5.0 AST is a failure

My suggestions
The cards: Remove the annoying melee/range mess.
Arrow- 10% damage and 5% attack speed/recast
Bole- 10% damage and 10% damage mitigation
Spear- 10% damage and 5% critical hit
Spire- 10% damage and 5% direct hit
Ewer- 10% damage and mana regen
Balance- 10% damage and 5% increase to all main stats.
Lord: 10% damage and applies damage over time on enemy hit
Lady: 10% damage and applies regen for duration
Sleeve draw: Should not have a time duration.
Divination: Should not have a cool down. Once we have 3 seals it should be available to use.

Seals: We should have different combinations.
1 of each seal should stay the same. Gives damage buff.
3 celestial seals: attack speed buff
3 lunar seals: critical hit buff
3 solar seals: damage mitigation buff
2 solars and 1 lunar: direct hit buff
2 lunars and 1 solar: aoe regen
The combinations are endless. Square can totally milk this specific gameplay so well if they wanted too. Since we can’t aoe cards anymore. They should be more powerful on single targets.

Healing potencies are fine to me but nocturnal sect is so bad right now. Why don’t they just remove the sects and make neutral sect the standard. Just lower the potencies or the shield and regen and remove the 20% healing buff. Also the shields won’t stack when you have another ast but the regents will. Just my suggestions.

Personally, I am not a fan of the new cards or of Divination. I was very much fond of the old card system after playing AST for 3 years with it. I know some people will just say to get over the old ways, but the original card system was what drew me into playing AST. I enjoyed the variety of the cards, and how sometimes your Ewers were used for MP instead of the coveted Expanded Balance—how Boles were nice to have during prog if you pulled one. How giving a (Stormblood) Spear to a BRD during their burst window would cause their procs to fly off the charts. I enjoyed the variety. Yeah, Balance needed to be addressed, but I disagree with the decision to make all the cards mini-Balances.

I also miss the time effects you could apply to cards with extending them (either with RR, Time Dilation, or COpp), and I miss being able to spread cards/buffs to my party more than just every 3 minutes. I’m not a fan of single-targeting cards, but that may also be my own personal bias due to playing and raiding with an AST that insisted on just padding one person.



With regards to Sleeve Draw, I think the new one is a good and neat idea in theory, but its execution leaves Sleeve Draw/Divination windows feeling unnecessarily cumbersome. It also requires Lightspeed if we’re talking about optimizing, simply because of the amount of double-weaving we will have to do within the time frame—deploy Divination, have a MA card ready, start Drawing other cards, MA them, Play to the appropriate job and Redrawing if necessary, etc.. It just feels clunky. The LS requirement also removes a lot of versatility from that skill, as we can no longer use it for heavy movement, MP conservation during heavy healing, or for quick and dirty Gravity spam on trash.

With regards to Neutral Sect, I think it’s nice, but you can only use it at level 80—so its another skill could have been put to use at lower levels (if for nothing else than for Aspected Benefic shield buffers on a tank pulling trash), but that cannot be because of the level its acquired. A quick note, though: WHM/Di AST/SCH Whispering Dawn regens do stack with one another (they always have), and the Neutral Sect shields will stack with SCH Galvanize because they are not Nocturnal Field but a different buff. So the not-stacking is a non-issue here. The only regens that will not stack are two Di ASTs regens, but Di AST/WHM regens are fine.

COpp depresses me. Same with CU. I think COpp is far too weak for its 2-minute cooldown, and I would rather have the extension+Stun effect back because I really liked having that—and the Stun was very useful in dungeon trash packs to allow the tank a bit of a breather from all the autos. CU needs a buff because Asylum and Sacred Soil crap all over it—especially the latter. I don’t know how they thought that it was acceptable in its current state next to those two skills.

Horoscope is also a skill I think should either deploy on its own, or function like WHM’s new Plenary Indulgence, where the Helios/Aspected Helios automatically procs the 400 potency heal from Horoscope. Having to weave in Horoscope a second time for the second heal just feels unnecessary when I compare it to Plenary. I guess they didn’t want it to be a reskinned, weaker Earthly Star, but I personally think allowing the heal to detonate on its own would be nice. It would also give it some optimization like Star where you would have to think about a good place to use it so that it goes off after a party-wide AOE.

Celestial Intersection is the only new skill AST got that I like. The shield before trash pulls in dungeons is really nice to have. It feels weaker than Divine Benison, so I think a small potency buff for it would be nice but maybe not necessary. I’m still feeling cynical about how much weaker AST feels in terms of healing compared to the other two healers. Playing WHM is like night and day compared to AST—the former is so much more comfy.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

My suggestions
Seals: We should have different combinations.
1 of each seal should stay the same. Gives damage buff.
3 celestial seals: attack speed buff
3 lunar seals: critical hit buff
3 solar seals: damage mitigation buff
2 solars and 1 lunar: direct hit buff
2 lunars and 1 solar: aoe regen
The combinations are endless. Square can totally milk this specific gameplay so well if they wanted too. Since we can’t aoe cards anymore. They should be more powerful on single targets.

Healing potencies are fine to me but nocturnal sect is so bad right now. Why don’t they just remove the sects and make neutral sect the standard. Just lower the potencies or the shield and regen and remove the 20% healing buff. Also the shields won’t stack when you have another ast but the regents will. Just my suggestions.

