What do you want in your AST?

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

And why is it a bad thing for a system of buffs to benefit other players more then yourself? That's what I'm failing to understand. Nothing is stopping you from giving yourself a card to buff your own damage should you choose to.

While old Lord and Lady had their moments of awesome, it was still rng. You still ran the risk of drawing nothing but Lady's when they would overheal and be a waste of a card slot.

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I never said it is a bad thing to benefit other players than yourself. What I was trying to say (and maybe Honey) is that jobs should be originally designed to use all of their skills to the fullest, even when soloing. Now that the job was changed considering feedback from other players other than healers, we can't use all of our skills outside a party anymore. It's not bad, it's just... weird.

Before 5.0X, all AST kit could be used for him/herself(although the optimal use would be for a party support), now you just waste the effect of some actions...

Regarding Lord/Lady, I prefer the old system. Considering we have less RNG now, we could draw more Lords easily and have that third damage skill AST is lacking (I would be one to spend Sleeve Draw on 3 Lords)...

i would like that the basic cards will have different effects that depend on what you choose a party member will give a buff or an enemy and will give a debuff.

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Originally Posted by Roxas_Andrade

I never said it is a bad thing to benefit other players than yourself. What I was trying to say (and maybe Honey) is that jobs should be originally designed to use all of their skills to the fullest, even when soloing. Now that the job was changed considering feedback from other players other than healers, we can't use all of our skills outside a party anymore. It's not bad, it's just... weird.

Before 5.0X, all AST kit could be used for him/herself(although the optimal use would be for a party support), now you just waste the effect of some actions...

Regarding Lord/Lady, I prefer the old system. Considering we have less RNG now, we could draw more Lords easily and have that third damage skill AST is lacking (I would be one to spend Sleeve Draw on 3 Lords)...

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I disagree, you can still use the cards on yourself to benefit yourself, cards only having one effect does not change that.

As far as minor arcana goes, that is true that we'd get more personal dps with more consistent Lords, but I can't help but imagine it would turn the cards into another aetherflow where optimizing means minimizing their intended use for the sake of chucking extra nukes. But I'm someone who prefers to give extra dps to others so it's just my opinion. I'd rather any pDPS increase be tied to what we have or focus on increasing our rDPS contribution.

All I really want is for AST to be controller friendly again.

AST's new card mechanic is flawed at a fundamental usability level. FFXIV is a game where a large portion of the population plays using a controller, and although there are varying degrees of difficulty between controller and keyboard/mouse users when playing certain jobs, every job's optimal rotation can be performed on either with the exception of AST. This is due to how FFXIV handles targeting party members.

Using a mouse and keyboard, to target a party member the player needs only click the player in the party list using their mouse (or mouseover if preferred), and WHILE they're doing this they can Shuffle and Minor Arcana their cards.

On a controller however, the act of selecting a party member and the act of using an ability like Shuffle are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You cannot shuffle and target a party member at the same time, you must choose to do one or the other, and to choose a party member you must physically press the D-Pad up or down the requisite number of times AND press enter to hard target said player each time or the targeting will reset and cause you to need to press the D-pad multiple times again. To do all this within a GCD is just insane.

This is not to say that I think it is impossible to optimally play AST on a controller, but I argue that maybe only about 1% of the playerbase can, and they do so with a much higher APM than m/kb users. It is this incredible disparity in difficulty between controller users and m/kb users that leads me to believe that AST's card mechanic was rushed and not play tested, and that it is a fundamental flaw that far exceeds any concerns on any other job at the moment as it is a physical bar on players that use controllers. The fact that this issue isn't even acknowledged as a problem by the devs is a slap in the face.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I disagree, you can still use the cards on yourself to benefit yourself, cards only having one effect does not change that.

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You can use cards on yourself, but not optimally. See the example of Sleeve Draw I said before.
The optimal way:
You use Draw, then Play on yourself. Draw goes on 30s CD.
You should wait 15s for the effect to wear off
Then you use Sleeve Draw, then Play.
You should wait 15s for the effect to wear off.
Draw is already ready and you still have 2 cards on your sleeve. You would waste at least 30s with Draw ready, doing nothing...

