AST Adjustments 6.2

I bet my Gil on that theyre going to remove Lord- and Lady of Crowns entirely again and then do some Potency adjustments and call it a day, all for the sake of Button bloating.


And it isnt like basic Rotation Skills on Jobs like SAM take up 8 slots or on the matter of Healers, u got arround 14 different Healing skills that only differ in looks, cooldown and somewhat in cast time. This could easily be fixed by turning those into combo actions like in PvP, if they want to reduce any "button bloat".

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Not just in casual content, I've took dancer into DRS and both 5.0 and 6.0 savages, and its one of two jobs I've progged ultimate in, so I'm hardly a casual dancer player. (I might not have as many parses btw because I do my hardcore content on ps4)

Then again, I'm not as zealous an optimiser nor super high skilled as some people. It was that 6.08 changes that made me think that the sks buff would be a good thing, because its not permanent having a card buff on, and it feels slower as a result of said changes.

I will concede that the sks buff may be better for me as someone with high ping so lag doesn't affect me as much compared to an equally experienced dnc player closer to the servers.



An alternative to the arrow i would like to suggest though to return to flavour if we cant agree on old arrow: give it paladin's double autos or instant casting speed. Still a speed buff but a more approachable one
Old arrow would also be good in the current situation for healers tbh. squeeze out more glare/broil/malefic/dosis. but thats just me being bitter again

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Based on info from The Balance discord, a very small amount of skill speed is recommended for most Dancers because not many players have absolutely no lag, and that will help you actually stick to your rotation. There are a few different thresholds that are recommended based on your ping, but an AST randomly giving you an attack speed buff is not the solution and has a chance of actually hurting your performance.

But yeah, rethinking what buffs the cards do outside of attack speed can make a lot more sense.

I want draw/play and arcana buttons to be one button each not two. I want sleeve draw back to mitigate crappy luck, I hate the cards so much I have barely touched my astro due to this. With these changes I, particularly the sleeve draw, I will return to healing on ast instead of scholar. I must say I was not happy for our essential dignity to be nerfed only to have the potency put on an extra charge of opposition and a new button.

What I find utterly baffliing is that in shadowbringers they changed sleeve draw from 3 fast card plays to 1 because it was TOO BUSY for many players to keep up with... and then they go and add a haste buff. So people who struggled to weave already struggle more. I liked the old sleeve draw, it was fun. A haste buff jus feels weird given all their previous efforts to slow the job down and make it simple.

Would like to see the time dilation effects to come back in some form but no way that happens this expansion.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

You will drift or clip with SkS because your GCD's don't divide evenly into the 30 sec cooldown of Standard Step (at 0 SkS, they divide perfectly into 12 GCD's). This isn't actually as much of an issue due to the 6.08 DNC buffs but it can still feel bad and misalign your rotation.

While you might like an attack speed buff for a "feel good" in casual content, an experienced DNC would hate it. SkS and SpS is usually the sort of stat that jobs either avoid like the plague or stack to very specific amounts for a specific rotation. While it would be nice to be able to just hit things faster and not worry, mathematically it can turn out to be a loss due to how the game is designed.

No class should be able to apply an unplanned buff that can disrupt other players rotation. It's just not a good idea.

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No offense, but that's exactly the reason why jobs are boring, I'm sorry. The second something seems remotely fun another one brings up a calculator. I don't play a fantasy game to have boring abilities because a spreadsheet says so.

On one end we have casuals so most of the game with eye contact to the MSQ needs to stay easy and on the other end the second an abilities threatens to make whatever job suboptimal (whatever that means) it's out the door.

I totally get both sides and they have a place, but XIV throws out the baby with the bathwater and the end result isn't all that appealing long-term. To be fair, PvP is a really good start.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

No offense, but that's exactly the reason why jobs are boring, I'm sorry. The second something seems remotely fun another one brings up a calculator. I don't play a fantasy game to have boring abilities because a spreadsheet says so.

On one end we have casuals so most of the game with eye contact to the MSQ needs to stay easy and on the other end the second an abilities threatens to make whatever job suboptimal (whatever that means) it's out the door.

I totally get both sides and they have a place, but XIV throws out the baby with the bathwater and the end result isn't all that appealing long-term. To be fair, PvP is a really good start.

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The problem isn't specifically that it's suboptimal. It's that it feels shitty to play. No one who has developed a strong understanding of the game's mechanics want so sit there and wait half a second to be able to continue their combo. Skill speed and spell speed are just bad stats conceptually for an RPG centered around cooldowns. There are other effects that could be more interesting and usable that we continue to not explore, but just like accuracy, skill speed and spell speed should've died years ago. Speed up mechanics should instead be built into the jobs that need them because that way it can be realistically controlled.

