Goodbye Astro

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Originally Posted by Miste

People exaggerate the old system's RNG aspect...since AST had tools at its disposal to help with RNG like Shuffle and Sleeve Draw etc. It was not as unstable as some people assume.

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Some people (not saying you specifically, but just in general) also exaggerate the usefulness of the old system.

Well, I suppose that is that...

I'm incredibly disheartened to hear that this is the direction that the devs have decided to steer Astrologian.

I've only mained healer since the far, far days of 1.0. When AST first debuted, even though it was seen as inferior to the other healers (in potencies and so on), I mained it because it was the exact sort of healer I'd always wanted and I loved the lore. The cards felt like we were dipping our hands into fate and making things happen with what we were dealt. It felt good. This new system just feels like we have just been twisted by the arm to provide "The Balance". AST is just the peon of other Jobs to provide them with flavorless Damage buffs, apparently... Neither our experience nor the lore matters.

With that said, for a Job I mained exclusively since it was introduced, I will simply turn in my Globe to the GC for seals and wash my hands of it as well.

In the live letter, the devs seemed to respond to the AST question with a slight hint of frustration so maybe they are equally as frustrated as their vision for the job, which many enjoyed, has been reduced to... this.

In any case, I will abstain from playing the job. Hopefully my one voice will join the many others in the player reports to come as tangible feedback of our dissatisfaction with how the job stands at current.

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Originally Posted by ColdestHeaven

I...uhm...if you don't want that card, can I have it? Last time I checked 3% was better than 0%, I mean, that's like an almost-Dancer constant buff given for free. They are not really useless - they are less useful. They still have an impact.

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Sure, take the whole pack. While you are constantly using 10 fingers to contribute with constant card throwing and weaving, the WHM/SCH next door uses 2 fingers to dps and manage to do the same or even higher party contribution with just personal dps.

Ask your BLM how many Fire IV he can manage to squish in that tight 15s window. I bet one can finish counting with just 5 fingers.

DNC Standard Finish is a 5% 60s buff with 30s cd that can be maintained forever easily. Cards aren't even a competition.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I just wonder which group would be louder if they hadn't changed the cards at all.

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There would not have been another group to speak of f they hadn't changed them. People like me who only took up AST because of the card changes would have continued to ignore AST in ShB were it not for the change.

I abandoned AST back in Heavensward after I got it to 60 because cards were absolute garbage. Either I drew really well and got lots of Arrows/Balances or more commonly, drew nothing but Boles, Ewers and Spires.

Drawing luckily did indeed feel great. It was satisfying to drop a super long Balance on someone. But the sheer odds of drawing well was overshadowed by the odds of drawing badly.
Sleeve Draw, while fun to watch occur was also garbage 90% of the time I used it while playing AST in prep for ShB. I sure did love getting AoE Bole with a held Spire. Such fun.

New cards aren't perfect. But they're a damn sight better than they were in terms of sheer usability. They don't last as long, but that's because the uptime on any given card effect of the old variety was even worse. Or better, As it was pure RNG as to what you got.
We also no longer need to be concerned with cards becoming obsolete as we get further in the expansion.
MNK and NIN generally didn't enjoy Arrows because they already had the SkS breakpoint they needed and more would just throw off their rotation. Bole was worthless in farm content. Spire was worthless everywhere except mass pull AoEs and then only if your party had melee dps.
Ewer was also practically worthless unless you just so happened to draw at the exact moment a fellow healer just so happened to be raised. Which happened less and less often as content went from new to farm status.
The only card that remained powerful and useful in all content, all the time was Balance.

New cards will always be useful in every content every time they are drawn from now until 6.0. That alone makes them a world above the old cards.

That's funny because a lot of people seem to have a differing opinion. "Absolute Garbage?" Are you sure we're talking about the same job here that I mained all the way throughout late heavensward and all of stormblood?

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Originally Posted by Sylve

New cards will always be useful in every content every time they are drawn from now until 6.0. That alone makes them a world above the old cards.

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Except for all the times where matchmaker gives you a configuration where you are getting none of the cards you actually need (which renders half your cards worthless and pointless) and refuses to give you the seals you actually need (which renders divination mostly worthless). Not to mention the fact that the effects are so weak and so short lived that the Old cards stomp on them in terms of gains.

Which is why AST is in such a terrible position that no one wants it except the people who only care about how high their personal numbers can get padded damn the rest.

I am going to be honest, I get far more worthless useless cards with the new AST then I ever got with the old AST. I also get frustrated far more often thanks to the seal system and the melee/range split. At this point if they want to stick with this simplified mess they may as well remove the card system entirely and just give us 3 buttons: A button that buffs a single target on a 30 sec cooldown, the 120 sec cooldown button that buffs the party, and a button that resets the single target buff button and grants 2 charges. Doing that makes the system achieve what the current card system was supposed to achieve while eliminating all of the current systems negatives. The lore of the class will still be destroyed, but at least we wont work harder then other classes who achieve similar results in far fewer button presses for their raid buffs.

In the old system Bole was useful in all content that was not optimized content, which is 95% of the content in the game. Ewer always had a use. In truth thanks to minor arcana all cards were never useless, never worthless. Spire simply needed a rework because it was too niche out of all the cards. I never heard of any card becoming obsolete.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Except for all the times where matchmaker gives you a configuration where you are getting none of the cards you actually need (which renders half your cards worthless and pointless) and refuses to give you the seals you actually need (which renders divination mostly worthless). Not to mention the fact that the effects are so weak and so short lived that the Old cards stomp on them in terms of gains.

Which is why AST is in such a terrible position that no one wants it except the people who only care about how high their personal numbers can get padded damn the rest.

I am going to be honest, I get far more worthless useless cards with the new AST then I ever got with the old AST. I also get frustrated far more often thanks to the seal system and the melee/range split. At this point if they want to stick with this simplified mess they may as well remove the card system entirely and just give us 3 buttons: A button that buffs a single target on a 30 sec cooldown, the 120 sec cooldown button that buffs the party, and a button that resets the single target buff button and grants 2 charges. Doing that makes the system achieve what the current card system was supposed to achieve while eliminating all of the current systems negatives. The lore of the class will still be destroyed, but at least we wont work harder then other classes who achieve similar results in far fewer button presses for their raid buffs.

