Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

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Originally Posted by RazeLandale

No way, that takes away the whole gimmick and makes it less unique. You're using cards. And, hey, maybe you're cheating a little with a quick shuffle or a card stuffed up your sleeve. But if you just pick at will that totally kills it.

I don't need to pick my cards. I just need them all to be useful. In all circumstances.

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Sorry but I fully disagree here. The gimmick of the class are the cards/buff. Them being random is just a cheap attempt to make the class balanced which completely backfired.

You're not talking about strategy here. The first dumbass can understand when it's time to up damage or attack speed or to give pt/mp when someone need it.
The thing is the random aspect make the job strategic 'cause you have to know or think to how optimize the card you just drew : for exemple if i get a spire card does it worth right now to use it on one of my teamate ? does it worth to turn it in royal road to get the spread effect ? In this way reducing the next card effect by 50% ? How much of my teamates ould be able to efficiently use the 5% dmg bonus i could use on them if i do that ? Shouldn't i better instead focus my buff cards on one or two very good dps ? if so i shuffle the spire card i just drew... etc etc..

If you remove this random aspect, the Astrologian will just turn in those kind of preset job with witch you know your entire cycle :

"ok i will begin the fight with the spear card spread on all the team to reduce all their offensiv CD time. Then i'll use a bole card with 150% potency on the MT since it will be a tunnel phase. After that it will be a dps check so i'll draw the balance and spread it and then.... Zzzzzzzzzz
http://cdn3.teen.com/wp-content/uplo...-lessons-8.gif"

Just use one of the other healers if you don't like the Astro. And don't tell that you actually like it, 'cause rng is what makes the Astro so cool.

AST is FFXIV attempt at a gambler job and everyone wants to remove the risk verse rewards or gamble from it now? If you remove the RNG from the cards then you are also asking from them to be nerfed in some form or another. Is that what you really want because I can just see it now. You can draw all 6 cards at once and place them any way you see fit but your cooldown for another draw is 180s.

I wouldn't have played it to 60 and finished all available content except Savage with AST if I wouldn't like the job. The problem with random in its current iteration is like so many people have talked about before its unreliable. It doesn't make the job "cool" it makes unnecessary "harder". If you look at the corsair from FFXI for example they could choose their buffs but would random roll for the effectiveness of it. While this wouldn't solve the problem it is at least a more calculated randomness.

Additionally there isn't much strategy at the moment. We already figured out which classes get the most benefit out of our cards "Did I get card Y? Okay give it to job X" If it comes down to it we make 1 strategic decision every 1 min. depending if we want to use royal road/spread or not. So its pretty much already a set rotation job to some extend.

Now if you want to keep the randomness or keep the AST from using all of the available cards. There could be a few different ways.

1. Have a currency like aetherflow stacks. 1 stack = 1 card. AST get to play 2-3 cards every X amount of time. (the same card can't be played again until your "stacks" are refilled)
2. Make draw pull up 2 cards and lets us choose 1 of them.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

"ok i will begin the fight with the spear card spread on all the team to reduce all their offensiv CD time. Then i'll use a bole card with 150% potency on the MT since it will be a tunnel phase. After that it will be a dps check so i'll draw the balance and spread it.

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That actually sounds a lot more fun to me, being able to carefully plan each buff and when to maximize the effectiveness of each? I'd really enjoy that.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

The thing is the random aspect make the job strategic 'cause you have to know or think to how optimize the card you just drew : for exemple if i get a spire card does it worth right now to use it on one of my teamate ? does it worth to turn it in royal road to get the spread effect ? In this way reducing the next card effect by 50% ? How much of my teamates ould be able to efficiently use the 5% dmg bonus i could use on them if i do that ? Shouldn't i better instead focus my buff cards on one or two very good dps ? if so i shuffle the spire card i just drew... etc etc..

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The cards now just give the illusion of strategy. There's nothing beneficial or strategic about drawing the same cards in a row, or only drawing balance once through the entirety of an encounter, or never drawing bole when you actually want reduced damage on the tank.

Take Ravana extreme. Imagine you go into the fight for the first time. Whilst you’ve watched a couple of videos and read the strat, there are things you only begin to understand when experiencing the fight. For example, there are significant periods of ‘down time’ in this fight where Ravana leaves the arena. Unless you are fully prepared with the timings of these abilities you are most likely going to waste your buff times – there were plenty of times where I could have wasted an extend + balance combo (when RNG was nice) without realising that the DPS couldn’t actually DPS for the next 40 seconds. That might be your only balance for the entire fight.

