Astrologian Discussion Thread: (Insert Yu-Gi-Oh! joke here)

[Snoctopus]

2. AOE Regen
3. Single Regen on tank
...
...
5a. Maybe also hit a Time Dilation on tank...

I have been doing this combo a lot since I've read this, and it's pretty baller. 40s on Aspected benefic, 1min on aspected helios is very nice. I actually didn't know that AH and AB stacked prior to reading this post, and have been stacking the two pretty religiously for larger dungeon pulls and on bosses. If you happen to have an extended Bole card up, things just get even better.

As far as LA goes, I tend to pop it around 70%. I'm treating it like I treat Invigorate, use early and use often.

I'm still feeling that nocturnal is weak.

[bercus]

For me it depends on the fight, some fights I'll pop my Lumi early around 90%mp, if I know I won't be hitting my max mp again while its up. Once I know a fight, I kinda time my shrouds(lumi), to the point where it'll come back up when I need it, without it reaching my max mp again, though it may get close. At the moment, I only seem to run into mp issues if I'm constantly raising, or I have to cover for other healer if they die/low on mp. These main reasons is why I like to keep my MP at a high at all times if possible, just incase events like these happen.

I'm really liking healing ravana ex though, even get to make use of barrier stance, had far better results with it over the other stance.

I do the same. Pop your MP recovery as soon as possible (of course not right away but after losing like 20-30%). Why? Because you will pretty much sit on a good MP-Pool then and are already ready for next pull, after current pull is dead. If you use it when your MP Pool is already about to be empty you have pretty much wasted getting your cooldown back up to use it again.

If People Pop MP recovery at 20-40% as they mention here, you are not using your skills perfectly. After the beginning of a pull I use them at like 10.000 MP of my 13.000 MP. While healing and tossing a nuke or so I am already full again and my Cooldown is already starting again. The MP I am missing I recover to pretty much full while Walking to the next pull. So noone ever has to wait on me and I can pump out MP pretty much as I want.

Same for raids. Don´t wait till 20-30% to use MP recovery abilities as a healer. When you use it once, I have already used it twice .

[Snoctopus]

Right now, I'm figuring like a few quick changes would make this class much more appealing to groups. I don't think they would be crazy overpowered.

1) Remove penalty from Expanded Royal Road. Just make it a flat AoE buff.
2) Change "The Spire" to TP Regain
3) Change "The Ewer" to MP Regain
4) Change "The Spear" to apply a % reduction to cooldowns already on countdown
5) Allow stance changes in combat

There! Now every card is useful!

[Ratatapa]

I do wish you could change stance, would love to change to diurne just for Collective Uncouncious.

1) I'm not sure I 100% understand Time Dillation (is it me or you have to use it AFTER you give a buff?)

2) And what buffs actually works with Time Dillation?

3) I'm not 100% sure if i'm doing good with cards.

Spire + Ewer unless I really need them I try to Shuffle them if not I give Ewer to DRK then me then SMN and Spire to melee DPS (like MNK and DRG)
Spear and Arrow I auto Royal Road
Bole Depending the pull I either auto use on tank or Spread it
Balance Always Spread unless I have Expanded Road

Anything to changE?

[Snoctopus]

I do wish you could change stance, would love to change to diurne just for Collective Uncouncious.

1) I'm not sure I 100% understand Time Dillation (is it me or you have to use it AFTER you give a buff?)

2) And what buffs actually works with Time Dillation?

1) You cast TD on the target after buffs have been applied.

2) It only adds 15 seconds to buffs applied by you - cards, regens, etc.

3) I'm not 100% sure if i'm doing good with cards.

Spire + Ewer unless I really need them I try to Shuffle them if not I give Ewer to DRK then me then SMN and Spire to melee DPS (like MNK and DRG)
Spear and Arrow I auto Royal Road
Bole Depending the pull I either auto use on tank or Spread it
Balance Always Spread unless I have Expanded Road

Ewer: I'll usually give to either DRK or myself. If it's a boss fight where I think I'll run into MP issues, I give it to myself first. If it's on dungeon trash, I'll either reshuffle it, or RR it.
Spire: Reshuffle, then RR. Right now this is the least useful card, by far.
Bole: Tank. Good candidate for Spread. Extended/Enchanced Bole + Regens + TD on tank can be pretty bad ass.
Balance: Highest DPS. Another good candidate for Spread. If I have this spread and pull arrow or spear, I'll RR them and give this to party.
Arrow: BLM > other DPS. Will RR if Balance is held.
Spear: Hardest to use. I'll either put it on myself if I'm about to use LA, or put it on NIN. I RR this one a lot.