In the old system Bole was useful in all content that was not optimized content, which is 95% of the content in the game. Ewer always had a use. In truth thanks to minor arcana all cards were never useless, never worthless. Spire simply needed a rework because it was too niche out of all the cards. I never heard of any card becoming obsolete.

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While I agree that it feels bad when you draw nothing but melee cards with 2 ranged in a dungeon and vice versa, I'm calling bull. The difference between a 1 seal and 3 seal divination is only 2% so while yes ofc you should min max it's a small enough difference to not feel bad in my opinion. A 3% boost is still a damage boost anyway, and you also have to remember that healers benefit from the ranged cards and tanks from the melee cards. So if you absolutely positively cared about making sure the strongest version of the card goes out, you do have the option of buffing the tank with melee cards and yourself with ranged.

And so what if Bole and Ewer where occasionally useful? It doesn't change the fact that relying on RNG to help a bad tank mitigate or to sustain your resources is not a healthy design for a class that honestly should lot have those things tied to randomness. At least with the current card system you are providing the same consistent effect, the potency of which is slightly effected by your luck.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

While I agree that it feels bad when you draw nothing but melee cards with 2 ranged in a dungeon and vice versa, I'm calling bull. The difference between a 1 seal and 3 seal divination is only 2% so while yes ofc you should min max it's a small enough difference to not feel bad in my opinion. A 3% boost is still a damage boost anyway, and you also have to remember that healers benefit from the ranged cards and tanks from the melee cards. So if you absolutely positively cared about making sure the strongest version of the card goes out, you do have the option of buffing the tank with melee cards and yourself with ranged.

And so what if Bole and Ewer where occasionally useful? It doesn't change the fact that relying on RNG to help a bad tank mitigate or to sustain your resources is not a healthy design for a class that honestly should lot have those things tied to randomness. At least with the current card system you are providing the same consistent effect, the potency of which is slightly effected by your luck.

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3% is so minor you do not even notice it. 6% likewise is also so minor you do hardly even notice it. Throwing it on a healer or tank works but ultimately the damage boost is so short lived that it becomes merely a drop in the bucket over the course of the overall fight. Such small buffs work when they have a long duration, not a short duration. This is why the Dancer standard step buff is so good, because it lasts an entire fight and does not lose potency. This is why the old AoE balance was so good, because it could last up to 40 seconds on the party and 55 seconds on the top DPS. This is also why you need to have all 3 seals for divination to even try to be worth its cooldown. Popping it with 4% or merely 5% just is not worthwhile for the cooldown. If the cooldown were shorter or the effect longer it might have been worth using regardless.

Oh and Bole was good not just for bad tanks but for good tanks to mitigate more. The more damage that got mitigated the less healing that had to be done which resulted in more healer DPS to help speed up the run. Ewer was helpful not just for you but for others as well. All you have to do is look at how high the demand was to have a BRD or MCH for refresh, even when their DPS was bad. Not to mention of course how much MP gravity spam could eat up or the high frequency of death in 24 man content.

As it is now we have the options of almost no impact but useful or no impact and useless. With nothing that can be better then expected, only worse then expected.

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Except for all the times where matchmaker gives you a configuration where you are getting none of the cards you actually need (which renders half your cards worthless and pointless) and refuses to give you the seals you actually need (which renders divination mostly worthless). Not to mention the fact that the effects are so weak and so short lived that the Old cards stomp on them in terms of gains.

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Lets take the worst possible situation. 2 Melee DPS in a Light Party. Half of my draws are going to them. But the other half go to me. Who is also DPSing. Are you suggesting that Healer DPS is worthless and pointless?
Getting 3 of the same Seal is harder to do than getting 3 different ones.
At the worst possible outcome of only 2 different Seals, We only lose 1% damage off the Divination. Ohnoes, the horror.

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Which is why AST is in such a terrible position that no one wants it except the people who only care about how high their personal numbers can get padded damn the rest.

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Anyone capable of analyzing logs will spot padded numbers in an instant. This argument also lost all of what little weight it had when FFlogs started awarding the rDPS contributions to the job that provided the buffs.
Given that ASTs were included in week 1 E4S clears, you are wrong.

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I am going to be honest, I get far more worthless useless cards with the new AST then I ever got with the old AST.

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As I said before, unless you're implying Healer DPS is worthless you are just using buzz words to make it seem like a problem exists where it doesn't.

Arrow on a MNK, SAM or NIN screwed with their rotations by causing drifts in buff/debuff applications and burst windows. They had specific SkS breakpoints they achieved for an optimal rotation, messing with that messed with their DPS.
In the current game, getting random bursts of SS has even more potential for screwing up rotations and cooldowns lining up with how things like the Gunbreaker DoT skill works, among others.
MP was a non issue in all content. TP was a joke.
Those cards had less value the better geared jobs got.

And if you really want to get 'simple', Aside from Bole 5 of the cards were +Damage buffs in various roundabout ways with Balance being objectively the best card.
Even Minor Arcana could screw you over, getting a Lord when you needed/wanted a Lady for Healing. And in doing that, you robbed your party of 30 seconds of boosted damage potential.

It was possible under the old cards to go minutes without meaningful buffs to the party. If you were Royal Roading the first draw to always empower your next one, you had 50% uptime on card buffs. Every MA use was lost damage.
You had a 50% chance to draw a DPS card to start with, so despite the 30 second duration we had a 50% uptime there too over the course of a long fight.

Take off the rose tinted goggles. Old cards had very specific, purely RNG based periods where they were stronger than current cards in very specific moments. Any bad luck strings rendered the entire system literally pointless.
New cards give a reliable rDPS boost across multiple fights. Old cards could never provide that reliability and they sucked as a result.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Lets take the worst possible situation. 2 Melee DPS in a Light Party. Half of my draws are going to them. But the other half go to me. Who is also DPSing. Are you suggesting that Healer DPS is worthless and pointless?
Getting 3 of the same Seal is harder to do than getting 3 different ones.
At the worst possible outcome of only 2 different Seals, We only lose 1% damage off the Divination. Ohnoes, the horror.

