I don’t hate the new Astro changes

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Originally Posted by Ahrijlaken

Dude AST now only 1 card effect : Damage .... we don't need RNG anymore. Just use 3 different card and pop the divination, what does it do ? DAMAGE boost.

What a diversity ... 1 card effect. The only thing you can do is choosing to bosot more range or melee, WOW ... so fking cool.

AST change are bad, it should have been 1 billion time better than that. it's pathetic

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Calm down buddy. It's not the end of the world. Just because the card effects are simplified doesn't mean the mechanics arent. All they really did was move the rng away from the cards themself but rather the setup for Divination.

They should just give that entire seal system to Geomancer, don't know.
Replace just the names of the cards and seals by others corresponding to Geo lore and that's it.
I'm still sad, we have gone through HW and SB with a fun card system and expanded years after years to completely change it after 4 years.
For me, it's like passing from Yu-Gi-Oh to a classic card game as War.

Ya from the looks it you only want to use cards on the dps cause if I'm reading this correctly

https://i.imgur.com/FjYGau8.png

and then we have(as of now since the Media Tour)

https://i.imgur.com/J8pAWxh.png

which isn't necessarily a problem for the standard composition but in the 4 man dungeons this is going to be slightly annoying because lets you get a bard and a smn in the party. They're going to get a benefit of Bole, ewer and spire and the other 3 are just going to be wasted if the cards didn't change from the Media Tour. SO I can definitely see this being changed in the future. Well, we'll get to see in two days.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Calm down buddy. It's not the end of the world. Just because the card effects are simplified doesn't mean the mechanics arent. All they really did was move the rng away from the cards themself but rather the setup for Divination.

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It's practically what color balance do you want. AST has been reduced to a balance bot.

At least we still have 1 decision making thing : To give more boost to range or melee ..... What a exciting job.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

It's practically what color balance do you want. AST has been reduced to a balance bot.

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Originally Posted by Ahrijlaken

At least we still have 1 decision making thing : To give more boost to range or melee ..... What a exciting job.

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Y'all do you then. If nothing else every card can be used now and not saved for later.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

It's practically what color balance do you want. AST has been reduced to a balance bot.

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That's how everybody treated it to begin with. SE basically said "Screw it, you can have your balances now, at an incredibly reduced rate."

I'd have preferred Balance becoming a True North style buff and Spire becoming a Direct Hit buff just to give the middle finger to the people who brought it just for the straight DPS increase. But hey, I'm not the devs, so...they make their graves by keeping AST mandatory.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

That\\'s how everybody treated it to begin with. SE basically said "Screw it, you can have your balances now, at an incredibly reduced rate."

I\\'d have preferred Balance becoming a True North style buff and Spire becoming a Direct Hit buff just to give the middle finger to the people who brought it just for the straight DPS increase. But hey, I\\'m not the devs, so...they make their graves by keeping AST mandatory.

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No, that really isn't how everyone treated AST. Not everyone fished for balance. Of course the vocal minority complained enough about it and here we are. But there is a reason why so many AST mains are now dropping the class.

They took the most interesting part of the class and simplified it. So much to the point we give one and only one buff regardless of what the card is. A real AST actually knew what to do. They didn't have the balance or bust meantality.

I hoped they removed balance card and put some of our healing abilitie into the cards with less RNG but still some RNG so we have to adapt constantly.

Our ability to expand other job "buff"/"spell" ( like extend the tank defensive CD ) -> On a card.
Our ability to put a bubble on the ground to regen -> On a card.
Etc ...

So we have to know the fight, we have to know what card to keep at the right moment ... it could have been so fun and exciting.

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Originally Posted by Ahrijlaken

At least we still have 1 decision making thing : To give more boost to range or melee ..... What a exciting job.

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We don't even do that, though....