[Ratatapa]

1) You cast TD on the target after buffs have been applied.

2) It only adds 15 seconds to buffs applied by you - cards, regens, etc.


Ewer: I'll usually give to either DRK or myself. If it's a boss fight where I think I'll run into MP issues, I give it to myself first. If it's on dungeon trash, I'll either reshuffle it, or RR it.
Spire: Reshuffle, then RR. Right now this is the least useful card, by far.
Bole: Tank. Good candidate for Spread. Extended/Enchanced Bole + Regens + TD on tank can be pretty bad ass.
Balance: Highest DPS. Another good candidate for Spread. If I have this spread and pull arrow or spear, I'll RR them and give this to party.
Arrow: BLM > other DPS. Will RR if Balance is held.
Spear: Hardest to use. I'll either put it on myself if I'm about to use LA, or put it on NIN. I RR this one a lot.

I see thanks also

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...8c6e83dc31c3c9

- An issue wherein the monk action “The Forbidden Chakra” and the astrologian action “Draw” cannot be queued immediately following the use of a weaponskill or spell.

[Elcura]

I feel like Nocturnal Stance is more useful after doing a few Ravana EX in it. The shields are effective coupled with close to WHM power heals. However, you definitely have to be more selfish with cards and smarter with MP management (which I feel AST is really good at now compared to when I first started) but overall even with Ravana spamming aoe damage attacks and healing them with A.Helios I didn't really get that low on MP (keeping pace with WHM for the most part). Nocturnal Stance seems good when you know the fight and when you can get away with not healing and when shields have the best effect.

The 5% increase in cure power helps and I'm not sure making the shields SCH level or lowering the MP will be fair, because right now it feels like I do just enough work to get up there. At a certain point there isn't enough regen in the world to prevent 1 shot damage. Though I'm sure that'll change with ilvl.

Ultimately until Alexander it'll be hard to see how AST is in a real playground.

[Silenka]

Can't remember if someone mentioned this before but it's really easy to just hold a card before an uncapped dungeon/trial by attacking your striking dummy -_- Looking forward to seeing if SE finds some convoluted way to "fix" this, lets AST hold cards without having to be in battle or just ignores it...

[Shaano]

Felt this goes here for you guys.

[Silenka]

This isn't how I pictured using cards before, but it is now

[Damane]

i have a question:
whats the point of Collective Unconscious compared to Sacred Soil? Both reduce damage taken by 10% (while soil also grants some conserve MP to succor), but i have to press the button down constantly on astrologian, cant move and cant cast anything else while a scholar can ¬.¬
I cant see a use for the ability as it is because it immobalizes me and i cant do anything else when i want to maintain the shield (or regen effect of it).

[Raldo]

Sounds like it's basically for easily-forseeable hard hits, like those Astral Flow-esque invincible-primal-is-about-to-explode moments.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Sounds like it's basically for easily-forseeable hard hits, like those Astral Flow-esque invincible-primal-is-about-to-explode moments.

I never got what the point of shielding these was tbh.

[Ratatapa]

Sounds like it's basically for easily-forseeable hard hits, like those Astral Flow-esque invincible-primal-is-about-to-explode moments.

You can't change stance in battle, so you have to choose before engaging the mob

[Elcura]

i have a question:
whats the point of Collective Unconscious compared to Sacred Soil? Both reduce damage taken by 10% (while soil also grants some conserve MP to succor), but i have to press the button down constantly on astrologian, cant move and cant cast anything else while a scholar can ¬.¬
I cant see a use for the ability as it is because it immobalizes me and i cant do anything else when i want to maintain the shield (or regen effect of it).

It's MP saving really, a weak shield and/or regen + 10% damage reduction or whatever other combos and it comes into use for various situations. Generally it's not very useful on the fly, but way more useful if you plan out your actions and know the fight.

It's also great for getting people to gather together, something about a bright shiny bubble attracts people to it. Like most AST abilities, the order you use them is important.