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Healer DPS is going to be worthless when the tank is doing wall to wall pulls and you spend far more time trying to heal them through all the damage they are taking and cannot spend any of that time DPSing yourself.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Anyone capable of analyzing logs will spot padded numbers in an instant. This argument also lost all of what little weight it had when FFlogs started awarding the rDPS contributions to the job that provided the buffs.
Given that ASTs were included in week 1 E4S clears, you are wrong.

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63 ASTs making up 3.2% of the healer parses. While the amount of SCH and WHM parses increased by more then triple going into week 2.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

As I said before, unless you're implying Healer DPS is worthless you are just using buzz words to make it seem like a problem exists where it doesn't.

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Except of course when so much is pulled or so much damage is taken that you are struggling to keep up with the damage intake and cannot effectively DPS. Which makes your DPS worthless. Even now WHMs expect their co-healer to do all the healing for them.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Arrow on a MNK, SAM or NIN screwed with their rotations by causing drifts in buff/debuff applications and burst windows. They had specific SkS breakpoints they achieved for an optimal rotation, messing with that messed with their DPS.
In the current game, getting random bursts of SS has even more potential for screwing up rotations and cooldowns lining up with how things like the Gunbreaker DoT skill works, among others.
MP was a non issue in all content. TP was a joke.
Those cards had less value the better geared jobs got.

And if you really want to get 'simple', Aside from Bole 5 of the cards were +Damage buffs in various roundabout ways with Balance being objectively the best card.
Even Minor Arcana could screw you over, getting a Lord when you needed/wanted a Lady for Healing. And in doing that, you robbed your party of 30 seconds of boosted damage potential.

It was possible under the old cards to go minutes without meaningful buffs to the party. If you were Royal Roading the first draw to always empower your next one, you had 50% uptime on card buffs. Every MA use was lost damage.
You had a 50% chance to draw a DPS card to start with, so despite the 30 second duration we had a 50% uptime there too over the course of a long fight.

Take off the rose tinted goggles. Old cards had very specific, purely RNG based periods where they were stronger than current cards in very specific moments. Any bad luck strings rendered the entire system literally pointless.
New cards give a reliable rDPS boost across multiple fights. Old cards could never provide that reliability and they sucked as a result.

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If MP was a non-issue in all content then why was Refresh a requirement? Why was refresh needed in all raid content? Oh, because it was always an issue despite the better gear. Especially in content where death was common or content that was optimized with it in mind.

Yeah Spire needed a rework. I keep saying that spire needed a rework. Even in the post you quote from I said spire needed a rework because it was too niche.

And sorry to say I do not have rose tinted goggles. I am talking gameplay I had before this expansion dropped and made AST an absolute pain to play. You cannot have rose tinted goggles for something not even 2 months old.

Yeah the new cards are "reliable" so "reliable" that they induce frustration when they show how "reliable" they are when they screw me over. Where the old cards gave me possibility the new cards give me frustration.

Which is why if they want to stick with this path I say remove the cards entirely. If they want us to have reliable buffs then actually make them reliable. Remove the melee/range split and seals which only exists for the purpose of even having the cards to begin with. Make it so we got 1 ST buff button on a 30 sec cooldown, give us "divination" on that 120 sec cooldown, give us "sleeve draw" for resetting the ST buff and granting it extra charges. With all the extra buttons removed they could fill in those gaps with potentially extra buffs or fill in our weak points such as lack of secondary MP source.

Then we would have reliable, consistent buffs. Sure it comes at the cost of everything the class was built up to be. Sure it comes at the cost of a large amount of pissed off upset AST players. At least it would make the balance only people happy. It would also mean that we put about as much effort into the party buff as other classes do.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

If you do 10k DPS on your MCH then that 3% is an extra 300 DPS. That is lower impact then throwing the non-optimal card from the old system on you. It also only lasts 15 seconds so you wont even feel it because it effectively has no impact at all. They are useless. It is better to minor arcana it and throw it on a healer or tank of the appropriate range then throw it on the wrong DPS. Cause if your tank is only doing 8k DPS then that 8% Lord of Crowns card boosts their DPS by 640 compared to 400 if it was tossed on your MCH at 10k DPS. Even without Minor Arcana it is better to toss a melee card onto the tank when you have no melee to put it on. If you have a co-healer and only Melee DPS then any ranged card is better tossed on the co-healer.

The reason why a low power boost like the Dancer standard step buff and the old AoE Balance buff were worthwhile was because despite only minorly boosting damage they did so over a long duration. AST could boost the duration so the entire party had 40 seconds of +5% damage and boost the top DPS to have 55 seconds of +5% damage. Dancer buffs themselves and their partner throughout the entire fight as they need to use Standard step on cooldown as an attack as much as a buff. The sheer duration is what makes the buff worthwhile the lower the strength goes.

Now the reason why the old DPS buff cards could be so strong and impactful was because there were utility cards mixed in as well. Which also meant the utility cards could be strong. Sure in optimized 8 man savage raids Bole was seen as useless because they only wanted AoE Balance, though that was not the only content and in all other content Bole was useful for a wide range of reasons. Ewer in optimized 8 man savage raid was not very useful aside from being an AoE burn, but in all the rest of the content it was useful because in 24 man raids or 8 man normal raids deaths were common and in 4 man dungeons gravity spam ate you MP like hell. Spire had the most niche use and was indeed the one mostly useless card, it needed a rework.

Overall yes the new cards are "reliable" in that they are generally useless for the given amount of busy work that you need to do. Their durations are too short for the strength of buff they give. As they lack utility cards to be counterbalanced against they cannot be permitted to be strong, as such they remain feeling impactless. They also made it just as frustrating if not more so, because while there was minor disappointment in not getting the card you wanted previously you are getting handed literally useless cards that feel worse to use if you have the wrong class configuration in the party. It is not amusing when the only person I can buff is the tank because the cards are pointless on every other person in the party.

