COMPLETE Astrologian Job Breakdown from DAWNTRAIL Media Tour! 

Oh man, my muscle memory is going to be the final boss any time I play AST

Undraw *gone*? That we lived to see the day...

With these new mechanics, this would be the perfect time to add Time Dilation back, please, I really would love to see it make a return

I'm an old boomer AST. For me, it wasn't the RNG per se that made me fall in love with old AST, it was that every card did something unique. So while I did like the quirkiness of having cards that increased crit or increased sks/sps or acted as an MP regen, I see the new cards as a strong step in a direction I really love.

As someone who really fell in love with Astro from the FTP experience, this is making me want to dive back in. 🔥

re 3:38 - I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually amplifies shield healer's outgoing heals, but rather incoming heals they get (same wording as Krasis)

I am an OG astro from Heavensward. Played it since it was released and I loved the card system. When they changed the card system I stopped playing. I think I am going to play it again now! Old astro is back baby!!!

As someone who started playing healer on Astro back in Stormblood, I am loving the new utilities on the cards now. I was so scared seeing the job action trailer and seeing the screwed up card ui. They should have never forced all cards to just do dps. I loved stb astro because it was so unique, had a bunch of utility and was generally harder to play than the other healers. This is making me so excited I might have to play through dt as astro instead of sage. It will never be as it was in stb, but I am just so overwhelmingly happy cards are going back to utility-based.

I'm interested to see how it feels in-game! Thanks for the thorough update, Happs!

Can't wait for it to get reworked again next expansion

I'm SO excited for cards not all just being the same damage buff!

Im just mildly annoyed that it's astral draw that gives the barrier and umbral draw that gives the regen, when those are the opposites of what diurnal and nocturnal sects used to represent

My main question about Astro still remains unanswered: What is happening with Astro's MP economy? With Astrodyne gone, we lose our key MP recovery outside of Lucid Dreaming and go back to having the worst MP economy of the healers. Here's a comparison going forward: Sage: Addersgall grants 1 stack every 20 seconds and each use of an Addersgall stack grants 700 MP and Rhizomata granting a free stack every 90 seconds. That's 2100-2800 MP a minute recovered. On top of that, Toxikon is a free skill and they start battles with 3 uses. Scholar: Their extra MP comes from Aetherflow, recovering 2000 MP every 60 seconds. White Mage: Assize grants 500 MP every 40 seconds, but this lack of MP recovery is backed up with Lillies every 30 seconds for free healing/damage and Thin Air granting a free spell use once every minute, starting with 2 stacks, and saving the White Mage anywhere from 400 to 2400 MP on that cast. Temperance will grant them three free Glare IVs every 2 minutes, adding more free toys to their arsenal. Astro: With no Astrodyne, all they recover is 500 MP a minute with Astral/Umbral Draw. What I'm hoping is they could either add an MP refresh into one of their core skills, like Collective Unconscious of Celestial Opposition (or even Synastry to make us remember this skill exists!), or even return Lightspeed to how it was originally, giving the reduced cast time and reducing the cost of their spells by 50%. Astro's been my main healing choice since HW and I want to see it in a good spot. I don't want to go back to being MP starved or having to pump Piety materia where Det/Crit/Spell Speed could be placed.

The return of HW Bole made me smile. But I like how it waffles between both aspects, instead of constantly fishing for 3 signs, you're literally going Astral and Umbral (without the sects) so the AST flavor is still there

Lol I want Barrier/Regen stances back cause I liked nocturnal AST >>; but this looks fun! Bye Astrodyne, you will not be missed.

As a controller player i'm gonna hate that now there are 3 play buttons😢

Honestly I love this return to form for the cards!

Ooooooh! I decided months ago that I’d main AST for the expansion, so with your review, I’m getting excited.

AST became my favorite healer some time ago, and have to say, I'm kinda loving these changes.

So uh... with no Astrodyne and less draws, how are we recovering MP

I've been enjoying Astro ever since shadowbringers and I feel like this was the general necessary step to build upon for future use. I'm actually really excited to play Astro and have a majority of the things I like and a couple of new toys to play with

AST loss some MP regen. Draw was 5% MP every 30s with Astrodyne every 90s offering 50 potency MP restore for 15s on one seal (Astrodyne can be up faster at the start of the fight but effectively every 3 draws so 90s). Now we only have Draw at 5% every 60s.