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The problem with this is that it's too intricate. I wouldn't mind all these as it would truly push the damage or other stats but I'd have to remember ALL the combinations to know what I want to do or am doing. And part of the identity of the healer is to preserve the sects. Otherwise you're just OPing it even though you lower the healing potency of the spells. That or you're just giving it the best of both worlds but truly condemning it to a world of not being able to heal/mitigate enough.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Spire- 10% damage and 5% direct hit

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I'd change one of those stats (DH) for Determination. Some classes do not benefit from it but DET does affect most classes.

OP hit the nail on the head. I have played all of the healers throughout the years, playing them against each other to see which play style suits me best. AST has gone through a lot of changes since its inception, but it has been so nice to watch it grow and turn into such a fun and impactful job to play. At the end of 4.0 it was Fluid and the amount of diversity in skills gave you lots of options to play with. The Time abilities, two of the most versatile and fun skills to use, being stripped away broke my heart and I am still confused as to why this change was made in the first place.

AST is a shadow of it's former self in regards to how it's playstyle linked up with it's job fantasy and lore. It feels silly to say because ability wise it didn't lose a lot, but the ones we lost felt like an integral part of the job as a whole and helped to really make it feel different from the other jobs. The cards no longer feel important or different, making the lore we got behind them all in the job quests all but useless. They are now just different colors of damage up. There is no flavor anymore, no depth, no choice. It makes me sad to see my favorite job reduced to a balance-bot . It's like being used to having freshly made Ramen at a Ramen House and then being handed a bowl of Instant Noodles. Yes it's still the same in essence, but that's about it.

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Originally Posted by xDaemianx

I'm sorry but I don't think it's within an AST's identity to just throw cards all over the place purely to get the seals. It was within its identity to fit cards in specific situations, or even use them for a greater purpose (party-wide buff, more potency or longer duration). All that matters now is that we get the three different seals for our Lv50 spell. That's it: "My kingdom for a Lv50 spell", even 50, we're not even talking about our newly acquired spell. We're talking about something that did exist before and has been snatched. Now, I'm not saying it has to be like it used to be, all I'm saying is that AST has lost its uniqueness.

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I still disagree, People only used balance and spear that was not engaging, now you have to decide on the fly and plan on actually using stuff instead of just spread balance, spread spear and that’s it. But like you said this is about the kit because the uniqueness is still in tact

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

I still disagree, People only used balance and spear that was not engaging, now you have to decide on the fly and plan on actually using stuff instead of just spread balance, spread spear and that’s it. But like you said this is about the kit because the uniqueness is still in tact

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What plan? The only thing we can do is use cards on the right job. That's about it. Before, we could at least decide who could benefit more from that buff (BRD - Crit; MNK - Dmg; Arrow - BLM; just to give some examples). It was no easy task trying to spread balance, though. In 4.0 we could actually plan what to use and when to use it.

If by uniqueness you mean "cards", then I think you missed the point of what an AST is. Think of it as if SE had decided to let you summon Bahamut provided that you only cast Ruin 2 while on Trance, nothing else. It's a loss on your DPS but, hey, you get to summon Bahamut and that's the essence of what a SMN is, right?

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Originally Posted by AmurT

- Neutral Sect:
Looks good at first, but its value quickly diminishes once you remember that shields and regens don't stack. You would use maybe two heals with this ability and I think that's an issue, especially when comparing it to the WHM equivalent bringing a much more useful 10% mobile party mitigation.

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I wanna just point out one quirk with this, the shields and regens from Nocturnal Sect do stack with other buffs if it's the buff that's not normally provided by your current Sect. Say for example if you're in Diurnal Sect and you use Neutral Sect, the Nocturnal Balance shield granted in this situation does stack with Galvanize and Nocturnal Field. That's because the cross-buff it applies is a unique buff and not the same one that's normally applied when you're in that Sect.

It doesn't explain why this shield stacks with other shields when other shields don't normally stack with eachother... but hey, the way it goes.

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Originally Posted by xDaemianx

What plan? The only thing we can do is use cards on the right job. That's about it. Before, we could at least decide who could benefit more from that buff (BRD - Crit; MNK - Dmg; Arrow - BLM; just to give some examples). It was no easy task trying to spread balance, though. In 4.0 we could actually plan what to use and when to use it.

If by uniqueness you mean "cards", then I think you missed the point of what an AST is. Think of it as if SE had decided to let you summon Bahamut provided that you only cast Ruin 2 while on Trance, nothing else. It's a loss on your DPS but, hey, you get to summon Bahamut and that's the essence of what a SMN is, right?

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No you’ve completely missed the point, there’s nothing wrong with the card system because you don’t like it. The problem is the kit that revolves around the card system itself i.e divination, sleeve draw and what not are the problems along with its healing problems.

And nerf to things like collective, don’t push your card agenda on a post about the core issues of the class.

I feel like Ast has become a healing slot machine. Spin to win with 3 different seals!

I agree. Someone commented to me that they like the new AST cause they like support functions. AST has less support skills now. A support class was when I could utilize different cards for different situations. Now I heal while fishing for stamps for a minor DPS buff that really only shines in trial/raid groups, and is only a little more effective than me focusing on DPS when I am in a group. AST before was adjustable to the size of the party; there were strategies for cards that shined in raids/trials and others that were ideal for dungeons. Each new skill I have gotten I have been excited for possibility, and each new skills is underwhelming especially in light of the time management, assorted support abilities, and other aspects I have lost.