Cards aren't as useful for progression - they're not consistent enough. I like WHM, I like SCH and I like AST. I'd like to use them all interchangably and feel confident that AST can hold its own. It's apparent it can't and one way to keep the uniqueness would be modifying the way the cards function - because at the moment they simply don't work (as confirmed by the OP).

I laugh at people that says the card system is more strategic than other healers abilities? Is it that hard for you to manage draw, spread and RR? If we are not able to drop the card the party need in any specif moment of the fight we are garbage imo.

For example: During full dps phase we have a very low chance to drop the 2 cards needed for this phase (balance + ewer/spire) or (arrow + ewer/spire). Or when a big hit phase arrives you should be able to get a bole card + ewer/spire.

The RNG is nice but we should be able to manage it more to be useful in raids where the fights are scripted.

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Originally Posted by Rewind

The cards now just give the illusion of strategy. There's nothing beneficial or strategic about drawing the same cards in a row, or only drawing balance once through the entirety of an encounter, or never drawing bole when you actually want reduced damage on the tank

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The thing is not about what the rng makes you draw, but what you are going to do with what you get. What can be more strategical in this game than that ? It asks you to have the largest look on what's going on.

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I laugh at people that says the card system is more strategic than other healers abilities?

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You see that ? It matchs with the big majority of the Astro you can meet in raid or dungeon. They don't
optimize the strategic aspect of their job. It's normal since every jobs are concerned by a big majority of players playing "half" their potency.
I'm okay with the fact that healing is the big part of the Astro, and it's healing potency is not that bad actually if your co-healer understand that you're here to support him when you're in noctural (so if he's a whm). But in addition of using wisely all your healing support skill like Synastry and Celestial Opposition in order to keep your mana up while you dps a little too, you have to find the best way to make all your draw something usefull for the team, and without this part the astro would really become a bad interval between sch&whm. It would have been much simplier to just add a regen mp/tp skill to the scholar pet instead of created a whole new job if it's to removed his particularity.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

The thing is not about what the rng makes you draw, but what you are going to do with what you get. What can be more strategical in this game than that ? It asks you to have the largest look on what's going on.

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Balance goes on highest DPS, Bole goes on the tank or someone standing in an AoE, Spear requires voice chat, Arrow goes on BLM/SMN, Spire/Ewer whoever has lowest MP/TP (requires voice chat).

The point is there is very little strategy that goes into using cards because you never actually know what you're going to get and therefore trying to set up RR combos is nearly useless and otherwise your strategy is limited to a half second of seeing what card you got and then using it.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

The thing is not about what the rng makes you draw, but what you are going to do with what you get. What can be more strategical in this game than that ? It asks you to have the largest look on what's going on.

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No it actually doesn't. I don't have to pay more attention to what is going on than I have to do on sch or whm. During my runs as AST I already know in general who gets which card before the run even begins. This only changes slighlty if I have used spread or royal road. Obviously there are exceptions.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

I disagree. Keeping our healing the same as it is now but making one card buff our healing? Trash. Increasing our healing by 5% for 20s everytime we use Draw? Very nice.

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Why not create a stacking buff with draw that gives 1-2% of let's say increased healing, and stacks up to 3-5 times (depending if it gives 1% (->5times); if it gives 2% (->3times)) on a duration that barely suffices. Like 32-35sec (server lag might need to be taken into account). Therefore one would encourage players to use draw on CD.


Edit: rephrased stuff :o

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Originally Posted by YuiSasaki

Why not create a stacking debuff that gives 1-2% of let's say increased healing, and stacks up to 3-5 times (depending if it gives 1% (->5times); if it gives 2% (->3times)) on a duration that barely suffices. Like 32-35sec (server lag might need to be taken into account). Therefore one would encourage players to use draw on CD.

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That seems really boring and doesn't really do anything for Noct while it makes Diurnal exponentially more powerful due to their HoTs.

I'd rather one of the two happen:

1. Synastry becomes a permanent buff that you can place on your allied party member; while Synastry is on that member, their healing output is increased by 15%. That way AST as a solohealer isn't strong, but in a duo group they become much more powerful. By displacing their extra healing onto the other healer, they now have time and MP to DPS and throw out card buffs.

2. Switch the stance buffs; Diurnal now gives 10% Healing Potency and Nocturnal gives 10% Attack Speed. In addition, Diurnal regenerates 2% of their MP when using Draw. Nocturnal Stance gives +50% effect to all card buffs (RR still counts it from the original potency though, so Enhanced Balance gives 15% + another 5% from Nocturnal and expanded balance is +10% to everyone hit).

This way, Diurnal is now the sustained healer half of Astrologian while Nocturnal is for when you don't need the healing and want more damage/buffs to be thrown out.