If we got more than 3 cleansable debuffs across every ounce of content added to the game in the span of 2 years, maybe debuff prevention would be a much greater asset, for example.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

There are other effects that could be more interesting and usable that we continue to not explore, but just like accuracy, skill speed and spell speed should've died years ago.

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Especially since Astrodyne feels like such a weak effort to keep the Seals mechanic. SE probably realized in ASTs current design that there isn't actually a need for more than 2 cards and quickly thought of some way to keep 6 cards. Standing VERY far back, the Job still appears to have RNG in card drawing, but when you take a closer look, it's simply the appearance of RNG with no actual quick thinking or decision making.

My favorite line: "All of the cards do the same thing, and somehow you still don't get the ones you want"

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Originally Posted by IllyaPrisma

Especially since Astrodyne feels like such a weak effort to keep the Seals mechanic. SE probably realized in ASTs current design that there isn't actually a need for more than 2 cards and quickly thought of some way to keep 6 cards. Standing VERY far back, the Job still appears to have RNG in card drawing, but when you take a closer look, it's simply the appearance of RNG with no actual quick thinking or decision making.

My favorite line: "All of the cards do the same thing, and somehow you still don't get the ones you want"

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Well that's kind of the issue from the get-go. Trying to justify 6 different buffs in this game is highly challenging because you're inevitably going to have cards that are weaker and others that are stronger. With the old system, Royal Road helped a lot at creating a counterweight to grant value to the more niche utility cards, especially Spire who's effect was virtually useless but was the best card to burn. This ultimately wasn't enough to make it a fair and balanced mechanic, but there was logic to it.

The seal system was created as a response to this, enabling them to homogenize the cards into 1 repetitive effect, but it's a colossal failure. It actually highlights even more just how unnecessary the 6 different cards aspect is on a functional level and has felt stupidly clunky every step of the way so far. Even though it's been smoothed out since ShB's launch, it still feels like a mess because there's just no reason to have the system at all the way it's currently implemented.

What's more is the Cards are very heavily linked to the lore of job, and while lore-breaking isn't something they're too afraid to shy away from, foundational lore aspects aren't things they're going to eliminate. If we were to ignore the lore, the most sensible thing we could do would be to cut the card system entirely and just replace it with a single button, but that would get a heavy amount of backlash, and I wouldn't be happy with that solution either. What this means is if they really want to make AST enjoyable is they're going to need to bring the cards back to the drawing board once more and figure out a way to justify having 6 cards in a way that doesn't feel like ass and yet retain a level of consistency that inspired the ShB changes to begin with.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Well that's kind of the issue from the get-go. Trying to justify 6 different buffs in this game is highly challenging because you're inevitably going to have cards that are weaker and others that are stronger.

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i agree with your post. if we lost 1 or even 2 cards for a total of 4 or 5 different effects in exchange for the effects actually being interesting and meaningful i would definitely prefer that. i mean pvp only has 3 cards and its already a lot more fun (tho tbh defensive bole as a 4th card would be great to have too).

Okay so here's a wacky concept, though the specifics would need to be ironed out.

Astral Draw draws one of three astral aspected cards: The Balance, The Arrow, and The Spire
Umbral Draw draws one of three umbral aspected cards: The Bole, The Spear, and the Ewer

Both the draw and the play are now on the GCD (your draws would share the same button as your play respective to each draw). When used, they create an orbital star stack on the Astrologian to a maximum of 6. When casting an offensive spell, a stack is consumed to deal an additional attack of 250 potency. Astrodyne is an OGCD action that transfers all your orbital stars to another player. Their spells and/or weaponskills trigger the 250 potency attacks, though the potency is still based on your stats and not theirs.

Each card compiles an effect on you as the AST along with the damage buff they put on other party members.

Balance = 6% damage increase effect
Arrow = 8% critical hit increase effect
Spire = 12% direct hit increase effect

Bole = 10% damage reduction effect
Spear = 10% increased healing action received effect
Ewer = 200 potency heal effect

Celestial Intersection grants your compiled astral effects onto one target as an OGCD action.
Celestial Opposition grants your compiled umbral effects onto yourself and nearby allies as an OGCD action.

I'm not quite sure how you might work out the rhythm of something like this, but I think that could be an interesting place to start. If fleshed out, it could actually create a highly passive healer who mainly DPSs with Combust and Malefics between drawing and playing cards, but is largely spending time passing damage buffs around and passing orbital stars out to others to use while you continue drawing.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Not just in casual content, I've took dancer into DRS and both 5.0 and 6.0 savages, and its one of two jobs I've progged ultimate in, so I'm hardly a casual dancer player. (I might not have as many parses btw because I do my hardcore content on ps4)

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That's fair, apologies if I came across as implying you weren't a good DNC.

