Nothing they're dead, should've mitigated, oh you can't cause your ONE raid mit tool is a 2 minute CD and you had to use it to save the raid because someone in the raid messed up a mechanic or because some other high damaging raid wide? Welp should've played AST. It's just so damn depressing and I honestly think half of the issues would be solved if they added a secondary effect to Plenary that gave everyone in the raid a stone skin, an aquaveil, or like 10-15 seconds of protect. Maybe give WHM some of those old Final Fantasy white mage spells like Wall. Just something, I don't give a shit about being the lowest DPS, but just a little bit more mitigation tools would be perfect.

[@TheLMBLucas]

The only change I would like to see, is a buff for every healer in their utility skills, so AST can have a buff on the cards and make it more interesting. I know that SE made the mistake of the 2 min fixed rotation and they can't look back now, so they removed Haste from the game, but other mechanics could still be implemented, because how it works now is: dps card to the dps... everything else on the tank lol

[@ikeaira8701]

make Ewer a crit buff card I say

[@Reivalentine3]

I started ffxiv a bit before the start of EW. started out on whm but found it so boring I swapped to Astro once I got to heavens ward and didn’t pick up a different class until I completed endwalker. I play on controller, and I did love ew ast but it felt like the cards where just a bit annoying at times. But now with full confidence, I find Astro so fun to play to where I actually played it in harder content for the first time in EX1. ( I have a whm friend for savage and therefore I tanked/dpsed for EE ) I think they just need to bring the other healers up to Astro’s speed for fun factor

[@Lilybellmusic]

Here's how I think about AST in terms of design - if everything stayed the same except divination was heavily nerfed, would I still enjoy playing AST? I don't think so. I wish cards were more interesting

[@RathVantas]

I think Whm needs some love. It does the lowest damage and has the worst kit in practice when considering how fights have been designed in recent history - mits and shields and burst healing are needed, huge raw healing throughput much less so. People say whm is the easiest healer and devs have mentioned difficulty of execution being a factor in job balance before but I think sage is honestly a bit easier, yet way stronger. Double barrier healer is super viable and even sometimes more comfy than 1+1, whereas 2 regen is usually terrible. Ast is just the best in almost every way, which yeah I'm glad for ast players if it's fun to play and feels good but for those of us who don't like ast it does feel unfair.

[@meno2294]

i like this Iteration of astro The only card I don't like is the hot I would really like it if it was a Mot Be great for resting a healer And then throwing that on top of them to help them get Their mana up

[@clouded9243]

I feel heavenward Astro was amazing it had its problem but it had the job fantasy down. Over the years it’s lost a lot but gained very little back. Overall I feel that it could be from a popularity thing, even when Astro is this good, their all still so many more whm. Honesty they need a rework (a big one)

[@bitvanbite]

I thought the non-damaging cards were for putting on randos in roulettes that think you're giving them a buff, so you get their comm.

[@bellamango6708]

i miss the EW card system :( as much as astrodyne was horrid I got some insane dps off of legacy ults buffing the hell out of smn LMAO I just think for me I miss the rhythm of pulling cards, I find myself overwriting bc doing it in a batch like that feels so ?? weird. it heals basically as before with preplanned stuff with an extra mit now and lightspeed is AMAZING but outside of high end im gonna be more bored i think lol Edit: I also want to mention i've been very confused on the "rework" so to speak bc astro still has so many awkward skills??? and they jsut gave us MORE cards that ALREADY HAVE A UTILITY on ANOTHER SKILL ENTIRELY. I love healing kits I can transform to meet my needs, overcompensate for prog or min max and it feels things like. oh idk horoscope. what specific purpose does horoscope serve that noct doesnt. its just a worse version of a skill we ALREADY have why didnt they fix stuff like that up, or synastry? it feels like a worse soteria like. please lmao

[@JimC1984]

DRK MCH AND AST. mained them all in HW launch back in the day. I feel like all 3 they have no idea how to change because back then they didnt homogenize jobs. Its like a different era they had in mind for the jobs identity. It makes more sense to me as well when I look at Stoemblood onwards jobs get very few changes each new expansion

[@carl493]

Personally, I would call the Lightspeed buffs "good" but not "fair". Good for the job, and it adressed a problem in the perfect way, Unfair because its just another thing that astro holds over its competitors now.

[@cakescakescakes]

it makes me sad I will never ever get to play Stormblood astro again. back when the cards were actually fun and interesting (if you're not constantly fishing for balance), extending buffs etc etc

[@mocmeo4425]

I love astro, but the fact that astro exist make the only other pure healer option much less appealing, and thats just sad because i love white mage just as much but whenever i pf with white mage i felt like i'm just lacking so much mit wise

[@yuzuki2385]

Astrologian for life!!

[@reiswindy]

I thought Bole and Ewer were pretty useful, especially for stuff like Mouser, but then again I'm really bad at Astro

[@TheJay104]

I always found astro too hard to play before really but now I'm really loving the new one. There was just too much weaving before so the 2nd lightspeed really helps. The healing cards do feel kinda sidelined, but the idea of them being defensive is nice. It's easy enough for them to change their effects to something else in future without harming the nice new system astro has.

[@zaytex5000]

You're free to enjoy the current iteration of AST but as a former main of the job in ShB/EW, it's really depressing to see my favourite job reworked for people who never played it to begin with. We have three other healers which are all very accessible and more straight forward to optimise, yet they had to simplify and essentially gut every aspect of AST's kit even though it was the only difficult healer to play and was an important identity for why a lot of people played it (i.e me).