While I was a rng/Astrodyne enjoyer, I am loving the cards having unique effects! Excited to play DT Astro ❤

i'll admit when i'm wrong; i dismissed the astro changes and was getting ready to ditch the class but this breakdown really put into perspective how much better it's going to be

You're vid is the only one that mentioned prepull you get a free astral draw automatically, which is huge for the buff window (although I would have loved seeing a 50 sec countdown timer request 😂). You're a gentleman and an astro sir, thank you!

Loving this music. Oye!

I will miss the rng draw system but this looks really promising. We are so back.

This takes me way back on the astro life, I may start playing it again. I really hated the changes made in Endwalker and never played it

I love the direction they're going in getting variety back into Astro. What I don't like, is that the cards are all single target... as if The job needed 7 variants of "tank" mits now when three was already to much and seldom used outside of aggressive dungeon pulls.

For later videos, dont put the disclaimer and your tool tips right above the job gauge lol

heavensword astro is back. love it

Have to say I'm disappointed to see the Sun, Moon, Star icons gone (that was fun to work with) but happy to see more distinct cards back that add variety to the gameplay again =)

I fell off of AST because i found sage so fun this expansion but what does an AST do when a raid gets nuked either by bad positioning or a mechanic that sets everybody to low hp. Whats the 'oh shit' setup?

I'm not sure about their thought process behind loading into an instance with astral already drawn. It feels if you dump your utility pre pull, then use balance, divination, lord, draw, spear then you're drawing umbral WAY too early. This means that you'll end up having lady of crowns during your 2 minute window, and lord of crowns during the off minute. Unless you hold onto lord and balance for a full minute, which imo is gonna feel really bad.

A bit concerned about some aspects of the reworked card system. Without being able to shuffle, we will almost certainly not use some cards to avoid sitting on astral/umbral draw? Also, if we are sitting on a lord, but draw comes off cooldown would we delay drawing until raid buffs due to drift etc or an appropriate time to use said lord? Finally, with us getting one dps increase card per draw, in 4 man content this could potentially force us into using cards on ourselves or tanks in the event of 2 melee/2 ranged dps slots which currently is not optimal. Cautiously optimistic because its seems more engaging than the current system but these bugs are going to need to be addressed.

I hope they give Astrologians 3 charges of Astral/Umbral Draw for MAXIMUM BUFFS!!! I also wish they brought back Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect as their own stances again...

Shouldn't you use "The Arrow" on the tank instead? It increases how much healing they receive by 10%, not how much healing they do to others. Or am I misunderstanding the wording on that effect?

lol the Synastry off in the corner

Yeah, i'm going back to it. No more RNG makes me a happy guy.

Hmm, was hoping AST get a gap closer too. Every other healer class has some sort of speed boost or gap closer; not sure why we're excluded.

Basically we’re back to Stormblood cards. Give or take a few differences

I only miss that AST used to be unique. Either be a pure healer or shield healer.

but how are we managing mana with this kit?

My biggest complaint with getting rid of the randomness of the cards is that it doesn't really make sense to talk about a deck of cards that you draw the same cards in the same order from? I'm not really thrilled by it even if I understand it's done to mainly balance classes, and perhaps the only way to.

Curious to see what they are going to do about mana management. Yes, Astro had too much mana in EW, but removing Astrodyne and half the amount of card pulls means you are going to be forever mana negative. This is especially a problem if you have to hold the caster card the entire minute to line up with buffs.

Looks amazing! I missed our real shields and the card effects!

imo, they should have named the new draw skills Nocturnal and Diurnal Draw instead, if only because I still miss Nocturnal and Diurnal Sect 😔

Wait, so we can balance, die, rezmage, and balance again?

I think I like this. I just wish Synastry was gone already too. What I would have done differently is the 2 different cards per Play button still having variation, so it'd be a coin flip for each but still similar effects and not too unpredictable/unreliable while still having that random chance flavor. Still want Celestial Opposition to have stun back... Oracle having no AoE damage fall-off is epic.