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I wasn't talking as a DPS, I was talking in general: cards go to whichever benefits the most, regardless of the role, that much I think we can easily agree on, because a damage increase is good regardless of the source - again, it's a matter of being more or less useful. Assuming normal cards being used on "correct" candidates: 10000 MCH gets 600. 8000 GNB gets 480. I'm not entirely sure this is how math works because cards don't increase linearly DPS in such a way (also buffs multiply etc.), but even in this case, damage is damage.

I can't agree or disagree on the buff being less visible or feeling less impactful than the older versions for the sole reason that I have no math to check - but if I remember correctly, the aim of the devs was to not make a party too reliant on damage buffs from Astro - so that could be the reason for undertuning this aspect in exchange for the "stability" of a damage buff instead of being at the mercy of RNG. Was that a good decision? Not sure, probably not, but then again I wasn't defending this part. However I do get the impression that the problem lies in wrong cards being far too weak, rather than "variety" being taken out of the equation.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

There would not have been another group to speak of f they hadn't changed them. People like me who only took up AST because of the card changes would have continued to ignore AST in ShB were it not for the change.

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Kinda seems like people who like the new card changes might've felt shafted, you know, with the whole "this is a healer rework expansion" aspect of things - if they left the crummy old card system in place there certainly would be people questioning it. My comment was meant to provide that bit of perspective.

I don't really have a dog in this race one way or the other, my main experience with AST is only raiding along side them, but from an outsiders perspective the changes make more sense than not. I feel a little bit with both sides, but the reality is most people only wanted DPS cards. To say the weaker cards were useful to use for fodder is just a rationalization to feel better about a bad design.

That being said, there seem to be core playability issues with AST moreso than what the cards do or don't do anymore. So the focus should be more on making the class enjoyable to play in action rather than the relatively unimportant aspect of the cards themselves.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

That being said, there seem to be core playability issues with AST moreso than what the cards do or don't do anymore. So the focus should be more on making the class enjoyable to play in action rather than the relatively unimportant aspect of the cards themselves.

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If you ignored the card system entirely then ever since its first implementation in HW AST has always been a discount WHM with the option of being a heavily discounted SCH in terms of play. It was really simple, really straightforward, and really consistent on its output. It was also, if one still ignores the cards, boring to play because of this simplicity. What made the class stand out and what made the class enjoyable was the card system itself. The entire lore of the class being built around the cards and their effects. It was all about working with what you got and the possibilities presented. This produced high highs, with low lows you could mitigate. Every card in the majority of content was useful and provoked thought in an otherwise very simplistic boring kit, so one tried to plan around the cards. With the new card system all the thinking was removed from the class. You either push for optimal, or you begrudgingly settle for sub-optimal not worth your time.

Now it is just the basic simplistic base it always had with nothing to spice it up. The entire class would need a rework to make the class enjoyable to play outside of the card system.

Oh and the card effects were not unimportant, the entire lore of the class and selling point of the class was the card effects. Detaching the card effects from the lore is like detaching BLMs from their explosions.

Slightly off topic, but did they ever address how they are going to rework the lore behind the cards? I just think that's rather lazy of them to change the way the cards work but not actually change the card images. Anyway, what drew me to AST was the RNG aspect of the class which made it unpredictable and fun to me and it looks like that is gone for good. Sad panda I am. Even with the buffs, it's just a really clunky and boring class to play.

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Originally Posted by Violet_Galaxy

Slightly off topic, but did they ever address how they are going to rework the lore behind the cards? I just think that's rather lazy of them to change the way the cards work but not actually change the card images. Anyway, what drew me to AST was the RNG aspect of the class which made it unpredictable and fun to me and it looks like that is gone for good. Sad panda I am. Even with the buffs, it's just a really clunky and boring class to play.

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They said no changes are coming to Astro. So I'm guessing they gave up with the lore also.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Kinda seems like people who like the new card changes might've felt shafted, you know, with the whole "this is a healer rework expansion" aspect of things - if they left the crummy old card system in place there certainly would be people questioning it. My comment was meant to provide that bit of perspective.

I don't really have a dog in this race one way or the other, my main experience with AST is only raiding along side them, but from an outsiders perspective the changes make more sense than not. I feel a little bit with both sides, but the reality is most people only wanted DPS cards. To say the weaker cards were useful to use for fodder is just a rationalization to feel better about a bad design.

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in an rng class you kinda need a bad outcome though rn none of the outcomes feel good but bad ones are annoying, and before the rework there were dissapointing out comes but they werent frustrating to me but the good ones like several aoe balances felt great

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Healer DPS is going to be worthless when the tank is doing wall to wall pulls and you spend far more time trying to heal them through all the damage they are taking and cannot spend any of that time DPSing yourself.

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Geez, it's almost like AST cant single weave most of its cooldowns on its AoE nuke, and that one of its main ogcd heals also doesn't do AoE splash damage, and doesn't have a cooldown that expressly allows it to instant cast both its healing and dps spells.


Oh wait.

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If MP was a non-issue in all content then why was Refresh a requirement? Why was refresh needed in all raid content? Oh, because it was always an issue despite the better gear. Especially in content where death was common or content that was optimized with it in mind.

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Because to be blunt, MP regeneration and stacking worked differently in 4.0. Ewer wasnt bad because its effect was bad, but because it was tied to RNG and therefore an unreliable source of mana regen. Refresh and Mana Shift (which btw where used more to extend Foe's on a brd then to actually restore the party's mp) where guaranteed effects and therefore could be planned around the use of. Now mp is a flat static value and piety helps increase the regen rate, alongside the fact that Lucid now has a higher uptime.

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Which is why if they want to stick with this path I say remove the cards entirely. If they want us to have reliable buffs then actually make them reliable. Remove the melee/range split and seals which only exists for the purpose of even having the cards to begin with. Make it so we got 1 ST buff button on a 30 sec cooldown, give us "divination" on that 120 sec cooldown, give us "sleeve draw" for resetting the ST buff and granting it extra charges. With all the extra buttons removed they could fill in those gaps with potentially extra buffs or fill in our weak points such as lack of secondary MP source.