[Damane]

It's MP saving really, a weak shield and/or regen + 10% damage reduction or whatever other combos and it comes into use for various situations. Generally it's not very useful on the fly, but way more useful if you plan out your actions and know the fight.

It's also great for getting people to gather together, something about a bright shiny bubble attracts people to it. Like most AST abilities, the order you use them is important.

yeah but compared to sacred soil it has so many disadvantages. i dont understand the reason why SE decided to pretty much immobiloze us when sch can pop sacred soil where they want and can do during soil what they want.

[Burningthought]

After getting more comfortable with AST (finally hit 60!), i've been using a lot of the tips and self discoveries i've found here and at least with Diurnal Sect i'm feeling more at home.

+A.Benefic and A.Helios on all pulls/bosses
+Using Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition to keep buffs up longer, especially useful during boss fights.
+Use Ewer on yourself more instead of shuffling or trashing the card.
+Make more use of Essential Diginity
+If arrow is being held and the tank is taking a lot of damage, pop it on yourself, <1second cast times are beast mode right now.

-Stop using Lightspeed, it's fucking useless.
-Some of the cards still feel particularly weak as mentioned before, Spire/Ewer would be awesome if it was TP/MP regen instead.
-Collective Unconscious is really bad compared to sacred soil and super situational. A lot of people have been saying this is good for big foreseeable damage, but why would you use this over say another A.Helios or even a normal Helios for regen, for Nocturnal why not just pop A.Helios? Astral Flows and Megaflares have never wiped parties before and it's not like there's a giant benefit in mitigating/healing that damage any further.
-WHM/SCH both have ways of temporarily increasing their potency (Divine Seal+Medica II for whm, and Rouse+Fey Illumination+Whispering Winds for sch) but AST does not. Lightspeed is shit right now and removing the potency penalty might bring us up to WHM/SCH levels for those tight encounters.

~The amount of effort/work being put into healing on AST might just be the shitty gear everyone is wearing. Tanks are taking a lot of damage and i'm constantly on edge trying to keep up. Higher ilvl might even this out.
~Expanded RR, i'm still not sure if this is worth having up. +5% damage/+10% Attack Speed/+20% Recast increase on everyone in the PT, would it really be too much to just have the normal potency?
~I still think that Essential Dignity needs a small Sect buff.
~Synastry doesn't seem to work if you are using Helios or A.Helios. I think it'd be nice if we could have the initial cures work towards the synastry target. Maybe lower the duration if they want to even it out some more.
~Nocturnal Sect i've only had the chance to use maybe once or twice in trials, I still think there's something that needs to be tweaked but I can't put my finger on it. I don't think increasing the potency is the answer, however something is needed since we lose so much healing potential without the HoTs.
~Thinking about it some more, if they had Essential Dignity give a shield in Diurnal Sect and a HoT in Nocturnal Sect with the same potency as A.Benefic it might actually help out with some of the issues too.

Edit:
~I'm still running into MP issues, preempting LA and popping Ewer cards are helping, but there's definitely some cases where DPS can't keep up with the pulls, or the tank is taking a lot of avoidable damage. It feels like AST is missing some tools to deal with those situations but WHM/SCH might be running into the same issues.
-The whm and scholar threads have like zero posts about people running into MP or healing issues. It's seems like its just an AST thing.

[Nama]

Ast buff and sects concepts really fall short for me and both should be more impactful and relevant to more abilities. Sects especially should affect more spells and abilities.

Collective unconsciousness is lame and really should be more rewarding for such a huge drawback as channeling. If they insist on keeping the channel then it should give something more. I think a good addition would be for it to aoe buff(with no potency loss) any card you have on spread.

Lightspeed should get mp regen effect and luminous aether should just givea flat amount of mp back.

[Silenka]

Lightspeed has been occasionally useful for me in dungeons for spamming cures on a tank who's pulled too much. It probably should have something to make it more appealing to use. Keep in mind though pretty much every job has an ability or two that's very marginally useful and only used in certain cases (and sometimes really not at all). AST wasn't going to be an exception

[Seravi Edalborez]

Lightspeed has been occasionally useful for me in dungeons for spamming cures on a tank who's pulled too much.

But the problem is lightspeed only lowers your cast time. Not your GCD. So any spell that is not over 2.5s is getting basically no benefit except "can cast while moving" in exchange for being 25% weaker.