DNC isn't the only example and to clarify I have no problems with a DNC loading up on SkS if they wanted. But sometimes at high end gameplay you find that your rotation maps so that you end on an exact GCD when the boss phase changes, often with small adjustments to ensure you complete a key combo on that GCD. Someone forcing SkS on you ruins that delicate planning.

Basically given that it can hinder gameplay for some players, SkS should be a personal choice, not something another class can dump on you.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

No offense, but that's exactly the reason why jobs are boring, I'm sorry. The second something seems remotely fun another one brings up a calculator. I don't play a fantasy game to have boring abilities because a spreadsheet says so.

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I don't disagree with you.

I'd actually like stats like "Haste" to be something we can load up on freely and go nuts with. I've never been a big fan of ff14's 2 minute precise spreadsheet rotation loops for optimal damage on some classes and I suspect the reason is that it's easy to balance and friendly to the spaghetti code and servers.

Ideally they'd work on making it so SkS/SpS weren't detrimental. But while they refuse to do that, giving a class the ability to force that detrimental stat on you just isn't fun imo. It's not the fault of the high end players that the game works this way.

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Originally Posted by IllyaPrisma

Especially since Astrodyne feels like such a weak effort to keep the Seals mechanic. SE probably realized in ASTs current design that there isn't actually a need for more than 2 cards and quickly thought of some way to keep 6 cards. Standing VERY far back, the Job still appears to have RNG in card drawing, but when you take a closer look, it's simply the appearance of RNG with no actual quick thinking or decision making.

My favorite line: "All of the cards do the same thing, and somehow you still don't get the ones you want"

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You know I had the long standing idea that through application of the Eureka Element system you could eliminate the RNG of AST and still kept the other card buffs. You could of turned Redraw and Undraw into Align Left and Align Right. The constellation you were aligned with was the buff you played. You could of then had turned the other card buttons into Extend, Expand, and Empower. Thus achieving the effects of the original HW/SB card system.

You eliminate the RNG so you always have the card buff you want available, while leaving in the utility belt.

Sure Spire would of still needed a rework but changing it to healing received would of kept the card in theme while being useful.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

You know I had the long standing idea that through application of the Eureka Element system you could eliminate the RNG of AST and still kept the other card buffs. You could of turned Redraw and Undraw into Align Left and Align Right. The constellation you were aligned with was the buff you played. You could of then had turned the other card buttons into Extend, Expand, and Empower. Thus achieving the effects of the original HW/SB card system.

You eliminate the RNG so you always have the card buff you want available, while leaving in the utility belt.

Sure Spire would of still needed a rework but changing it to healing received would of kept the card in theme while being useful.

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i love this idea. good for prog and good for farming.



i had a different one for the old card system where instead of drawing a random card every time, you get a spread of all 6 cards in a random order every 180 seconds. redraw would then be "shuffle" and its up to you how to use the spread in the order given. minor arcana instead let you use a card without consuming royal road effect

I like the old Arrow only on Healer or Caster. I was not so unpoilte person who give it to a Melee. The Arrow could be good for SAGE or SCH aswell. The important thing is that you always have a DPS Up form the Divination trait, that people would love to see. The utility that somepople love is RNG. Thats some ast player like aswell but the dmg for all are important here. It should feel powerfull to use a card and easyer. The melee and range card thing is terrible in my eyes. (#two range dps groups) I hold a lot of place holder for the balance Team. I hope SE could use the Idea. One idea SE take form me haha and that feels good. For the Nosttalgics here The Born of (Pan-) Heima (From 2017)

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Originally Posted by Theox

All I can really hope for is them addressing button bloat WITHOUT making the job easier, but judging by the recent changes to some classes new astro is going to be awful and I'm ready to switch for 6.2 to something else.

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I think this is the safest assumption. They will probably remove something with the intention of making the job easier and not replace it or compensate in any other way. In their minds, they probably think people don't want to play AST because it is the "busy" healer.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

I like the old Arrow only on Healer or Caster. I was not so unpoilte person who give it to a Melee. The Arrow could be good for SAGE or SCH aswell. The important thing is that you always have a DPS Up form the Divination trait, that people would love to see. The utility that somepople love is RNG. Thats some ast player like aswell but the dmg for all are important here. It should feel powerfull to use a card and easyer. The melee and range card thing is terrible in my eyes. (#two range dps groups) I hold a lot of place holder for the balance Team. I hope SE could use the Idea. One idea SE take form me haha and that feels good. For the Nosttalgics here The Born of (Pan-) Heima (From 2017)