Celestial Opposition and Collective Unconscious would still need to be changed, though.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

You're not talking about strategy here. The first dumbass can understand when it's time to up damage or attack speed or to give pt/mp when someone need it.
The thing is the random aspect make the job strategic 'cause you have to know or think to how optimize the card you just drew

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But that's just adaptability. Which is heavily bound to the max. use of the random given card (which may be non-existent in some situations). While other classes are adaptive all or most of the time.
You can call yourself the greatest strategist or tactician in history... if you only have a big box full of things, pulling random (sometimes useless) stuff and thinking about the best use of this random item in the given situation... you won't make it into history books (except maybe for the laughs).
I mean...

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for exemple if i get a spire card does it worth right now to use it on one of my teamate ?
does it worth to turn it in royal road to get the spread effect ?
In this way reducing the next card effect by 50% ?

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Just a decision depending on actual tp-usage of players.
Since you don't know what you get next, your decision is only between TP+ (easy to say if good or bad in a situation) and AoE-something (hard to say if good or bad).

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How much of my teamates ould be able to efficiently use the 5% dmg bonus i could use on them if i do that ?

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If you draw it. It's just luck.. You have to decide if it's better to use a single spire or RR it and have the chance of 1/6 to get Balance and 5/6 to get something other.

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Shouldn't i better instead focus my buff cards on one or two very good dps ? if so i shuffle the spire card i just drew... etc etc..

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.... and get another spire, now AoE. With two mages and a WAR tank. Great.


You can't adapt to every situation, while every other class can (within their framework). If your 'general' (i.e. raidleader) tells you to boost the dps in a given situation, dps will use strong CDs/Buffs, SCH will use Selene, while Astro may or may not contribute something useful.
Usually a class know if a action is good/useful before they are using it. Astros often only know that after using it (RR).
That's the main difference in buffing between Astro and other classes.

Think of a SMN who can't affect which Egi they summon.... would you call that 'more strategic'?


I think Miius approach may be a good one.. drawing 2-3 cards and deciding which to use/hold would keep the RNG-factor but players could way better weigh the pros and cons of their actions.

Good to see people still falling for the illusion of strategy in AST :p lol. There is no strategy at all in the cards, because certain cards will always go to certain people. Strategy usually implies planning and fore-thought, which you simply cannot do in the current card system.
What we have now is a luck system, with buffs that aren't powerful enough offset the RNG, and our only mitigation against this RNG can still leave us with the same useless card that we threw away in the first place.

I know we will end up with a decent healer in the end, but please don't go around telling everyone that AST is ok, and that people who say otherwise 'just don't get it', it just ends up showing that you are the one who doesn't get it.

Yea you got it :

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that's just adaptability

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thinking about the best use of this random item in the given situation

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Just a decision depending on

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You have to decide if

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your decision is only between TP+ and AoE-something

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may or may not contribute something useful

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It's exactly why this job is so cool ! Every 30 sec (or less thanks to the store skill) you have decision to make that can't be known beforehand. Combine that to different group make-ups and different boss mechanics and you never fall asleep 'cause of knowing classic cycles.

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While other classes are adaptive all or most of the time.

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http://reactiongif.org/wp-content/up...-right-GIF.gif

In general I get why you like the random aspect. But randomness is not sustainable in an evironment where others have to rely on you.

It's a decision like 'Do I pick heads or tails?" in coinflipping or 'Do I take the door with the car/holiday or the envelope with the secret price.'

And so, no real decision (founded on facts), rather a decision on gut feeling. Which has nothing to do with strategy.

If you draw wrong cards in a row your strategy will always be: I'll hope for a better one. That's no real strategy. :D

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

*snip*

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You seem to misunderstand what strategy means, so here's a quoted dictionary definition for you:

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a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim

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Which is why AST can't really have a strategy to cards. Say my overall aim is to increase DPS....but I draw Spire/Ewer first and shuffle it into a Spear or vice versa. Spire/Ewer are useless because half or more of the regenerated resource are going to be wasted since people are at full, and Spear is now useless since everyone used their CDs before I placed it. I could Royal Road it and get Extended, or I could Spread it and save it for later when people use CDs...but Spear is really the worst of the 3 "Increase DPS" cards so I might as well not use it at all in case I draw a Balance or Arrow during a phase that doesn't need it, since those are better buffs I would want to save. Instead I choose to RR it since I don't need Spear now or later.

Now next time I draw I have no Shuffle. I draw Spear again. The worst DPS card. Now do I waste my Extended buff on the weakest of the DPS cards or do I just waste the Draw and click off the buff so I can get a Draw faster?