The old Sleeve Draw could be used in its entirety by the AST if he so desired. The new one depends on having a party to be optimal.
If we had old Lord/Lady, then we would be able to use this new SD completely, but we haven't... T-T

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Originally Posted by Roxas_Andrade

You can use cards on yourself, but not optimally. See the example of Sleeve Draw I said before.
The optimal way:
You use Draw, then Play on yourself. Draw goes on 30s CD.
You should wait 15s for the effect to wear off
Then you use Sleeve Draw, then Play.
You should wait 15s for the effect to wear off.
Draw is already ready and you still have 2 cards on your sleeve. You would waste at least 30s with Draw ready, doing nothing...

The old Sleeve Draw could be used in its entirety by the AST if he so desired. The new one depends on having a party to be optimal.
If we had old Lord/Lady, then we would be able to use this new SD completely, but we haven't... T-T

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And again, I fail to see an issue with this. I understand what you mean now but is... is this really an issue? It sucks that a mechanic meant to help you buff your party...is less optimal when used selfishly? So what?

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

And again, I fail to see an issue with this. I understand what you mean now but is... is this really an issue? It sucks that a mechanic meant to help you buff your party...is less optimal when used selfishly? So what?

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Solo content still exists. And it’s usually pretty painful on healers (since the gutting of SCH, anyway). And considering AST is behind the other healers in rdps even when they’re buffing dps effectively, they must be especially painful in solo content (I haven’t tried solo content on AST post 5.0 so I can’t say from personal experience). It’d be nice if AST’s buffs could at least get it up to where near where the other healers are in solo content. Even if you did that it still wouldn’t be optimal to use it on yourself in group content, because a x % damage boost on the class with the lowest pdps in the game is never going to be as effective as a damage boost on literally anyone else.

You couldn’t buff the cards that much, since that could end making the AST too powerful compared to the other healers (not saying they’re at the perfect level now, just that there’s a point at which you wouldn’t want to increase it any more). However, Roxas’s suggestions shouldn’t increase AST’s rdps, but they would make AST more effective in solo content, while also making that solo content more satisfying. I really don’t see any problem with that.

HY there

As was an astrologian main, i can tell i loved the old astrologian far more. It was perfect. The feeling to play with it was far sperior and far much unique than any class even worldwode not just in FF. Now astrologian is nothing... can do nothing, and its buff dont do anything compared to the real astrologian what it was in stormblood.
Astrologian is something like prophetess. Fate guides you nothing else. If the fate gives you The Bole card, go and find a use for it. It have so many way to use that card. The new astrologian, well, i wont call those things cards anymore, much more a piece of paper with some low lvl enhancement, nvm, so the real thing, this astrologian is not astrologian anymore.
The real astrologian was the old one, what was guided by fate (RNG cause fate is probably is that) and followed by luck and creativity, to find use for what fate choses for you.

But to take aways from the "RP" side of the class, astroologian old card system was far superior and enjoyable in every way. Every card has its own use. For me, as a not that professional gamer, ewer was everything. Free mana? Jesus, need.
But for other options, with AOE + Bole combo + aspected helios with nocturnal was a great boss aoe mechanic blocker. What is main priority in this game afterall. Yet its gone.
Other realy useful thing was for me in dungeon runs, it was pretty much helpful The Arrow card, for faster recasts and such.
In other situations, a +50% buffed The Spear card was a very nice buff for a dragoon or other high dmg dps to melt even bosses in no time.
So please, peoples... The Balance is not the only card. As that it is most worthless card in the whole deck. Yes, the combination effect to gives +50% to the effect of the next used card was good. But realy... still that was the lowest card in the deck.
Cause as a healer, my role is not dmg buff but saveing the group. And well, dmg dont gives defense nor anything else. For dps boost, there is many support class like Bard for example or now Dancer.

But please, be somewhat "realistic". The role of the healer is not to support damage output of the dps's. Its role save them and heal them.

So anyway, i prefer the old astrologian much more. For player experience and for usefulness too. I hope Developers will see the logic in this and hope they undo this astrologian called charlatan.

Fate be with you everyone.

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Originally Posted by Nhala_Levee

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You've already lost most of the people here by saying that Balance was the worst card.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

You've already lost most of the people here by saying that Balance was the worst card.

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I told the truth. A healer job not to boost the dmg, but save the dmg dealers and the tanks.