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Exactly its good for healer and bm I would not be insensitive to throw it on no one else to let them clip

what astro (and honestly all healers) needs is the ability to queue macro like actions! mouseover is such a beautiful thing, but u r pretty much guaranteed to clip ur GCD with an in game mouse over macro for cards/single target heals (lets not forget about field aoes either)

only healers need to target friendlies on a regular basis, NOBODY else does ... DRG and tanks can slap a <x> targetting macro on their shareable buffs (dragon sight, nascent flash etc) and it works fine since thay have WHOLE GCDs to work with, for a casting healer this is completely unfair, significantly bloats the amount of APM u need to do that can vary wildly

as for 6.2, im going to give benefit of doubt if they undo the kaiten change, but otherwise wouldnt hold my breath.... cards might be going byebye tbh

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Originally Posted by Chopstix

what astro (and honestly all healers) needs is the ability to queue macro like actions! mouseover is such a beautiful thing, but u r pretty much guaranteed to clip ur GCD with an in game mouse over macro for cards/single target heals (lets not forget about field aoes either)

only healers need to target friendlies on a regular basis, NOBODY else does ... DRG and tanks can slap a <x> targetting macro on their shareable buffs (dragon sight, nascent flash etc) and it works fine since thay have WHOLE GCDs to work with, for a casting healer this is completely unfair, significantly bloats the amount of APM u need to do that can vary wildly

as for 6.2, im going to give benefit of doubt if they undo the kaiten change, but otherwise wouldnt hold my breath.... cards might be going byebye tbh

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Even better would be to have two targets. One target for enemies and one for party/alliance, such that damage spells will always be cast on non-party target instead of all the back and forth.
You can almost accomplish this with focus target and out of game macros, but not quite. There’s still clunkiness around assigning target party member as focus target

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Originally Posted by DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise

Even better would be to have two targets. One target for enemies and one for party/alliance, such that damage spells will always be cast on non-party target instead of all the back and forth.
You can almost accomplish this with focus target and out of game macros, but not quite. There’s still clunkiness around assigning target party member as focus target

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i also use out of game macros, but have single heals set to go on target of target, no matter who tanks (tank swap etc) heal will go on the right person, mouse over is for silly dps who stand in stuff for spot heals <3

i highly recommend healers to try out 3rd party stuff for targetting convenience, u go from man "this shit sucks" to "holy shikes i can do all that?"

Honesty AST is the last bastion of interesting healer gameplay for me. If they simplify it much further I might just unsub. Give me more to do between heals, take some notes from new PvP, make healing interesting again instead of having every class appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I think they need to go away from the idea that cards = rng. Astrodyne feels terrible for a miniscule buff and often miss it when timing with lightspeed. If they want to do a tarot theme, they could instead have a fixed deck that you manipulate and stack, make a combo route of tarot readings, or have a tapping mechanic like mtg where you can set cards upside down for effects. I'm unsure how convoluted they can be with it since they still have to keep it inline with the amount of button presses with the rest of the healers being about 1-3 buttons for singular/aoe healing and buffing. It would be cool to see a gauge of 3 cards like Ewer, Arrow, Bole that change into Balance, Spear, and Spire based on a buff/timer you turn on. There's so much they could do to make it more thematically cohesive like sage, and I hope this 6.2 rework really is substantial now that they see the success of Sage.

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Originally Posted by Levirre

I think they need to go away from the idea that cards = rng. Astrodyne feels terrible for a miniscule buff and often miss it when timing with lightspeed. If they want to do a tarot theme, they could instead have a fixed deck that you manipulate and stack, make a combo route of tarot readings, or have a tapping mechanic like mtg where you can set cards upside down for effects. I'm unsure how convoluted they can be with it since they still have to keep it inline with the amount of button presses with the rest of the healers being about 1-3 buttons for singular/aoe healing and buffing. It would be cool to see a gauge of 3 cards like Ewer, Arrow, Bole that change into Balance, Spear, and Spire based on a buff/timer you turn on. There's so much they could do to make it more thematically cohesive like sage, and I hope this 6.2 rework really is substantial now that they see the success of Sage.

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Half disagree with this, for two reasons:

1) AST is the Gambler expy of the game, so removing RNG kind of ruins a core conceit of the job fantasy. Doubly so since the idea of randomness and probability pairs so well in a "theoretical physics" kind of way with time magic.

2) The game has already removed so much flavor in service of homogenizing jobs and scripting gameplay. Elemental typing, weapon damage typing, stances, pets, and now we are in the middle of removing debuffs, DoTs, crits, and any party damage buff that isn't 120s. I think a lot of players really don't know what they are asking for when they demand that jobs be less inefficient/randomized and more consistent--it has destroyed so much uniqueness and excitement in job design. Kaiten and the removal of SAM crits was already a huge blow, but I think removing all RNG from AST is a threshold beyond which the game would not be redeemable.

minor arcana and arcana play become the same button - Class fixed.

Welcome to my TEDTalk.

