AST Cards are boring

Utility and raise is a red herring. Even in ultimates fight that are excruciatingly designed around the total amount of mitigators and defensives, every role brings what it has to bring with relatively minor differences overall. Raise sure proves to be a valuable tool for world first races, but otherwise... nah.

What matters in the current meta is effort. All the balance of the jobs revolves around effort and that's why we see half the casters being SMNs, and half the rphys being DNCs. It's even funnier in casual roulettes like expert where half the total DPS i've met were probably dancers. People just go for the path of least resistance even if they deal less than a BLM, because the DPS checks are irrelevant past week 1 unless it's Abyssos release and then it opens another can of worms.

What makes or breaks jobs in the ShB/EW model is the rather brutal appearance in class design that SE openly admitted focusing on introducing radically different levels of class difficulties. Does it fundamentally break balance on performance? Not really since anything can clear anyway. At best it breaks balance on people doing speed runs and whatnot. But it certainly breaks balance on the amount of effort put into the game itself and how easily a group can progress depending on the jobs they choose to take. You also end up with players of a wholly different skill level in some statics because they literally got carried by their job (esp SMNs).

I suppose I am in the minority as I enjoy this current iteration of Astro. Old Astro especially during HW was horrible even though I played the class the most it had an identity crisis and the cards were tedious and not as impact full as they are now. Stormblood brought some QoL changes but ultimately I think the changes to pure damage based on card role was the best choice. It means less time focusing and recalling each cards mechanic while actually focusing on a raid mechanic.

Riddle me this why does bard/dancer/dragoon/monk who are dps classes that actually contribute and give their entire party buffs and ast must be doing this annoying thing of single target scrolling? My favorite of bard is their dh buff they give the entire party and when Big crit hit with phelgma as sage hitting like an eyeball popping 55k critical direct hit rate.

On topic its very pitiful and stale that all the cards do the same thing where the 4 dps I just mention seem to make that measly 5% flat damage a joke. Let me even give sch on a praise on this part as well since chain strat makes entire members (not sure if it also counts for alliance members or just for the sch party they are with, again this makes ast cards a clown meme.

Another example I can point out is let's look at a light party dungeon you have 2 samurai, both is full 665 gear with their relic or savage 665 wep, both know their rotation (pretty much twins). At this point the ast maybe is just gonna scroll down and hit the person on the third spot(i have my party set up as myself first tank second and dps last) which give a feeling of useless whereas sch you press chain strat and you, tank and your 2 dps is all hitting bigger damage more than ast boring 5% card and do not have to be playing scroll battle of the hmm who do I give the card to because they both doing the same damage so ill just pick who looks prettier/cooler at this point.

Again those who complained or find stormblood ast too much to handle, the simple solution was play turn your brain off whm. The fact they gave pvp ast 3 cards its old stormblood effects proof that SE under the quiet knew that stormblood ast was perfect else instead they maybe would have given them shadow bringer effects card for pvp.

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Originally Posted by Memoriae

I suppose I am in the minority as I enjoy this current iteration of Astro. Old Astro especially during HW was horrible even though I played the class the most it had an identity crisis and the cards were tedious and not as impact full as they are now. Stormblood brought some QoL changes but ultimately I think the changes to pure damage based on card role was the best choice. It means less time focusing and recalling each cards mechanic while actually focusing on a raid mechanic.

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This is the best example of the unbridgeable divide between new players and veterans, right there. The former don't want to focus on anything else than DDR mechanics, the latter want to go back to more intricate rpg mechanics.

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Originally Posted by IceBlueNinja

Riddle me this why does bard/dancer/dragoon/monk who are dps classes that actually contribute and give their entire party buffs and ast must be doing this annoying thing of single target scrolling? My favorite of bard is their dh buff they give the entire party and when Big crit hit with phelgma as sage hitting like an eyeball popping 55k critical direct hit rate.

On topic its very pitiful and stale that all the cards do the same thing where the 4 dps I just mention seem to make that measly 5% flat damage a joke. Let me even give sch on a praise on this part as well since chain strat makes entire members (not sure if it also counts for alliance members or just for the sch party they are with, again this makes ast cards a clown meme.

Another example I can point out is let's look at a light party dungeon you have 2 samurai, both is full 665 gear with their relic or savage 665 wep, both know their rotation (pretty much twins). At this point the ast maybe is just gonna scroll down and hit the person on the third spot(i have my party set up as myself first tank second and dps last) which give a feeling of useless whereas sch you press chain strat and you, tank and your 2 dps is all hitting bigger damage more than ast boring 5% card and do not have to be playing scroll battle of the hmm who do I give the card to because they both doing the same damage so ill just pick who looks prettier/cooler at this point.

Again those who complained or find stormblood ast too much to handle, the simple solution was play turn your brain off whm. The fact they gave pvp ast 3 cards its old stormblood effects proof that SE under the quiet knew that stormblood ast was perfect else instead they maybe would have given them shadow bringer effects card for pvp.

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The current cards are an abominable homogenous boredom, but saying that a constant +5% on a single target is meaningless is akin to saying that the dance partner mutual buff is irrelevant, which isn't the case. On top of it, handing out a 5% solo target buff doesn't lose any power in a light party unlike a full party buff that is literally cut by half due to party size.

Chain Strat like all AoE party buffs only affect the party.

AST also has Divination as an AoE party buff. The cards are something on top that much like Dance partner is to DNC's technical finish.

I do agree that the resurgence of all those old abilities in various pvp jobs kits is very ironic to see, and not just the AST cards.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Chain Strat like all AoE party buffs only affect the party.

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This is wrong. Chain Stratagem is not an AoE party buff, it's a debuff on the enemy, so anyone hitting the same target will benefit from it (whether in the party or not).

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This is wrong. Chain Stratagem is not an AoE party buff, it's a debuff on the enemy, so anyone hitting the same target will benefit from it (whether in the party or not).

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Which is damn annoying when you have multiple SCH’s in an alliance raid

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This is wrong. Chain Stratagem is not an AoE party buff, it's a debuff on the enemy, so anyone hitting the same target will benefit from it (whether in the party or not).

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You're right, that was a brain fart.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This is wrong. Chain Stratagem is not an AoE party buff, it's a debuff on the enemy, so anyone hitting the same target will benefit from it (whether in the party or not).

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Ah thanks for confirming this cause I was unsure.

It's not really fair to call the current cards 'minor' but man, as per the title, they truely are boring and uninspiring. If you're not running a parser you're just never going to feel them.

Say what you will about the old cards, but when you got a good run of luck and really pocketed someone with them, it felt good for all involved at least from my experiences.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

It's not really fair to call the current cards 'minor' but man, as per the title, they truely are boring and uninspiring. If you're not running a parser you're just never going to feel them.

Say what you will about the old cards, but when you got a good run of luck and really pocketed someone with them, it felt good for all involved at least from my experiences.

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This is a big one. Even the cards that were regarded as "mostly useless" like Bole and Ewer had a noticeable impact in the right situation.

Being able to put 20% mitigation on your random dungeon tank that doesn't know what mitigation is, or stacking Ewer with Lucid and extending them with CO to not run out of MP in savage pugs with your 0 piety gear made you appreciate those cards without having to comb through logs.