Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

The changes look ok to me but it's worrying that I have to wait for each draw (Astral/Umbral) before I can give damage buff to two players. I'd prefer the RNG than this at times but RNG is sometimes annoying because for example there's only range DPS but RNG gives you melee cards and vice versa lol.. I'm also not sure if the healing cards can stack. In any case, they can be combined rather than having Play I, II, and III on my hotbars.

I play on controller and I like that I can draw and play the cards really quickly. But we'll see once the game is up.

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Originally Posted by Kyanari

The changes look ok to me but it's worrying that I have to wait for each draw (Astral/Umbral) before I can give damage buff to two players. I'd prefer the RNG than this at times but RNG is sometimes annoying because for example there's only range DPS but RNG gives you melee cards and vice versa lol.. I'm also not sure if the healing cards can stack. In any case, they can be combined rather than having Play I, II, and III on my hotbars.

I play on controller and I like that I can draw and play the cards really quickly. But we'll see once the game is up.

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RNG is poor gameplay, it doesn't matter how it's implemented if you can't choose which card to play. This is why like, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, and Paper Mario Sticker Star is terrible, because it replaces combat with "sucks to be you, you didn't draw something useful"

Like we'll have to wait and see how this works, but the only RNG that should exist here is when something is a offensive or defensive benefit. You should never have a situation where you draw Ewer or Bole and... well have nothing to heal before it ticks off. I preferred in a way how it originally worked where saving the card to Rainbow Road was more useful than the EW system where it added an extra level of unnecessary micromanagement. Now it seems like it just forces you to use cards you don't need.

This is why I'm a bit torn with the changes because if you get good RNG you can complete all the signs within the first few seconds as opener but now you're stuck with a 60s CD before you can give a range damage buff. Kinda a bit late to sync with their openers if I'm not mistaken. Not to mention 4 of the cards (Arrow + Spire, Bole + Ewer) can just be combined together since they'll be used mostly towards the tanks. As a controller user, I'd be most likely use a macro so I just have 3 buttons rather than 4. /shrug

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Originally Posted by Kyanari

This is why I'm a bit torn with the changes because if you get good RNG you can complete all the signs within the first few seconds as opener but now you're stuck with a 60s CD before you can give a range damage buff. Kinda a bit late to sync with their openers if I'm not mistaken. Not to mention 4 of the cards (Arrow + Spire, Bole + Ewer) can just be combined together since they'll be used mostly towards the tanks. As a controller user, I'd be most likely use a macro so I just have 3 buttons rather than 4. /shrug

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I believe they've already stated that they will be adjusting the Draw CD to be less than 60 to fix that issue. But I agree that drawing cards in the current system feels very bland for the most part, there isn't a lot to think about at all. I picked up AST in EW specifically because I wanted more moment-to-moment decision making in my healers, and that's gone now.

Why not making it 2 card each 60 second one defense and other offensive that can actually have impact and make it one randomized and call it a day

instead of 4 cards each 60 with small affects

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

RNG is poor gameplay, it doesn't matter how it's implemented if you can't choose which card to play. This is why like, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, and Paper Mario Sticker Star is terrible, because it replaces combat with "sucks to be you, you didn't draw something useful"

Like we'll have to wait and see how this works, but the only RNG that should exist here is when something is a offensive or defensive benefit. You should never have a situation where you draw Ewer or Bole and... well have nothing to heal before it ticks off. I preferred in a way how it originally worked where saving the card to Rainbow Road was more useful than the EW system where it added an extra level of unnecessary micromanagement. Now it seems like it just forces you to use cards you don't need.

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its Royal Road, and yes it was the best iteration of the cards. Assuming they kept that system and improved on it, the alternate reality we could be living in would look like this:

SB (three buttons):
Draw - Draw a card. Action changes to Play
Play - Use currently drawn card on self or target.
Royal Road - Discard currently drawn card to enhance next card to be played.
Minor Arcana - Discards currently drawn card to gain either Lady or Lord.

ShB (one button):
Celestial Draw - Randomly select one card. Action changes to Celestial Shuffle.
Celestial Shuffle - Flip through your divining deck by repeatedly pressing the ability in order of Balance > Bole > Spire > Spear > Arrow > Ewer.

EW (one button):
Set - Place currently drawn card face down (ground aoe). Action changes to Flip Set.
Flip Set - Flips card face up affecting all party members with set card effect. 12 yalms. Flip Set will activate after duration expires.

DT (one button):
Set Play - Place currently drawn card face up (ground aoe). Applies drawn card effect to all party members who stand within it aoe. 12 yalms.

Technically this does have one more button than the current iteration of AST, as of 7.0, but this direction focuses on the cards rather than introducing more ogcds that do not synergize with the cards. Actions like exaltation or celestial intersection would not exist because the cards can already fulfill those roles.

Regardless, AST and DRK are in the same boat where they are reworked literally every expansion and thus will never have a foundation to build and expand upon.

Just wanted to emphasize that while the 7.05 changes to Astro were very good, it does nothing to bring back the job fantasy and moment-to-moment decision making that was integral to the job in every prior iteration. I was considering leveling Astrologian first after leveling it and loving it in Endwalker, but all the snappy decision making that I loved is just gone.

There are already 3 other healers with no random elements to their design, please bring back the ONE alternative for people who loved the split-second decisions it required.

The effects on the new cards are cool, but there needs to be some small amount of randomness to them!

The problem with the randomness is that it bad RNG can render the Job much worse off... It's not like the difference between a crit or a normal hit... But the difference between drawing Lord of Crowns instead of Lady of Crowns, or drawing The Arrow instead of The Balance...

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

The problem with the randomness is that it bad RNG can render the Job much worse off... It's not like the difference between a crit or a normal hit... But the difference between drawing Lord of Crowns instead of Lady of Crowns, or drawing The Arrow instead of The Balance...

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That’s why you have RNG protection in the form of in game mechanics

Take late SB AST, if you drew a bad card then you had a series of options

If you drew balance->great
If you drew spear->pretty good
If you drew ewer/spire->royal road it
If you drew ewer/spire and already have a royal road stocked->redraw it
If you drew a bole/arrow->redraw it
If you run out of redraws and still don’t have a good card->minor arcana it

With the amount of inbuilt protection you had you almost never had a final bad result and self correcting bad RNG with thematic in game elements is better than the devs just shaving off the ability to get bad RNG

Instead of trying to do protection from bad RNG, they could always just get rid of the bad results... Like while wasn't well received when everyone of the 6 major cards was just a DPS buff, it did mean you could always use all 6 of them regardless of what you drew into.

Now, they don't all NEED to just be "Increase damage dealt by x%", but you can have other flavors of increasing damage such as Crit, Direct Hit or Haste buffs... And Lady of Crowns being a nearly useless heal could very well replaced with just another attack like Lord of Crowns...