It's an illusion of choice. Except in very specific circumstances, you will want Balance/Arrow/Ewer. Balance goes on top DPS, Arrow goes on self or top caster, Ewer goes on whichever healer has less MP.

These are split second decisions you know before battle; any other card you draw will either be Shuffled, RR'd, or clicked off depending on if it's the card you wanted or not.

And even then, in the overall scheme of the battle, you will have to know your cards did nothing significant in the battle and you were better off going SCH for the ability to directly DPS, have infinite mana, and give a consistent Attack Speed buff to your team.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

As of now, there's nothing unique about AST except for their (useless) cards.

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If you think the AST cards are useless, you're really not playing the job properly.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

If you think the AST cards are useless, you're really not playing the job properly.

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Spear is literally useless, and arrow can be counterproductive on longer fights by running them out of tp. Bole, Spire and Ewer are situationally useful which doesn't work with rng, and even then bole's usefulness is extremely questionable. That leaves you with one card out of six, balance, that will never be a dead draw.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

You seem to misunderstand what strategy means, so here's a quoted dictionary definition for you: a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim

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http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires...tratégie/74818

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Art de coordonner des actions, de manœuvrer habilement pour atteindre un but

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literally "Art to coordinate actions, maneuver skillfully to achieve a goal"

I guess you mix up with "organise"

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

If you think the AST cards are useless, you're really not playing the job properly.

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The cards are weak enough at this point to be considered mostly useless. Some may have small uses, but overall throughout an entire raid encounter, the cards really won't be doing as much as the other healer's can in terms of utility.

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Originally Posted by Mclyde

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I'm honestly speechless that you just ignored my entire post to nitpick a definition in a language different than your native one.

Welcome to what an argument with an AST apologist is like :p they do not use logic or reason, they simply repeat the same sentence over and over and over.

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

Welcome to what an argument with an AST apologist is like :p they do not use logic or reason, they simply repeat the same sentence over and over and over.

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I can at least take solace in the fact the thread itself has remained mostly amicable, unlike other threads where it's kinda devolved into... something entirely else?

So what do you think the chances of AST getting changes before 3.1 are? Since they'll be missing both weapon and body by late September.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

So what do you think the chances of AST getting changes before 3.1 are? Since they'll be missing both weapon and body by late September.

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I would expect if there are any change pre-3.1 they will be minor at best with a more thorough balancing happening at the 3.1 mark.

Personally, I am hoping they'll make the changes when they drop 3.1 and see what happens and hoping for some information to drop during the 3.1 patch previews they'll be posting. Maybe we'll end up with a very long post from Yoshi-P himself in the healer forum like what happened when the WAR changes were announced back in the 2.0 era.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

So what do you think the chances of AST getting changes before 3.1 are?

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Before 3.1, I feel like we will only see some numbers tweaked, since numbers are easily changed in a hotfix and don't require a patch. Higher potency on heals, lower cooldown and longer duration of synastry, etc. The hopeful reworks to the card system, and to the nearly useless abilities (CO, CU, and nocturnal sect) won't be until 3.1.

Oh, and for the sake of all that is good and green in this god-forsaken universe: the most easiest and obvious fix ever, that shuffle can't redraw the same card. Seriously, why hasn't this happened yet.

Personnaly i'd like a little decrease of the draw skill and spread preserve cooldown (like 25 sec CD) and a reworking on Celestial Opposition and Collective Unconscious : for exemple it would be cool if CU stops the remaing time of the allie's buff present in the Shield)

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Originally Posted by Geardagas

Oh, and for the sake of all that is good and green in this god-forsaken universe: the most easiest and obvious fix ever, that shuffle can't redraw the same card. Seriously, why hasn't this happened yet.

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There could be a couple of reasons why this hasn't happened yet (or may never happen):

Without seeing the game's source code of the game, what we deem as "an easy fix" may not be so easy to fix from a programming perspective.
Without being able to read the dev's thoughts, they may deem it's not a necessary requirement. While I for one wouldn't mind the Shuffle change, I don't feel it's necessary either. The dev team may feel similar, but again, I'm not a mind reader.

Time will tell once they start announcing what they plan to balance.

How isn't it a necessary requirement?

How does redrawing the same card not completely negate the entire purpose of using shuffle?

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Originally Posted by Geardagas

How isn't it a necessary requirement?

How does redrawing the same card not completely negate the entire purpose of using shuffle?

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It is a necessary requirement. Shuffle is probably the most annoying aspect of AST, as (at least for me), the same discarded card is drawn again at least 50-60% of the time.