I'm hoping they overhaul, or preferrably, remove the seals entirely. It was a redundant "mechanic bloat" in ShB and it didn't really get that much better in EW. It only exists to make it less obvious how dull neutering all the cards into 8 flavors of Balance is, which is a problem in on itself, but I doubt that's changing anytime soon.

I personally hope they change the amount of oGCDs needed during burst. Not because I'm having trouble, but because I don't like the idea of having to use my utility skills(Lightspeed in this case) exclusively for DPS, instead of - you know - phases where I actually need to move while casting.

Also... I want the old cards back. This will never happen, but I'll keep saying I miss them, because I miss them >.<.

I am not particularly unhappy with the current AST as I still feel like the Healers all feel unique and sometimes things can be exaggerated on how boring something is, its very subjective and dependent on the content you do. If there was one thing I'd ask for is making some superfluous buttons just a TAD more useful.

Now I never played Heavensward, Stormblood AST but there seem to have been some good ideas in there, particularly Royal Road, Time Dilation. I think most people who are not high on nostalgia can see why the 6 diff buffs AST used to have was a nightmare for balance and how the current buffs although more same-y are not as problematic.

My suggestion although probably not likely judging from previous changes would be to have a semi-return to SHB Minor Arcana with some Royal Road flavor. Being able to randomly draw a buff to your next card could help Minor Arcana not feel like an afterthought.

It's also possible to just make Lord of Crown's DPS positive and do anything else with Lady of Crowns (sometimes the free instant AOE heal can be nice).

I think if anything whoever is handling AST changes, I beg to just try and reinforce ASTs identity in the changes and not have it be purely the same as what we have been getting. This includes trying to incorporate Synastry better in the Kit, reworking Minor Arcana, and streamlining Draw/Play cards. Additionally, I have heard that Lightspeed could use some QoL so that too.

Lastly, I can see some kind of change to Astrodyne, I'm not sure what it would look like but I do sometimes find it annoying to try and figure out how to line up those buffs with Divination. Idk to what extent MAJOR adjustments means to the development team but in short:

Minor Arcana: QoL: make play and draw one button, and making the cards feel more useful- possibly by giving them the Royal Road, Time Dilation, or SHB Minor Arcana effects aka being able to extend the duration, potency, or add utility to a card.

Synastry: Make it more useful in times when it's not in the niche cases. I do myself use it dungeons but it could be better overall. This could be anything to bring it in line with other abilities. This one is open to creativity.

Astordyne: Make it and Divination line up a tad bit better and review the current buffs to see if it can be more useful as a core mechanic.

Lightspeed: I'm not 100% aware of this issue with other players but it seems the cooldown could be shorter or it could have charges.

Sleeve Draw: I know they specifically mentioned button bloat as an issue which I don't 100% agree on, it's moreso cohesion with buttons for me. AST is inherently busy and that's okay. I think Sleeve Draw can be reintroduced to solve a plethora of issues such as Minor Arcana and Astrodyne.

All I can ask is for some of these changes to be implemented or that at the least some of the ideation behind PvP AST can translate to PvE with the knowledge that everything done in PvP can't just be transferred over easily but even just a discussion on those ides is good.

Astrologian is my main class since i have started to play the game in 2019. Since ShB was already out i do not know the HW or SB AST.
This being said i do have some complains about the current card system.

I want to "play" with my card:
The current card system is just damage increase wich is nice but why not give it more flavor ?
We have a total of 6 cards (without minor aracana) there is plenty of possibilities for differents effects.
I see a lot of you guys praising SB cards with each card having differents effects and i would love to see that, the PvP version already done that and i enjoy more PvP AST on this aspect.
If we got this change i would love to see a keep system where you're hold you're card because for now it's not useful but it would be later and also a "specific draw" ability where you pick the card you want (don't know if this one is feasible xD)


Maybe a little damage buff but that cherry on top
AST is a busy healer and that's what i like about this job, we buff we heal and we deal damage but i really want to see a change in the card system.

The only thing I remember being said was that they wanted to look into adjusting how busy AST and DRG were. In that case, I can only imagine that they'd want to consolidate or remove buttons, maybe choosing to change the cards a bit while elongating the cooldown so that we don't have to go through the card mini-game so often.

Ideally, I would prefer it if they'd just reconsider and change certain elements (I've listed my thoughts in the past, and I don't think it's fair for me to put everything through that again), but I doubt they'd bother wasting enough time to do that if there's a DPS to consider. So I expect a lot of trimming with no meaningful replacement, as is usual, and then a ridiculous buff to ASTs potencies come the .3 patch, as per tradition with Yoshi-P and his efforts to try and make AST played more while simultaneously trying not to understand why people don't really play it in the first place.

