50 gil says they pulled another Gordias and "tested" it phase-by-phase with invulnerability on.
They probably postponed it because their drafted list of changes for ast was;
- Aspected helios mp cost reduced by 100
- Fall Malefic Potency Increased by 10
- Earthly star radius increased by 2 yalms.
At this rate they are just gonna reveal that all they wanted to do was to delete draw, and give us back one of the old iterations of sleeve draw(the one that auto-draws subsequent cards for you after playing one) and put it on a 90s timer. (oh and you also can only use the ability in whilst combat)
So here's the spicy meatball parmesan.
All healers are in a good place. They all perform very well in content and are not hurting in terms of output.
The problems with AST are things like astrodyne not lining up with divination well, the seal systems, the way minor arcana works. etc All things that need to be improved but ultimately function the way they are. Largely, we are dealing with how the job plays.
The tanks on the other hand are not all in a good place. PLD for example was significantly behind the other tanks because its niche of not losing uptime was negated on every boss this tier. PLD's toolkit is revolved around not melding well with burst windows and keeping uptime. Damage has shifted to being all about those 2min windows and uptime is irrelevant for melee now, they always get it. PLD would struggle behind other tanks for the rest of the expansion without immediate changes. Additionaly, they said they are giving PLD a full rexamination on their abilities to change things in the expansion just like DRG and AST. This makes sense and was completely warranted.
It goes even further, because the card system itself is needlessly confusing because there is no clear pattern in them to make identifying which target is optimal easier. I know its effectively just 2 options, with 3 icons causing 6 cards to exist. But at least if the colors matched, it makes it a lot easier to learn.
Not just that, but with a proper color/icon scheme they could even make it have more options. What if a card always involves 2 colors splitted in the diagonal? The upper section then could even become something like melee dps, phys dps, mage dps, and the bottom section then can even randomize between all 5 (so tank/healer becomes less likely, or even apply a randomized bonus effect). Whether that would be good is something else, but it shows how flexible a good interface can make such system.
That a blue icon can refer to ranged dps and healer is a massive flaw in the card system. Its just asking for confusion to start.
Just delete Draw, Play, Undraw, and Reshuffle and replace them with:
Card Play:
OGCD - 30 second cooldown - 2 charges
Increases the damage dealt by self or target party member by 6%
Duration: 15 seconds
Additional Effect: restores 5% of own MP
Make all of Astrodynes effects always occur and give it a 60 second cooldown. Done, clunk removed. That’s all the card system boils down to anyway, so why keep bending over backwards for this obtuse 6 card system when that’s all it is? Why continue this needless life support on lore when it’s clear the lore doesn’t matter to the design team?
I suspect 6.3 Paladin will just get some big tweaks, not a full rework. I expect a 2 minute req window and not much else tbh.