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Because people would get salty that their cards are gone. As much as the forum hates the cards as they are now they're still a system that adds an extra layer of uniqueness and monitoring to the class. God forbid the dev team try to keep the core aesthetic of the job intact and try to keep some level of the rng feel without making half of the effects niche at best and worthless at worse.

God forbid the dev team would respect its lore and core identity, cards are gone, the devs should at least had the courage and go all the way instead of that half made job.

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Originally Posted by Halik

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

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People keep bringing, X card was great but not reliable then its "useless", well yeah, AST was unpredictable that's whole the idea, a literal Job based on RNG, on a game full of rotations and scripted fights AST was the only one with some leeway for free form and improvisation, god forbid there is something like that for players who enjoy it, you get a defense boost and need it then you use it, otherwise redraw, spread for later if you know a pull is coming, burn for RR or minor it, same spire same ewer. Now it has been completely sanitized, you don't even have to take the effort of getting 3 different seals with the new 5.05 change.

Fights are so boring I even started to count bosses auto attacks and casting the needed heal just to keep my mind focused on anything.

For AST like us who had learned and took decisions in all kind of different situations about when or how to use X card feel nothing but boredom looking at Blue = melee , purple = range.

And that was just the cards, we also have the loss of Time Dilatation and CO that gave even more strategy to the class, it was such a complete package.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Geez, it's almost like AST cant single weave most of its cooldowns on its AoE nuke, and that one of its main ogcd heals also doesn't do AoE splash damage, and doesn't have a cooldown that expressly allows it to instant cast both its healing and dps spells.

Oh wait.

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Yeah, I've dropped tanks trying to do that. Wall to wall pulls are a nasty business when you do not have top DPS that can burn things down quickly enough that the tank blowing all their cooldowns and the healer trying to keep them up do not run out of cooldowns before the mobs take the tank down. Even the crazy tank players I know all say that when they get an AST they pull carefully because AST wont be able to handle the wall to wall pulls even with them popping invulnerability skills.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Because to be blunt, MP regeneration and stacking worked differently in 4.0. Ewer wasnt bad because its effect was bad, but because it was tied to RNG and therefore an unreliable source of mana regen. Refresh and Mana Shift (which btw where used more to extend Foe's on a brd then to actually restore the party's mp) where guaranteed effects and therefore could be planned around the use of. Now mp is a flat static value and piety helps increase the regen rate, alongside the fact that Lucid now has a higher uptime.

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Lucid has a higher uptime and MP issues remain, such that RDM had to get its entire ST rotation slashed in terms of costs because it was literally unsustainable and SMNs still complain about MP issues of their own. SCHs had to beg to get energy drain back so they did not enter a feast or famine situation in terms of MP. Noct AST is pretty much not viable due to its high MP costs and need for a secondary MP source as Lucid cannot keep up. It was not as much a problem in the past... because we had a secondary MP source: Ewer.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Because people would get salty that their cards are gone. As much as the forum hates the cards as they are now they're still a system that adds an extra layer of uniqueness and monitoring to the class. God forbid the dev team try to keep the core aesthetic of the job intact and try to keep some level of the rng feel without making half of the effects niche at best and worthless at worse.

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Not any more complaints then what we have now. What we have now is just as bad on the lore front and worse then that in usability or reliability. What uniqueness they had was stripped away for simplification. With less monitoring needed then other classes need for their gauges.

And guess what? The devs killed the core aesthetic of the job which is tied as much into the lore or the cards, effects of the cards, and feel as it is the pretty graphics. They seriously could make that one button ST buff ability use the same animation we have now using a randomized card appearance and nothing would change. You just would not have to deal with the clunky frustrating system that one single card being all the cards produced.

And for the people who think this is just a small group of us upset, I would love if you check the JP side, so many first time posters going there to either express their disappointment or outright say they will quit AST altogether, with a ton of likes on each post too.

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

And for the people who think this is just a small group of us upset, I would love if you check the JP side, so many first time posters going there to either express their disappointment or outright say they will quit AST altogether, with a ton of likes on each post too.

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Really? It's that bad there also?

Guess I need to check that out

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

SCHs had to beg to get energy drain back so they did not enter a feast or famine situation in terms of MP.

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That wasn't really the problem for scholar---at least not for me, and I think not for most people. The reason I wanted energy drain back wasn't for the MP or the damage, but just to have a button to dump excess aetherflow stacks, because wasting resources felt bad on a job themed partly around resource management.

To the extent that energy drain has helped with my mana situation, it's not really because it restores MP, but because I'm no longer hesitating to recast aetherflow if I haven't used all the stacks.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

They seriously could make that one button ST buff ability use the same animation we have now using a randomized card appearance and nothing would change. You just would not have to deal with the clunky frustrating system that one single card being all the cards produced.

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I think I honestly would have preferred that. I don't know that the new card system is more or less complex than the old one; I kind of think it's apples and oranges. All I know is that I enjoyed the complexity of the old one and don't enjoy the complexity of the new one. So if the old system had to go, I'd have preferred a really simple card system combined with increased complexity elsewhere in the job.

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Originally Posted by Brarry

Canceled sub. Resources are not being put into the healing classes because the devs don't play healers. They see no need to change the clunky flavorless boring card system for ast. Collective unconscious. Horoscope autodetination? No reason for 6 images of the cards that don't make sense to keep since lore is out the door. Looks like homogenization is there route due to laziness to allocate resources to development. They are happy with the 2 healer dynamic of sch and whm.

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Which classes do the devs play?

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Ewer wasnt bad because its effect was bad, but because it was tied to RNG and therefore an unreliable source of mana regen.

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Ewer wasn't necessarily "tied to RNG" because IF doing new content or otherwise finding yourself (or teammate) running into mana trouble often, you could set Ewer aside to use it when you needed it. In fact any utility could be set aside like that. There were times when I was healing a squishy tank who thought s/he HAD to pull big .. so I'd set aside Bole, use it on a big pull, and when I drew Bole again I'd set it aside. I viewed these as an extra, not a necessity, *because* there was still RNG and it was possible not to see a specific card before you'd want to use it. *shrug* I thought it was fun.

