5.3 A response to the AST "balance" changes

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Originally Posted by Doozer

I really don't see what people are saying about AST being annoying because you have to change targets to give people cards... can't you just set up a macro for each party member on the list? .

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A job should not use macro to reach its full potential. Macros can, for sure, help with a couple of skills. However, having the obligation to use it for an entire job's core skills is just unacceptable. This thing about playing AST without controller is "way better" just evidenciates how BAD the job design was. There should never be a difference on optimization by using a controller or a keyboard + mouse.

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Originally Posted by Caduagm

A job should not use macro to reach its full potential. Macros can, for sure, help with a couple of skills. However, having the obligation to use it for an entire job's core skills is just unacceptable. This thing about playing AST without controller is "way better" just evidenciates how BAD the job design was. There should never be a difference on optimization by using a controller or a keyboard + mouse.

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I mean, while there shouldn't be a difference on optimization, there very obviously is because keyboards have significantly more buttons, and using a mouse has greater access to all things on screen. I don't think that's related to job design, unfortunately.

I'm exclusively on controller and have no problems dishing out cards to align with dragonsight and dancer buffs. This nerf is horrible.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

You're barking up the wrong tree if you think I care about 0.7 second optimization or whatever. I don't do Savage/Ultimate because I find it too repetitive and boring. So I don't think I really need to optimize things down to fractions of seconds. There is more to the game than Savage and Ultimate, you know that right? Either way, I don't have issues with skills 'clipping' or anything. I don't just mash buttons like a baby.

And, I like that you ignored my first post saying how I was aware of it not being useful for controller users. Read everything I say on the subject before responding to me, please. You're just wasting your time.

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That was an aggressive response, one of which I did not expect. I merely provided information about how the systems work, and macros are unbufferable, if you don't care about savage content then yeah, you probably don't care about this change to AST whatsoever, nor do you have any issue using macros for combat despite them being far worse the majority of the time compared to having bufferable actions. :)

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Originally Posted by Caduagm

I don't even get mad anymore, because clearly they have no clue on how to balance healers - AST is just specifically worse.
My dreams of getting a new healer in 6.0 are pretty much unreal, since I'm sure Squere will come up again with "we'd rather balance the existing healers than add a new one" for the 3rd time in a row.

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Welcome to step 5 of the grieving process: Acceptance.

I really don't like the sleeve draw changes for AST. I get that it's suppose to be an rdps nerf and that it supposedly equalizes performance for Keyboard and Mouse vs Controller. I think it's still terrible. I don't believe theres a way to perfectly level the playing field between the two and this just feels like It's punishing people that liked playing lots of cards and using Minor Arcana. I would honestly take an mp regen nerf to like 2% just to get more cards to play. If playing Cards is really that difficult for you then why play Astro? I'm trying to see the depth of the new Sleeve Draw and I just don't think it's there. Beyond getting a perfect divination for an opener, I think it just plays like get an extra draw every 3 minutes after that. It seems so under whelming that a trait to turn Draw into Draw 2 could replace it.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

I have never had timing issues or skills triggering later than normal.

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You will have. Rather you likely just won't have noticed if you're not optimising things as you state. It's not a huge jarring pause but it can add up.

Please don't take this as me saying that macros are unacceptable. But rather that people should be aware of the price of using them.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

You will have. Rather you likely just won't have noticed if you're not optimising things as you state. It's not a huge jarring pause but it can add up.

Please don't take this as me saying that macros are unacceptable. But rather that people should be aware of the price of using them.

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The macro wait time doesn't seem like much but it does result in multiple GCD's lost over the length of a fight.

In low tier content ultimately it doesn't matter. I've out DPS'd people as a tank using a lazy AoE macro as sad as that is.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

I mean, while there shouldn't be a difference on optimization, there very obviously is because keyboards have significantly more buttons, and using a mouse has greater access to all things on screen. I don't think that's related to job design, unfortunately.

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Except it is related to job design when AST is the only job that suffers from this kind of keyboard + mouse versus controller discrepancy.

The Sleeve Draw nerf makes sense given AST's substat priority will have shifted away from piety to compensate, akin to WHM and SCH respectively. You personally will be outputting more DPS, so you no longer need as many cards. I do think it's a nerf that's meant to be targetted at high level optimization more than low level, however. The more cards available the easier it was to guarantee basic seal management, which left room for timing cards in accordance with other raid buff windows, fishing Lord/Lady for specific dps, accounting for their burst windows. With less cards there's less of a gap, and the core focus of Seal Management remains the overall focus.

Basically, it's a dps nerf, partially to accommodate the MP adjustments, partially to target the skill gap, and, importantly, partially to bring AST more in line with the other two healers.