Here's the thing about AST cards: either they all need to contribute to damage or none of them should contribute to damage. That was the problem with pre ShB era cards: Half (post Spear change) contributed to damage and half contributed to utility (or were used to set-up for damage). The utility cards, being RNG, were faaaaar less useful than the damage cards, even with Bole buffed out the ass to equal Rampart. How was slightly less damage on a tank/the group that you couldn't plan for compete with a 5% flat damage buff? 7% crit buff? It didn't. It couldn't.

We also have to look at the pre-HW skill set AST had. Most of their Job skills went to card management (Draw/Play, Royal Road, Spread, Redraw). Gravity, their AoE filler spell, used to be 52. They didn't have it for any of the ARR post game dungeons. A lot of skills that feel like they should be job quest skills are instead learned during level up (Essential Dignity is at level 4, btw). This caused major problems down the road on introducing new spells for level up. The job design was too limited in scope. The ShB card changes alleviated a lot of this problem.

However, EW introduced a new problem by giving AST a bonkers amount of buttons to hit with a seal system that isn't practical with how cards are doled out. So, my proposition is thus:

Minor Arcana: neither card does damage. Lady is now an AoE heal with a regen effect while Lord is an AoE heal with a shield effect. (Celestial Opposition might get nerfed to be just a flat AoE heal, but maybe gets both regen and shield effects if used while under Neutral Sect).

Basic cards: Now only do direct damage by the AST (half are single target, while the other half are AoE. Redraw is 3 charges again. Draw grants the Celestial Redraw effect which automatically redraw the single-target card to the AoE one of the same seal and vice-versa (this will not consume a charge of Redraw). MP gain is buffed back to 700MP. Sleeve Draw returned and put on a 60s timer (will also grant Celestial Redraw).

Astrodyne: sits on a 60s cooldown timer. Seals determine what kind of attack is performed when Astrodyne is used (3 of the same = big AoE hit [can probably use current Lady of Crowns animation]. 3 different = big single-target hit [can probably use old Lord of Crowns animation]. 2 same = Earthly Star).

I'm aware this greatly lowers the amount of support AST does, but this does make it more solo-friendly and controller friendly.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

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We really need to make some corrections here.
There's 3 major problems with astro: Its cards and time magic are gone robbing it of its flavour and playstyle, its one of the few jobs bloated to an excessive degree and losing its sects in favour of a nonexistant regen/barrier split when all healers have regens and barriers caused it more limitations.

1. Play is a shb thing and a stupid idea that they've kept around. Crown play likewise. These need to go. They did not exist back in HW/SB, draw/play was the same button. Likewise MA was also a single button.
HW cards were Draw, RR, Spread and Redraw. Nobody used Undraw or Undraw spread. Why Undraw has not been deleted is unknown to this day.
SB was Draw, RR, Spread, Redraw, MA and Sleeve draw. 6 buttons but this was also the time we got the brilliant W cross hotbar.

2. Once again, the support actions were FUN and had their niches in situations other than the raid environment. Yes some needed a buff, all had their uses however. The job identity has rng as described in earlier posts in this thread. Removing it takes away another chunk of the playstyle ast players new and old enjoy. The shb cards were a complete downgrade, it would have been far better to remove the balance and spire and put new effects in their place while keeping the dps buff as divination if removing rng from your damage buff is such a problem.

3. The astrodyne mechanic you have suggested is decent in theory, but the earthly star removal just to put it in there is very foolish as its one of Ast's best healing tools.

4. Your overall rework reduces further Ast's playstyle of a buffer when its already in the dumps. While no Ast would turn down more buttons to make its solo gameplay fun, removing the support for it would likely be unpopular.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

Here's the thing about AST cards: either they all need to contribute to damage or none of them should contribute to damage. That was the problem with pre ShB era cards: Half (post Spear change) contributed to damage and half contributed to utility (or were used to set-up for damage). The utility cards, being RNG, were faaaaar less useful than the damage cards, even with Bole buffed out the ass to equal Rampart. How was slightly less damage on a tank/the group that you couldn't plan for compete with a 5% flat damage buff? 7% crit buff? It didn't. It couldn't.

We also have to look at the pre-HW skill set AST had. Most of their Job skills went to card management (Draw/Play, Royal Road, Spread, Redraw). Gravity, their AoE filler spell, used to be 52. They didn't have it for any of the ARR post game dungeons. A lot of skills that feel like they should be job quest skills are instead learned during level up (Essential Dignity is at level 4, btw). This caused major problems down the road on introducing new spells for level up. The job design was too limited in scope. The ShB card changes alleviated a lot of this problem.

However, EW introduced a new problem by giving AST a bonkers amount of buttons to hit with a seal system that isn't practical with how cards are doled out. So, my proposition is thus:

Minor Arcana: neither card does damage. Lady is now an AoE heal with a regen effect while Lord is an AoE heal with a shield effect. (Celestial Opposition might get nerfed to be just a flat AoE heal, but maybe gets both regen and shield effects if used while under Neutral Sect).