Indeed, the beauty of the astrologian, at least the 4.0 version, was that its great variety of tools was a bit limited by RNG and you couldn't just click any utility on demand -- but the class ((WHEN PLAYED WELL)) had elegant methods of mitigating the randomness. You could plan some of those methods in advance depending on environmental variables, such as what kind of boss fight was coming up, or whether you had a weaker geared tank, whether there was a DPS check to get past, etc.

It's sad to read from people who apparently never played AST to its full potential. When I hear things like "fishing for balance" or "only two cards were useful" -- I see a red flag, someone whose comments should probably be disregarded, or at best, taken as a third-party perspective.

Probably in the minority here, but I kinda like how the base cards are now, personally runs feel a lot smoother to me than they did before the changes. A couple things I am not enjoying however is noct, barely even touch that lately, so hope they figure something out with it and also kinda wish lord and lady did... something else, just find them kinda boring as "slightly" better versions of base cards... heck id take their old effects to be honest...

AST is fine, I really like new cards system. I just activate my sub to play AST, so...Thank you SE for new AST

I stopped playing it aswell. Leveled to 80 but it feels bad. It's a hot mess mostly because of the card system and the high amount of oGCDs. Sure those oGCDs are awesome to have but it feels you are forced to heal just with them or you are wasting DPS time.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Snip

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I'm sorry bad tanks gave you a biased experience. Even in 5.0 when gravity was a full cast time I still found moments to cast it when the tanks taking a beating, especially when Lightspeed was up. Use your cooldowns. If the tank is still taking a beating after you've used all your cooldowns that is either on them for not properly mitigating or the group not having sufficient aoe dps.

Energy Drain wasnt brought back for the mp sustain. It was brought back so SCH's had a way to dump excess aetherflow. You have Lucid on a 1 min and Lightspeed on a 90 sec cooldown. You have the tools to restore mp, maybe throw a bone and give ast another mp restore? Ok fine, but an rng card that you would rather burn to enhance a dps card most of the time is too unreliable, sure you could save it, but most people would've rather save that balance so they can use it at the best time.

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Originally Posted by Kleptobrainiac

Which classes do the devs play?

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Black mage

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Yes, I have my own "bad" opinions that do not align with the "community-approved" ones.

The old system was an unreliable pile of RNG mess. You had Balance, two worse Balances and three utility cards. The (very few) moments where you needed one of the utility cards, you had 1/6 chance to get them.

The new system is something you can actually control. It's better for balancing and it has plenty of room for optimization. That's all.

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Before: Balance, two situational balances, three utilities, one damage and one heal. The ability to burn a card to buff the next.

Now: Eight way worse balances. And three redraws so if you don't like your way worse balance you can trade it for another way worse balance.


Eight whole cards with eight different effects turned into a coin toss with two similar outcomes.


AST mains played AST because of the cards and their semi RNG which involved fast decision making and made them feel powerful. And unique.
To turn this all into a coin toss that's either heads or heads is like removing jumps from Dragoons, or buffs from Bards... whoops, sorry!

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I'm sorry bad tanks gave you a biased experience. Even in 5.0 when gravity was a full cast time I still found moments to cast it when the tanks taking a beating, especially when Lightspeed was up. Use your cooldowns. If the tank is still taking a beating after you've used all your cooldowns that is either on them for not properly mitigating or the group not having sufficient aoe dps.

Energy Drain wasnt brought back for the mp sustain. It was brought back so SCH's had a way to dump excess aetherflow. You have Lucid on a 1 min and Lightspeed on a 90 sec cooldown. You have the tools to restore mp, maybe throw a bone and give ast another mp restore? Ok fine, but an rng card that you would rather burn to enhance a dps card most of the time is too unreliable, sure you could save it, but most people would've rather save that balance so they can use it at the best time.

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Bad tanks good tanks did not matter. Good tanks lasted a few seconds longer but would still go down. Even with Lightspeed and Synastry. Unless we got good DPS that will clear fast wall to wall pulls with an AST are a no go. All of my tank buddies agree on that. Though even with WHM or SCH some of those pulls are dicey and if the healer makes one wrong move trying to DPS the tank drops with the snap of a finger. Hence why I call them crazy tanks which they take as a badge of pride.

If we continue holding these discussions and making sure we prod them about it for every live letter, then I feel we might inevitably get somewhere. Even if our cards were reduced to three unique effects (MP regen, DMG buff, DEF buff), that alone would still be better than the boring thing we currently have.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Before: Balance, two situational balances, three utilities, one damage and one heal. The ability to burn a card to buff the next.

Now: Eight way worse balances. And three redraws so if you don't like your way worse balance you can trade it for another way worse balance.


Eight whole cards with eight different effects turned into a coin toss with two similar outcomes.


AST mains played AST because of the cards and their semi RNG which involved fast decision making and made them feel powerful. And unique.
To turn this all into a coin toss that's either heads or heads is like removing jumps from Dragoons, or buffs from Bards... whoops, sorry!

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How does anything you said change the old system from an unreliable pile of RNG mess to not an unreliable pile of RNG mess? I won't bother because enough has been said about the shortcomings of the old system.

You do not speak for AST mains, you speak for yourself. This is not as one-sided of an opinion as you think. Too bad the people who can't move on and won't adapt seem the most vocal around here.

The way you oversimplify the new system is incredibly disingenuous and it seems you completely forgot that Divination and seals even exist. It's quite clear you've not thought at all about the potential of the new cards.

Now that the cards do not span the entire duration of most jobs' rotation, it's no longer as simple as throwing it on the highest DPS.

Let me give you a scenario: BLM and MCH, equally competent. BLM pulls higher DPS, naturally. You draw Ewer (oh god why? oh wait, it's no longer garbage). BLM is casting Despair. MCH is about to build up Wildfire. Who do you pick?

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

How does anything you said change the old system from an unreliable pile of RNG mess to not an unreliable pile of RNG mess? I won't bother because enough has been said about the shortcomings of the old system.