The whole reason they removed the original (and best imo) card system was because they didn’t want parties waiting on an aoe balance before pulls. Fair enough. But Now they’re incentivizing waiting 60 sec after astral draw to have umbral off cooldown so both dps cards run concurrently as you waste the other 2 cards to pull the ranged dps card within the divination window. The devs do this all the time. Take something away for x reason then implement it down the road again without addressing the elephant in the room. Its confusing at best and infuriating at worst. Example 1: we used to have unique cleanse spells for each healer. Whm had esuna, sch had leeches, ast had I believe it was called exaltation?. They removed and consolidated them into esuna as a role action because “its confusing to players to have multiple abilities/spells for the same function” yet phys ranged now have 3 functionally identical party-wide mits with different names and looks. Example 2: They removed miasma 1 and 2 on sch because “its too complicated for healers to maintain multiple dots” yet now sage gets the equivalent of miasma 2 while scholars get a dot only usable once every two minutes? 🤦. Just go back to the original card system for God’s sakes and tweek it slightly. idk why its so hard for them to admit when they make mistakes it’s okay no one is perfect. And don’t get me started with “healing magick trait” increasing damage on healer dps spells. We have been spamming the same limited number of spells for literal YEARS and you give us a trait that’s simply a potency increase? Why do 2/3 of the work instead of spending the extra little bit of time and at least also upgrade the spell effects so we dont have to be looking at fall malefic/broil 4, etc for another 2 plus years. Its laziness.

Oh, wow. With the RNG gone, I might give AST a try. Have been playing WHM as my go-to healer, so let's see

HELL YEA. my love for AST since 3.0 and maining it is even more increased! i love this haha

Card changes seem good to me, and probably the best we're going to get. My only complaints are that it still seems as overly busy as it was before. Some people liked that aspect but I did not, we'll see how it plays out.

i cant wait im happy with this change been play ast since its launch

Feels like there’s more buttons now…. Yay?

Biggest fear relieved... The cards actually have unique effects again. By effects for each card, I'm pretty happy with this as you've shown it. I'm sure my opinions will shift a bit after I go hands on myself, but I don't foresee any major complaints from my circle of people. Biggest downside is Cards still occupies 5 Buttons. 1 shy of worst case scenario, while not really being able to choose between Astral and Umbral draws is a bit of a bummer, its better than half a hot bar for just my cards. Honestly, there was a ton of ways playing cards could've come out, and most are worse than just 5 buttons. So won't complain too much on that.

So are you forced to pull Astral draw to get Lord of crown for damage?

My hotkeys, poor, poor hotkeys 😭

Kinda wish the draws were different buttons even if the cd was shared. Would've preferred to choose which draw or even being random over it just always being the same rotation. Just makes it less interesting imo

Issues found from at least in this media tour: 1. The top is mana economy. 5% regen per minute without LD is unacceptable. You will run out of mana in 2mins by just spamming malefic, and no free GCD. compare them to the others: WHM 5% per 40s + thin air/min + lily gauge aka 4 free GCD / ~min. SCH: solid 20% regen/min and SGE 21%/min 2. loss potency from Macrocosms since increasing potency to malefic. 3. dps loss in comparison with current AST because modifications of card system. No compensation from spells. 4. Enhancing defensive toolkit is questionable (not only issued in Ast, the other healers as well). 4 more single survival buffs in 2mins, with existing 3 stacks bene, 2 stacks Celestial intersection, exaltation, etc. What is more, they buff tanks in the same defensive toolkit at the same time. Over 60% of game contents you will never be asked to utilize these abilities. 5. mobility is still the worst amongst healers. The potency and value can be oversight and can be modified in the future, however, these obvious shortages already bring me bad impressions in which the dev team lacks attention in testing and evaluation. The reckless rework has been proven that they've never bothered to play AST themselves, and still dare to present it onto the media tour expecting those players to find out the errors, but no paying them to do so. Take note, Ast is one of the few jobs which has the earliest revamp announcement since 6.2（so 10 months period）, yet it turned out to be a foreseeable failure with current design. It is really bringing the player base in a speechless and disappointing situation and turn down the trust to the current developing team. How did you spend your time on this project?

I miss shield astro.

I'm a little concerned about mana management now... 5% every 60 seconds instead of 30, plus no astrodyne... i liked infinite ast mana lol

So from how it looks.. You open with.. Malefic, Damage card, Lord, Dot, Draw, Damage Card, Malefic spam. Then redraw at 1 minute and spend the junk cards, hold damage card for 2min burst window, then basically repeat the opener.... So cards between opener and 2 minutes actually mean nothing and you just need to stop the draw drifting at odd minutes. What would have been cooler, was if you Astral Draw you go into regen stance, but Umbral Draw puts you in shield stance, so you alternate between both stances at every minute. Could have added much more flavour to the gameplay of balancing the Astral and Umbral cycles.

Goodbye Draw animation, you're the last card animation since release and I'll miss you. Oh, and Redraw. I can imagine PUG nightmare seeing AST keep eating their cards themselves now

We just need Time Dilation back!