[@TheJay104]

​@@zaytex5000 I understand that statement, I liked the old smn but now it's gotten reworked to be a 1 button job. A lot of other people love the new smn though and it's become one of the most played jobs so I don't see old smn ever coming back.. Also I find scholar to be the most difficult healer by far, there's just so many systems in there which lock out others from being used, it's not very intuitive. I can't wrap my head around that one. New ast feels like a nice step up from whm into something more complex to offer you more utility

[@TOAGamer1]

I think the only busted thing about AST is its movement. My only major issue with the healer balance is WHM vs AST situation. If you look at SCH vs SGE, SCH has more party mitigation and bigger shields but SGE has more actual healing throughput. With AST vs WHM, AST has the best of both worlds honestly.

[@zydeox1221]

I think you should point out that Astro falls off when it comes to healing at times. I week oned it on that job and there were many times where I was cornered into gcd healing whereas in whm I can output same or better healing for half of the effort. You're out of lilies? Just pop a medica III, group will regen before the next raid wide. Popping Medica III on heavy multihitting raidwides? Womp Womp, party dead. Cure III that shit. Meanwhile on astro, I'm scavenging for small resources here and there between malefics to aid my cohealer. Taking brutal impact as an example, maybe I have a horoscope activated by helios that I can add, maybe a celestial opposition with collective unconscious, and hope that my cohealer also uses his ogcds well so we can manage unscathed with no dps wastes. Can't have the group survive with the small boosts in healing I provide? I gotta gcd heal, group survivabillity is a dps gain over my shitty lil dps button. It's unreasonable to expect that we can no gcd heal the group at week 1, but as it stands I get the feeling that even with things planned out, there might have to be a gcd heal usage somewhere even in bis gear and In pf it's pretty much unviable to enter with a no gcd healer mentality that kill the entire group. The overall end result is that astro is always going to be the weakest healer on the healing side, according to fflogs statistics it's only slightly weaker than whm, but in gameplay it feels a lot weaker due to the indirect healing that comes from prepping skills or planting "healing timebombs". And If I manage to no gcd heal the fights, congratulations, my barrier healer just did more healing than me not counting his mits and barriers which is his main job, ultimately making me kind of a healing griefer. So, I disagree that the ast changes are crazy, It has a distinct weakness from the other healers, which is the higher skill floor and lesser healing capabilities aswell as a considerable higher difficulty in each encounter than whm, and to make up for that weakness It received some juicy offensive buffs that are very appreciated.

[@RocketBlox789]

Hate to be the one to tell you this, but Medica III and Helios Conjunction heal the same amount

[@zydeox1221]

@@RocketBlox789 What is your point? You're bringing up a skill that is exactly the same between the 2 jobs when I'm emphasizing why one is easier than the other using their differences as a form of reference.

[@rtbchef]

Comparing 1K dps to abyssos is bit misleading in my opinion as the damage has inflated during expansions, so 1K M4S dps is not same as 1K P8S dps

[@bnhearyza4767]

I do think WHM should do a bit more damage. If they do, I think it'll be in a good spot. Lilybell is the best healing tool in the game, in my opinion. Confession + Rapture takes care of the majority of healing, especially with its high range. And it just has vastly superior recovery tools, with Cure III spam and free rezes. It certainly isn't without its merits. On Lightspeed, I think the change is good. I dislike jobs that have bad movement but little way of dealing with it, which is how AST was in EW. I don't wanna imagine doing Light of Life and all 3 Harvests in P7S as AST. It just sounds miserable. Make movement difficult, that's fine, but give me the tools to deal with it, like with Picto or BLM. As for opportunity cost, I like the design. For DRK specifically, I am staunchly against removing the MP cost from TBN. It just needs a strong aftereffect, such as a massive heal on shield break, for example. Or in the case of something like Energy Drain, maybe do a bit more damage (I think it should always be updated to do half the damage of your main attack spell) Opportunity cost should exist, in my opinion, but be offset by powerful effects or a bit of extra damage!

[@nikidelvalle]

Honestly I raised an eyebrow at the idea that the old card system wasn't "just slap the color coded card on the correct target", because it absolutely was. Just because a fraction of players mastered giving it to a player based on their job instead of their role - an interaction only particularly relevant in a fraction of the content - doesn't mean anything. The game is not just made or balanced for hardcore content. The new card system and card effects are both indisputably more interesting for the vast majority of players. Not that I'm saying I don't also want the cards to be more interesting, just that suggesting the new cards are bland in comparison to the old ones just seems silly to me.

[@steveh1474]

yeah, theres absolutely no way any player anywhere is keeping track of 4 different players with 4 different GCD speeds, to pick the right spot for the card depending on which card they currently have and which card they draw. if this was done in any capacity at all, it was done with plugins that would answer those decisions for you, which doesnt make the player good for needing extra programs to play the game.

[@amestyrbjorn541]

@@steveh1474 That's a cope. It wasn't hard to do whatsoever and I loved it more than the current Ast. You just needed to know the 2 minute and 1 minute windows for every dps and a drk at the time in EW and then give in time. Most of the times it's enough to see an indicator of a buff on the party list next to the dps players or if such a job doesn't have those, then based on the time. Most people are just incapable of doing mechanics and preplanning astrodyne and adjusting the cards based on the draw. It was great and it was a skill expression which Square has been eliminating for all classes starting with SHB.

[@realBeltalowda]

Astro gains strength through foreknowledge which makes sense given the job is all about divination. If you’ve done the fight before (almost like having experienced it in a former life), you know what lies in the future (divining) and therefore the abilities that require setup become more and more powerful as your powers of divination (remembering fights from past lives) improves.