Basic cards: Now only do direct damage by the AST (half are single target, while the other half are AoE. Redraw is 3 charges again. Draw grants the Celestial Redraw effect which automatically redraw the single-target card to the AoE one of the same seal and vice-versa (this will not consume a charge of Redraw). MP gain is buffed back to 700MP. Sleeve Draw returned and put on a 60s timer (will also grant Celestial Redraw).

Astrodyne: sits on a 60s cooldown timer. Seals determine what kind of attack is performed when Astrodyne is used (3 of the same = big AoE hit [can probably use current Lady of Crowns animation]. 3 different = big single-target hit [can probably use old Lord of Crowns animation]. 2 same = Earthly Star).

I'm aware this greatly lowers the amount of support AST does, but this does make it more solo-friendly and controller friendly.

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Might as well just get rid of the cards all together then and just buff their Malefic potency since they all are just dps buttons anyway with this set up. And people are still going to complain about getting AoE damage cards when they need single target ones since I assume single target damage will be higher than the AoE counterpart, so it does nothing to appease the min maxers who complained about the original iteration anyway.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Might as well just get rid of the cards all together then and just buff their Malefic potency since they all are just dps buttons anyway with this set up. And people are still going to complain about getting AoE damage cards when they need single target ones since I assume single target damage will be higher than the AoE counterpart, so it does nothing to appease the min maxers who complained about the original iteration anyway.

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The problem is AST's gimmick in and of itself just doesn't work within the context of FFXIV. Either all cards need to contribute to DPS and be random, or all cards need to be utility and be selectable. We can't have halfsies or else we have the problem of "Balance or bust". You may not like min-maxers, but that is the reality of the game.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

The problem is AST's gimmick in and of itself just doesn't work within the context of FFXIV. Either all cards need to contribute to DPS and be random, or all cards need to be utility and be selectable. We can't have halfsies or else we have the problem of "Balance or bust". You may not like min-maxers, but that is the reality of the game.

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The reality of the game is that there is nothing preventing people from clearing content with the previous iteration of cards, or when divination was tied to the seals, what happened was people were getting upset about missing out on a 2% damage increase with divination. And before that it was about a few hundred DPS between the top parsers when card effects were different. This has never been about the ability of the cards to make or break runs, it was about parsing the best numbers using the cards that is all, people got mad because they weren't getting top parses when the AST that was feeding them cards didn't draw enough balance cards.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

The reality of the game is that there is nothing preventing people from clearing content with the previous iteration of cards, or when divination was tied to the seals, what happened was people were getting upset about missing out on a 2% damage increase with divination. And before that it was about a few hundred DPS between the top parsers when card effects were different. This has never been about the ability of the cards to make or break runs, it was about parsing the best numbers using the cards that is all, people got mad because they weren't getting top parses when the AST that was feeding them cards didn't draw enough balance cards.

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And, guess what? You all got mad that the healers weren't balanced. Everyone wanted AST because they could do that. So, what did SE do? They catered to your demands. AST couldn't do that anymore, or, rather, that was all they could do. Honestly, you guys have no one to blame but yourselves for the state of AST. You wanted balance, and you got it. And, everything that goes with it.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

And, guess what? You all got mad that the healers weren't balanced. Everyone wanted AST because they could do that. So, what did SE do? They catered to your demands. AST couldn't do that anymore, or, rather, that was all they could do. Honestly, you guys have no one to blame but yourselves for the state of AST. You wanted balance, and you got it. And, everything that goes with it.

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no "we" didnt ask for this. even without balance whm was woefully undertuned. what needed to happen was to increase the dps of whm to make up for the difference

and to be honest the biggest game changer wasnt even by SE, it was by fflogs introducing rdps. without rdps we would still be card feeding and padding players for their top parses and nothing wouldve been fixed

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

And, guess what? You all got mad that the healers weren't balanced. Everyone wanted AST because they could do that. So, what did SE do? They catered to your demands. AST couldn't do that anymore, or, rather, that was all they could do. Honestly, you guys have no one to blame but yourselves for the state of AST. You wanted balance, and you got it. And, everything that goes with it.

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incorrect
People have been demanding utility for WHM or highest pdps for years. its still not been granted

nobody asked for our cards to be reduced to nothing. Nobody asked for sch to get ripped to pieces with a fairy deleted and dots removed. Nobody asked for whm to lose almost everything in sb

balance is a matter of potencies, its nothing to do with what playstyle it is.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

And, guess what? You all got mad that the healers weren't balanced. Everyone wanted AST because they could do that. So, what did SE do? They catered to your demands. AST couldn't do that anymore, or, rather, that was all they could do. Honestly, you guys have no one to blame but yourselves for the state of AST. You wanted balance, and you got it. And, everything that goes with it.