It would be pretty lol if NIN or SAM's 1m burst is just so much better than all the ranged that we just give them the card instead xD

We sages are eating good this expansion.

celestial opposition needs to be better it doesnt make sense for a regen healer to have a basic aoe heal as a 60s CD and does the same thing as aspected Helios for the wait. Thats the kinda thing a barrier healer would get a 60s cooldown -_-

Astro is the same as WoW Shadow priest. The class will just never be stable

oof the new card system gonna take a while to relearn. rip my play macros T_T

It’s like a utility version of the older Eclipse system that Warcraft Druids had where you jumped back and forth between Sun magic and Moon magic

err where do i get my mana now exactly

Heck yeah this is all really cool! Very excited. I'm a little confused as to why they still call it Neutral Sect considering we don't have Sects anymore but they've always been strangely weird with skill names. Overall it looks much more fun than EW

I like this a lot actually. I think thematically it fits better for an Astro to be “in control” of the cards being drawn, so to speak, instead of playing like a gambler who can suffer from rng lmao

Do they still have collective too?! Thats a lot of mit for a pure healer

I'm gonna have so many mouse over macros O_o

All these new skills... And no mana to use them. With the new cards being extra charges of stuff AST already had. I guess I will go join the MNK mains by switching to picto until the inevitable mid expansion bandaid fix.

The one big downside to the changes is how many dps get "left out" on buffs. Before you'd get 3 people during buffs with a card meaning only one person gets left out. Now only one person gets a card which is a huge feels bad moment and makes you feel more like DNC 2.0 rather than someone who buffs the whole (most) party

I see Synastry is still there.

ED may not have been needed in statics but in "normie" content that 3rd charge is definitely welcomed.

This only shows me the fact SE dont know wtf to do with astros or healing classes....this is basically pre-sb 😑

As someone who hasn't unlocked AST but remembering how people described it in ShB, I wish they gave it the 2 sects back. That looked like the core of the class identity from the outside looking in and until it returns I have no desire to unlock it.

Much prefer this over EW ast, but I prefer SB ast over this. If they can add some card interaction back similar to what we had before along with more time based mechanics I will be happy. RNG is controversial and even though I do like it I can live without it IF I get my interaction back with my cards and more time mechanics to play around.

My FC mates are still whining about that AST isn't the same as it was in HW over 7 year ago, and they refuse to accept any changes that aren't making it that again. But they also only play DPS jobs. I mainly play WHM or Sage for healing and really didn't like AST in EW. It was so clunky to play on controller. If you're a raider with a set group and macro everything maybe it worked, but it just felt bad. And the dopamine hit of getting rng in your favour wasn't enough to pull it out. These changes seem like a step in the right direction, and I'm excited to try AST again. It seems like it'll feel better to play.

not the random whm lashings..

Looking at the balance discord it seems like AST players hate this re-work as it removes the core of what made AST fun for them and play differently from other healers, unsurprisingly people who were put off by the complexities in playing the current card system and didn't play Astro before seem happy that there is a star-themed-WHM in the game now.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT GACHA GAME ANYMORE ON ASTRO

3ED3EZ

Seems like I'm boned as a controller player since it doesn't look like I can do a play macro for each party member. I can't make 18 macros to cover all 3 types of card and trying to soft target and play cards for me is out of my capabilities so astro will be out of my reach.

The card changes dont seem that great to me. Its essentially Aether stacks from sch, but you lose all the flexibly with how to use your resources.

I came here expecting to say RIP to my beloved, but… I think I like how it sounds? Huh, maybe I won’t be switching mains after all.

As an AST main who has mained the job since HW, I like this. Was very skeptical about another rework and thought EW was the best iteration we've seen since HW/SB, but this seems better. Looks more fun to play and the card stuff looks neat and a great callback to HW/SB AST. Hoping for the best!

I had no hope for AST but... ehh, getting the more varied cards back seems interesting! It may be good, but I have been burned by AST reworks too many times.

I'm hyped for new Astro. Astro is my regen healer of choice but I started leveling white mage because in current content, with everything happening regarding mechanics AND having to worry about what card I got, where does it go, is it the right seal, etc was overwhelming for me. Not having to deal with that RNG and also getting more varied card effects is gonna bring me back to Astro in full force and I'm so ready for it

Looks fun!!!!!!!!

I like it will miss the rng tho

Eh White Mage is till better imo.

Astros are feasting thank god

RIP astro. square enix hates you.

good riddance to undraw, shit should have been gone 4 years ago lol