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The shortcomings of the old system transferred over to the new system only worse because the duration and effect was heavily slashed, the cards were split into melee/range and then split further into 3 seals. Where in the old system only top end raiding fished instead at all content you fish for particular cards. Until you get your seals at which all that matters is the range type for you to minor arcana.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You do not speak for AST mains, you speak for yourself. This is not as one-sided of an opinion as you think. Too bad the people who can't move on and won't adapt seem the most vocal around here.

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Its the majority, shared across all three regions. There are more people upset and throwing away the class then there are those who like it. AST's representation in high end content has all but vanished, and their appearance in normal content ques has all but vanished.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

The way you oversimplify the new system is incredibly disingenuous and it seems you completely forgot that Divination and seals even exist. It's quite clear you've not thought at all about the potential of the new cards.

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He is not oversimplifying the system. It merely IS that oversimplified. You have 1 card effect spread over 8 cards. Seals and the melee/range split only exist so that the card system itself can exist. Divination's only purpose is to be the AoE buff, and only tracks seals so that seals had a reason to exist to support the card system itself existing. The potential of the new cards is shallow with no width. All it takes is a glance and you know the complete potential of the new cards. All that matters is the system hands you the ones you need so that you do not have needless frustration.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Now that the cards do not span the entire duration of most jobs' rotation, it's no longer as simple as throwing it on the highest DPS.

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Now that the cards do not have a duration worth a damn their weak effects lack impact. As a result ASTs overall impact is weak. The weaker the buff the longer the duration needs to be, which is why Dancer's buffs work and why Dancer is an automatic pick for many raid groups while AST is left to gather dust.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Let me give you a scenario: BLM and MCH, equally competent. BLM pulls higher DPS, naturally. You draw Ewer (oh god why? oh wait, it's no longer garbage). BLM is casting Despair. MCH is about to build up Wildfire. Who do you pick?

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It would not matter which one you throw it on. If the MCH is outputting 12k DPS then giving him the card is an extra 720 DPS. If the BLM is doing 13k DPS then throwing the card on him adds an extra 780 DPS. A 60 DPS difference.

The DPS difference between either of them is so small as to not matter. You throw it on whichever one you can click on faster.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Its the majority, shared across all three regions. There are more people upset and throwing away the class then there are those who like it. AST's representation in high end content has all but vanished, and their appearance in normal content ques has all but vanished.

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You know that for a fact because you've done the numbers. Please share.

Also, you know for a fact that AST's representation in high end content is because people are unhappy with the new cards, not due to the fact that it was severly undertuned for the entirety of Shadowbringers minus 4 days.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Now that the cards do not have a duration worth a damn their weak effects lack impact. As a result ASTs overall impact is weak. The weaker the buff the longer the duration needs to be, which is why Dancer's buffs work and why Dancer is an automatic pick for many raid groups while AST is left to gather dust.

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What I am saying and what I am trying to illustrate with the example is that because the damage buff is on a shorter duration, you now have more nuanced decisions to make when choosing your target.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

It would not matter which one you throw it on. If the MCH is outputting 12k DPS then giving him the card is an extra 720 DPS. If the BLM is doing 13k DPS then throwing the card on him adds an extra 780 DPS. A 60 DPS difference.

The DPS difference between either of them is so small as to not matter. You throw it on whichever one you can click on faster.

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No wonder you don't understand the shorter duration thing. When you see 13k DPS on a Black Mage, do you think that any of their abilities equally contribute to the total DPS?

The reason it didn't matter with a 30 second Balance is because those 30 seconds would span the entire BLM rotation, therefore it wouldn't matter where they were in their rotation. If you use the card on the Black Mage in my scenario, you're boosting the following: Blizzard III, Blizzard IV, Thunder, Xeno, Fire III and maybe one Fire IV.

What you are telling me here is that the difference between MCH's Wildfire phase and BLM's ice phase is negligible.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You know that for a fact because you've done the numbers. Please share.
.

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I too wanna see this data.
And no, using savage numbers don't count because not everyone does Savage.
Though Eden normal is a better use since even causal players can beat e1.
Not accurate number but it's an idea.

If you're just going by the amount of complaining on the fourms, that's also not an accurate amount since only a small amount of players use the fourms.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You know that for a fact because you've done the numbers. Please share.

Also, you know for a fact that AST's representation in high end content is because people are unhappy with the new cards, not due to the fact that it was severly undertuned for the entirety of Shadowbringers minus 4 days.

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If you want hard numbers just go watch the abysmal growth of AST parses on FFlogs. If it truly was in such a good spot then its numbers should have spiked these past 4 days. Except they have not, while the WHM and SCH numbers regularly increase by 200 every other day.

Oh and when I see complaints about AST in game, it is always about the cards. When I see people say they are dumping AST they always cite the cards. Weaker healing could be put up with if the cards were worth it, but people do not feel the cards are worth it. Even the healing changes did not make AST any more prevalent because those changes were mainly aimed at EX Trials and the Savage Raids. The AoE healing it did have was sufficient for dungeons.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

What I am saying and what I am trying to illustrate with the example is that because the damage buff is on a shorter duration, you now have more nuanced decisions to make when choosing your target.

No wonder you don't understand the shorter duration thing. When you see 13k DPS on a Black Mage, do you think that any of their abilities equally contribute to the total DPS?

The reason it didn't matter with a 30 second Balance is because those 30 seconds would span the entire BLM rotation, therefore it wouldn't matter where they were in their rotation. If you use the card on the Black Mage in my scenario, you're boosting the following: Blizzard III, Blizzard IV, Thunder, Xeno, Fire III and maybe one Fire IV.

What you are telling me here is that the difference between MCH's Wildfire phase and BLM's ice phase is negligible.

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So you are saying that I should watch my BLM like a hawk to know what stage of the rotation they are in just so I can precisely time throwing my buff out. Which means I will be lacking in paying attention to the rest of my party and doing my job worse. I should also at the same time be counting the shots my MCH party member makes and how long it has been since they used wildfire so I know precisely when they are about to enter a burst window so that I have a card ready to slap on them when they are about to wildfire burst.

For incredibly tiny potential gains.