The card makes that decision for us. It's the one and only point of complexity in the mechanic, which in turn further reduces decision-making for us.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

It has nothing to do with Minor Arcana. You want to use cards asap in order to make the most of the 3s recast time on Draw during Sleeve Draw's buff window. Spending time on Redraw/Minor Arcana during that window invites clipping or delaying it by additional GCDs, neither of which is ideal. The less you desync your draw timers the better, as Sleeve Draw can eat out a potential Draw or two if you don't use those cards asap.

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You're over thinking it.
Sleeve Draw reduces recast of Draw to 3s, but that doesn't mean you have to use it every 3s.
If you do, you'll be overwriting all your card buffs anyway.

https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/...1629932038.png
A 250 potency heal on a 90s cooldown, vs 600 (thanks to the initial tick) on a 30s.

Celestial Opposition is even more embarassing. SE honestly didn’t even try with this rubbish. The only change I’ve noticed at work is the Indom nerf going live

Really, with the movement restrictions on Collective Unconsciousness one would think it would be about 1.5 times better than Sacred Soil.
Not like, way worse.

Those 240 malefic and 45 combust is just a bit TOO weak wouldnt you say?

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Originally Posted by althenawhm

Those 240 malefic and 45 combust is just a bit TOO weak wouldnt you say?

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Your ranged dps cards also affects healers now, so you can buff your damage by 6/8% and the additional 2-6% from Divination. I get that's not alot but with ast's ability to buff its and allies damage on a consistent basis giving it too much damage potency would make WHM even worse.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/...1629932038.png
A 250 potency heal on a 90s cooldown, vs 600 (thanks to the initial tick) on a 30s.

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Great balance SE !

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/...1629932038.png
A 250 potency heal on a 90s cooldown, vs 600 (thanks to the initial tick) on a 30s.

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Mhhh nop thats false!

You can extend the bubble 18s and the buff hold 15s. So the buff hold al least 33s so we have 11 ticks with 50HP so we have 550HP. If you only use it short we have only 250Hp. So it feels bance in the HP. But the CD is meh...

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

Mhhh nop thats false!

You can extend the bubble 18s and the buff hold 15s. So the buff hold al least 33s so we have 11 ticks with 50HP so we have 550HP. If you only use it short we have only 250Hp. So it feels bance in the HP. But the CD is meh...

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When exactly do you outside of gpose hold CU for the full duration?

Holding CU for 18 seconds would cost you a huge amount more potency by way of casts lot =(

It was always better to tap the button to apply the buff and try and extend it with CO where possible.

Honestly to me these changes feel like they just took a soul of the class.
AST was all about those cards and I loved all of them. I'd always find a way to use different cards here and there.
Some people found certain cards to be useless well NOW they are TRULY useless because half of them are unnecessary since there are already cards that are the same, just have a different name. I don't see the point in having so many cards that do literally the same thing.
At least before it was interesting, I liked the RNG part, having to redraw or just using whatever RNG gives you and now you don't even need to look at what you got - draw a card and use it, done. This is just boring and pointless.
I'll probably switch to scolar now.

Divination seems like it's going to be annoying. =w=
You can only use it while you have 3 seals and you can only gain seals while in combat (no clue if seals stay with you when you go to a different area yet, my game crashed when I tried to teleport to Limsa... >w> ).

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Divination seems like it's going to be annoying. =w=
You can only use it while you have 3 seals and you can only gain seals while in combat (no clue if seals stay with you when you go to a different area yet, my game crashed when I tried to teleport to Limsa... >w> ).

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I think they'll need to adjust the CD on this ability as well. It's a bit too long... I've been able to use it only once in the trials/raids that I've tried.

Just think of it as your Balance + Spire fishing being averaged out.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Just think of it as your Balance + Spire fishing being averaged out.

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It seems less like it's being averaged out and more like it's just less common, because y'know, I used to be able to pull a full set of cards, and use regular Draw and all that.

I DO hate the changes
Heals are really nerfed. Looks like this is what they meant of "healing more" because of low heals.