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

Good to see people still falling for the illusion of strategy in AST :p lol

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This is one of my biggest gripes with some in the "AST is fine, nothing to worry about here!" crowd. I feel like they have yet to recover from the initial glow at low levels, back when it was easy to be wowed by all the buffs you had, and when it was easy to imagine that they made some class-defining difference and that you were making great strategic decisions by timing your cards "just right" on the "right" person.

The reality is that the AST card system is full of insignificant and outright false choices with little room for true strategy and skill due to the mostly weak effects of the cards and the unpredictable timing of when you acquire them. Also, the psychological reward of happening to Draw a card you want to use soon, Spreading it, and whipping it out with desired Royal Road effect at the ideal time is very much not in line with the actual reward that execution provides in gameplay terms....

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Originally Posted by Geardagas

How isn't it a necessary requirement?

How does redrawing the same card not completely negate the entire purpose of using shuffle?

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The question I counter with is "how is it necessary"?

I know I'm playing devil's advocate here but consider the tooltip:

"Return the currently drawn arcanum to your deck and draw another."

If you take this literally, this means

1. Return card to deck
2. Shuffle deck
3. Draw new card

Dev's could say "this is working as intended" and leave it at that. Is it annoying? Most certainly so, but is a necessary change? Not in my mind, but that's just my personal opinion.

Yea, taking the time to get an Enhanced/Extended Arrow/Balance can take 60/90 secs or more, and when you do get it, a SCH's DPS is still far better :p needs big changes IMO.

For fixes for AST, I'd rather see a buff to Diurnal stance and make AST the healer that specializes in HoT's with some burst healing here and there for when it's needed.

I have no idea how to fix the cards though outside of possibly making them all 6 separate active abilities, maybe not have the cooldown start until you've used all 6? Make it all about comboing two every 15 seconds with Royal Road.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

The question I counter with is "how is it necessary"?

I know I'm playing devil's advocate here but consider the tooltip:

"Return the currently drawn arcanum to your deck and draw another."

If you take this literally, this means

1. Return card to deck
2. Shuffle deck
3. Draw new card

Dev's could say "this is working as intended" and leave it at that. Is it annoying? Most certainly so, but is a necessary change? Not in my mind, but that's just my personal opinion.

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it's pretty fitting with the class's lore too, as Jannequinard explained it, shuffle is delaying a reading for another time (maybe that's why everyone gets tons of spires? shuffle is screwing over future-you? :P), so perhaps redrawing the same card is fate saying "no, you're using this card NOW."

it would be nice if redrawing the same card gave us SOMETHING as compensation for wasting our CD though (eg, reducing the CD of Draw if you play it instead of discarding it (or perhaps a heal buff or refresh for "playing along" with fate))

It seems unlikely that we'll see full control over which card buffs we have at a given time, if only because of the logistics involved. Most classes (AST included) are already facing ability bloat issues, which greatly limits the ways in which they can give us control. They can't give us five additional Draw abilities (one for each card, plus the original Draw being assigned to one as well) without making Action Bars quite unwieldy for AST.

The best option I can imagine would be for Shuffle to be largely redesigned. Put it on a short cooldown (5 seconds or something), and allow constant redraws until we get what we want. They could even, for extreme control, put it on a miniscule cooldown (0.5 seconds, like Mudra, perhaps). But that doesn't really make the job play fluidly at all, as you'd run around trying to squeeze in constant Shuffles while healing.

I think if we see major card overhauls, they'll be more along the lines of expanding the usability of existing cards (such as by giving each of them a secondary effect that is more general--a HoT effect, for instance) so that we're less likely to feel the need to throw away a card that isn't especially useful at a given moment.

We need an overhaul.

Tonight i did some scholar to help an fc mate with some trials and dam it was depressive.

I actually felt like a complete class once more.

-i had fairy to help me out with heals and could buff on command
- i had my own shields in all sizes and clolors, from single target shield to party shield to aoe bubble.
- i had mitigation tools like virus and eye for an eye
- when stuff went bad i lustrate on command and i could pop rouse+ fey illumination if it was a lot of damage over some time rather then spiky.

Comparing this to my ast
-lower heals in general
-the only oh shit button is at least for me almost used on cd
- a funky lolrng buff system that i swear someone trolled me by putting like 6 extra spires in
- no healing cooldowns

My scholar on 50 felt a lot more complete then my ast on 60.

Shuffle timer being on par with draw timer is probably the right balance along with preventing double draw of the same card. The buffs in itself are not an issue as they are strong enough to merit an astrologian with the group. Most teams seem to suffer from lack of strong cooldowns for the astrologian which I hope they will focus more on then increasing potency that is not needed.