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When AST first came to us in 3.0, it was under tuned. It had MP problems, couldn't heal as well as WHM, and its RNG buffs coupled with low personal damage potencies meant WHM was superior. Between 3.0 - 3.3, AST received several buffs to improve its problems: increased healing potencies, better MP management, and an enormous buff to The Balance which rendered WHM inferior throughout the end half of HW. The biggest common complain of AST was how it was designed to replace WHM or SCH rather than just offering its own unique advantages, thus creating situation where it would only ever be better than or worse than WHM or SCH.

Going into SB, the main thing I remember people discussing was trying to move AST away from being WHM 2.0 or SCH 2.0 and giving WHM offensive buffs to compete with AST. SE Responded by telling us we didn't know what we were talking about and that giving offensive buffs to WHM would ruin its identity. They proceeded to reinforce its identity as a "pure healer" (a BS term that means nothing) by taking away many of its unique tools to give to the other healers without replacing any of them, adding new actions that did nothing to address WHM's weaknesses, and giving it SB lilies which were a disaster. Meanwhile SCH got Chain Stratagem which it didn't need, lost a bunch of DoTs due to the remove of cross class as well as Bio and Bio II getting merged (the former which made sense but the later didn't), and lost Energy Drain and Miasma II initially only for SE to bring them back due to outrage. And then there was AST who got a ton of new complimentary resources that continued to increase its dominance over WHM. It had clunk, yes, but was very powerful and largely enjoyable.

The only thing people wanted of the card system was to further iron out some of the weak aspects. Changing The Spear to a crit buff was one such answer that was given partway through SB. From there, the big topics were that Spire was never useful other than being Royal Roaded, something that would've needed to change anyway due to TP being removed, and not being able to use the Lady of Crowns correctly because Minor Arcana's cooldown wouldn't start until after you used her.

Literally no one was asking for or wanted EVERY card to become The Balance.

SE: Hmm, some people liked fishing for this one card, should we take it out, make it a raid buff (...literally Divination) and leave the cards gimmick be completely utility-based? pffft nah, delete the other 7, and that one other fairy while we're at it

PS: I'll never understand the dev's stance on WHM being the 'curebot' healer when in reality it's quite the opposite - it's the most aggressive healer, and without a distracting niche like cards or overload of ogcds, really, attacking is all it can do anyways

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

The reality of the game is that there is nothing preventing people from clearing content with the previous iteration of cards, or when divination was tied to the seals, what happened was people were getting upset about missing out on a 2% damage increase with divination.

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The reality of the game is that there is nothing preventing people from clearing content without the previous iteration of cards. What I mean by that is we just don't need unreliable utility that we can't map, especially as we get better at the game. It's not that people are obsessed over parses, it's the fact that they're always going to prefer the option that is useful 99% of the time over the option that might have an impact 10% of the time. Who wants to sacrifice their groups damage for useless flavor buttons? It's just common sense.

I've personally never seen the obsession with mixing AST's dps cards with utility. Why can't we have both but just separate them? For example if Draw was only dps and MA was only non-dps utility.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The reality of the game is that there is nothing preventing people from clearing content without the previous iteration of cards. What I mean by that is we just don't need unreliable utility that we can't map, especially as we get better at the game. It's not that people are obsessed over parses, it's the fact that they're always going to prefer the option that is useful 99% of the time over the option that might have an impact 10% of the time. Who wants to sacrifice their groups damage for useless flavor buttons? It's just common sense.

I've personally never seen the obsession with mixing AST's dps cards with utility. Why can't we have both but just separate them? For example if Draw was only dps and MA was only non-dps utility.

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But that's exactly what people have been asking for (just check previous comments). If everyone was fishing for Balance/DPS cards, then rework them so there are no DPS cards anymore. You would still dislike it because you don't like RNG utility, but that's a you problem and not an AST problem. People are starting to dislike parsing/minmaxing talk because it does suck the fun out of the game if everything needs to be mapped and all that.

People just want AST to have an identity again and to be fun. RNG has always been part of AST's identity and while utility you can't plan around 100% of the time might just be "flavour" for you, a lot of people enjoy it and it's what drew them to the job in the first place.

I think some players here are missing the key word Yoshi P said. “Major” he said major adjustments are coming to Astrologian and he wants us to let him know if they take it to far or not. So are we looking at a summoner style rework or a major rework to their skills which could mean deleting and adding back maybe some they deleted before or changing them completely.

I do miss old Astro and yeah people fished for balance because it was the strongest card. However, people did ask for the balance to be changed since Astro had a guaranteed raid spot. They butchered and destroyed this job and scholar in shadowbringers. They didn’t need to do that. Now Astro is the least played healer and now we getting major adjustments to it. I hope they bring back time aspects of it. I miss that and the old cards.