Celestial opposition is a joke. It recovers so little HP. It's like a mini aspected helios, and will not help that much in an emergency.
I thought it was gonna be like an Assize but it isn't

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Divination seems like it's going to be annoying. =w=
You can only use it while you have 3 seals and you can only gain seals while in combat (no clue if seals stay with you when you go to a different area yet, my game crashed when I tried to teleport to Limsa... >w> ).

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Yes, indeed trying to get divination correctly is annoying. Specially trying to get the correct seals is If ppl were complaining for ewer and spire, this is worse. It's like I used my 3 stacks of Redraw and never got the seal I needed, so I just had to convert it into Lord or Lady
And the most annoying part is that you can only get them in battle. If you hit the "Play" button and the enemy dies, you don't get the seal >(

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Originally Posted by Siris

I think they'll need to adjust the CD on this ability as well. It's a bit too long... I've been able to use it only once in the trials/raids that I've tried.

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I also vote for this. What's the use of having a short recast time for Draw / Play and getting seals pretty quick if divination is gonna need to wait?

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Originally Posted by Lumivyory

Honestly to me these changes feel like they just took a soul of the class.
AST was all about those cards and I loved all of them. I'd always find a way to use different cards here and there.
Some people found certain cards to be useless well NOW they are TRULY useless because half of them are unnecessary since there are already cards that are the same, just have a different name. I don't see the point in having so many cards that do literally the same thing.
At least before it was interesting, I liked the RNG part, having to redraw or just using whatever RNG gives you and now you don't even need to look at what you got - draw a card and use it, done. This is just boring and pointless.
I'll probably switch to scolar now.

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Honestly I would have just changed them to buff the Main Stat: STR, MND, INT, DEX, and Tenacity(because VIT only raises HP). Then leave one as a dud card for balance.

I'm eating my words...these changes are quite fun, and I complained endlessly about how my job was being ruined to my friends. I would like to see some variety still beyond boosting damage, but maybe not through the cards themselves but rather through the usage of Divination. Tweaks are needed, but it's surprisingly satisfying to play. My only major problem is not being able to gain seals out of combat. Seals are cleared upon changing areas, so this shouldn't be an issue. I've had several times where I was casting a card on someone while they were beginning to pull, and because I wasn't myself in combat yet, I got no seal. qq

I do not at all mind heals being weaker. Yes, I lost some DPS time, but who cares? I played to be a healer, not a DPS! I'm actually quite pleased and hope that they can flesh out this new system some more.

I will say CO feels very meh now. Such a low potency heal with such a long cooldown. At least put the stun back on it.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

I will say CO feels very meh now. Such a low potency heal with such a long cooldown. At least put the stun back on it.

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They should just make CO how it was in SB. We don't need an instant cast baby medica. The Stun and Buff extension were great!

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I really dislike that the developers took away any semblance of planning or thought process behind the cards, as that was what attracted me to the job back in Heavensward. I also do not like the idea of padding a single person with cards. The issue was clearly just Balance...but instead of addressing it, they changed every card into mini, weaker Balances... I can't quite understand this decision.

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I have no doubt that you're a better AST then me and most likely have a deeper understanding of the changes than I do, but I don't feel like much was lost. The more varied card effects in SB were good, but they're being random kind of spoiled planning as far as I'm concerned. Maxing the number of cards played was usually better than holding onto specific cards, and while the Balance got a lot of attention as the broken card, the Spear and the Arrow weren't all that different as far as the AST drawing them was concerned. They were just Balance but slightly different. Bole and Ewer were the more interesting cards (and Spire in the 1% of situations where TP mattered), but because of the way the game works you could never actually count on them to be available when you wanted them.

I think the cards should have kept their old attributes, except Spire obviously, and become something like passive buffs on players that the AST could activate later. Essentially instead of using Spread to store cards, you store them on different players. This would allow ASTs to build a specific combination of cards and control exactly when and how they were used.

Also, I don't feel like we're really feeding cards to one player with the new system. I think I've been dividing them pretty equally among party members in dungeons and having to target specific party members instead of defaulting to AoE spread in most situations is more engaging.