If that is your nuance in the system then its pretty pathetic and takes away from doing your job of keeping people alive. Must be why AST only functions for the most elite of elite of statics who call for this kind of stuff. Though you get better benefit out of just having your Dancer perma buff the BLM (or Monk). Though hey, perhaps that nuance is just so required that its little wonder the cards feel like they have no impact. Throw them in at the wrong time and the buff is squandered, which means 90% of AST players are screwing themselves on a regular basis. Nice to know. It just makes the new card system even more worthless.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xxvaynxx

I too wanna see this data.
And no, using savage numbers don't count because not everyone does Savage.
Though Eden normal is a better use since even causal players can beat e1.
Not accurate number but it's an idea.

If you're just going by the amount of complaining on the fourms, that's also not an accurate amount since only a small amount of players use the fourms.

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AST currently makes up 16.6% of the healer parses on E1, or 4897 out of 29247. If you go E1S then it is 13.4%, or 4624 out of 34360. If you go up through normal it stays consistent in that for every 1 AST there will be 3 WHMs and roughly 2 SCHs. If you go up Savage then the amount of ASTs drastically drops to where you have up to 14 WHMs or SCHs per AST.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

If you want hard numbers just go watch the abysmal growth of AST parses on FFlogs. If it truly was in such a good spot then its numbers should have spiked these past 4 days. Except they have not, while the WHM and SCH numbers regularly increase by 200 every other day.

Oh and when I see complaints about AST in game, it is always about the cards. When I see people say they are dumping AST they always cite the cards. Weaker healing could be put up with if the cards were worth it, but people do not feel the cards are worth it. Even the healing changes did not make AST any more prevalent because those changes were mainly aimed at EX Trials and the Savage Raids. The AoE healing it did have was sufficient for dungeons.



So you are saying that I should watch my BLM like a hawk to know what stage of the rotation they are in just so I can precisely time throwing my buff out. Which means I will be lacking in paying attention to the rest of my party and doing my job worse. I should also at the same time be counting the shots my MCH party member makes and how long it has been since they used wildfire so I know precisely when they are about to enter a burst window so that I have a card ready to slap on them when they are about to wildfire burst.

For incredibly tiny potential gains.

If that is your nuance in the system then its pretty pathetic and takes away from doing your job of keeping people alive. Must be why AST only functions for the most elite of elite of statics who call for this kind of stuff. Though you get better benefit out of just having your Dancer perma buff the BLM (or Monk). Though hey, perhaps that nuance is just so required that its little wonder the cards feel like they have no impact. Throw them in at the wrong time and the buff is squandered, which means 90% of AST players are screwing themselves on a regular basis. Nice to know. It just makes the new card system even more worthless.

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To be fair, astro has always had the least amount of players playing compared to whm and sch ALSO with the change to fflogs.
You don't need an astro anymore because your DPS is now rdps which is what you're ranked on now instead of your padded dps.

So now that whm does tank DPS and sch is really powerful in healing...
Our poor astro.... Astro is my favorite healer so I'll still play it.

My personal experience on the effect the changes have had was I personally started playing when Heavensward was new and fell in love with the Astro class. These changes have completely turned me off to the class and I play white mage now, healing is my favorite role even if they've felt somewhat neglected as of late. It probably doesn't matter to a large percentage of the player base but I happened to really like the lore and story of Astro, part of what I fell in love with, and these changes sort of walk all over it. It's not just the cards for me either but the whole effect, I have not level'd up Astro to 80 yet but having gone through as WHM they just feel in a better place for me. I wish I could be more constructive in this regard but I don't know what exactly could be done to "fix" this problem, I was much more of an rp gal as apposed to the savage raiding business but it's looking like this is the class for some time.

If you enjoy or like or approve of the new system I don't want to take that away from you, enjoy what you enjoy but realize for some of us we not only didn't get a new heal class but lost an old one.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

If you want hard numbers just go watch the abysmal growth of AST parses on FFlogs. If it truly was in such a good spot then its numbers should have spiked these past 4 days. Except they have not, while the WHM and SCH numbers regularly increase by 200 every other day.

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Why should have they have spiked these last 4 days? Why would a job being strong automatically mean people will play it? BLM is very strong, I don't see it topping the fflogs statistics you seem to like so much.

I say a job is strong. You respond with "Not enough people play it". How does that compute?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

So you are saying that I should watch my BLM like a hawk to know what stage of the rotation they are in just so I can precisely time throwing my buff out. Which means I will be lacking in paying attention to the rest of my party and doing my job worse. I should also at the same time be counting the shots my MCH party member makes and how long it has been since they used wildfire so I know precisely when they are about to enter a burst window so that I have a card ready to slap on them when they are about to wildfire burst.

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Counting the shots? MCH uses Wildfire on CD. If MCH used it at 0:05, then they're using it at 2:05, 4:05, 6:05, etc.

I'm saying that if you know more about the other jobs in the party you'll see significant gains over slapping cards willy nilly.

Obviously, you wouldn't do this if it interferes with your normal play. But if you care about maximizing RDPS contribution through your cards, this system is significantly more interesting.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

If that is your nuance in the system then its pretty pathetic and takes away from doing your job of keeping people alive.

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Is this what it's about? Jealous of DNC? You don't have to worry, DNC and AST do not compete for the same spot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

AST currently makes up 16.6% of the healer parses on E1, or 4897 out of 29247. If you go E1S then it is 13.4%, or 4624 out of 34360. If you go up through normal it stays consistent in that for every 1 AST there will be 3 WHMs and roughly 2 SCHs. If you go up Savage then the amount of ASTs drastically drops to where you have up to 14 WHMs or SCHs per AST.

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FFlogs are not a good indicator for many reasons:
- Not everyone parses.
- Out of all people that parse, not everyone uploads logs.
- One person accounts for multiple logs. If I parse two runs of Eden and upload, I count as two SCH parses.

In fact, if I go into E1S today and clear it 100000 times, then by your logic, AST would be the most popular job.


Anyways, I'm done. AST is strong. The healers are more balanced than they've ever been. People will realize it sooner or later.