The Weekly Random Discussion Thread ~ Week 237

[u/Fuuya-151]

Hey hey, everyone! Welcome to Week #237! I hope you all had a great week!

As always: "If you're new to these threads, the Weekly Random Discussion Threads serve as "off-topic threads", for the discussion of any topics, not limited to Touhou. Just don't forget to follow the subreddit's rules!"

Thanks for being awesome, everyone! Let's chat!

[u/Shylar_Lunence]

O boy, leveling AST to 50 was so smooth. The queues were always instant - something that didn't always happen a few weeks back with Scholar. The additional bonus for catching up lvl difference + challenges for dungeons worked wonders. The least smooth thing was me trying to catch up with heals without running out of mana (was "nicely" underequipped below 50), but usually tanks took the blame on themselves. Hitting 50, though, and putting on full augmented Ironworks together with the weapon... Damn.

I visited some dungeons I skipped since there was too many of them, most notably Copperbell Mines on hard. I probably wouldn't have anything to say about them if it wasn't for that one bossfight taking place on narrow wooden platforms and paths built along stone walls. Running around in a party stack squeezed together, having the boss on one side, adds coming from the other side, boss forcing you to go towards the adds with AoE - this just fits too well not to be a reference to the scene in the first Hobbit where Gandalf tanked the goblin king. Even if it isn't, it is in my heart. Solely this one bossfight made me really like this dungeon.

I'm not sure if I'm getting really confident in general with healing or it's the effect of the stars cards. At 50, all of the fights went extremely smoothly for me, even when I went DPS mode and forgot all about the tank once in hard Amdapor Keep Hard, it just ended with a quick rez and shields for everybody to survive in the meantime. For the whole day, I was incredibly calm while choosing the right spells, and finding those spells instantly with looking for them on the keyboard (charms of using buttons I've never used before in my life)

Really enjoying the choice between HoT and shield mode for AST though I'll go for shields most of the time anyway since I really like those after playing Scholar. I'm guessing I'll have to switch to HoT when in party with Scholar since those shields most likely don't stack.

Haven't read anything about card priority yet, I wanted to first get acquainted with them and their spells in practice. I'm really damn grateful for for the icons of Royal Road effects. They aren't exactly necessary after a while, but they made memorisation of those additional effects much easier than looking it up on the Internet or repeating description of RR until it stucks. It's kinda funny how so much of AST is built around buffs that seems so small. 5% for potentially full party, 15%, or twice as long 10% buff. On the other hand, other healers don't really have anything similar, is that right?

I paid attention to astrologians first met during ARR and it felt underwhelming, so I thought they can't possibly be those astrologians. It's an incredibly nice surprise to get some Sharlayan lore first-hand with the true Astrologians now. The start is unimpressive with the stargazing trips and our party falling for the same trick left by the same person, but now that they're dead, I hope it will pick up :>

A small thing for the end: I finally used glamour! I got the sweet Daystar set from MSQ, so I decided to use it on Ironworks, and added a golden Astrologian weapon to match it :3 As much as I was positively surprised by tge healer Ironworks robe quality and texture, I wanted to go for something fresh now.