Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

Kind of a last minute guess, but what could end up happening with AST is that all cards now have unique effects again, and are AOE, but The Balance, and only The Balance still increases damage. The card rotation goal is to rig your deck so that you have the The Balance under buffs, and you do this by knowing, and manipulating the cards that are still in your deck, and which cards have been played, and are in your discard pile. You will always draw The Balance when out of combat, but every subsequent card will be random while in combat. However, cards will not be drawn from the discard pile. Once all 6 cards have been played, they get shuffled, and returned to your deck. Deck states don't change when KO'd.

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The current AST is really just a shell of its former self.. I really enjoyed having most buttons be dedicated to the card system instead of the ogcd heal galore we have today. Nocturnal sect will also be missed dearly although I feel like it might return in 7.0...

But despite that, I hope the future will scrap the generic cards to have the card system back again with random utility buffs instead

AST, healing wise, is completely fine. I have zero complaints about how AST heals, it's thematic and unique, the problem is just WHAT they have to heal (basically nothing). But that's a fight and overall healer design issue, and addressing things on AST only won't fix that problem.

But literally, the biggest complaint of AST players, both people who play them, and people who don't, is the busy burst window. Some people like it a lot, myself included, but I'll admit that it's hard for most people to get into. And while I'd love to just say 'skill issue' and 'if you don't like it, go play another healer' SE has this mindset where a job literally cannot be allowed to be difficult, so a solution has to be provided. So what I anticipate we'll get from Dawntrail is some kind of change to cards to make them just... piss easy to use. If I had to guess, AoE cards are the easiest change, and possibly the one I'd hate the most bc it turns quick thinking, reactivity, and a reward for knowing how other classes work into 'draw, play, draw, play, etc' which like... I'd probably quit the class off that. The best change is to shift around where your weaves actually are, and get rid of extraneous button tax like astrodyne, and minor arcana so that your burst isn't as blisteringly fast. I think, as much as I complain, as long as cards are still single target, still require decent weaving, and still reward you for understanding how other classes work, I'll still main it. Because what other job even gives that experience? Dancer and dragoon are the only other classes with single target buffs, and dragoon only uses theirs once every 2 minutes on the same person every time, and dancer has full, permanent uptime on their damage buff.

Despite what people say, I think making cards into their stormblood selves (with some updates, obv, like how TP doesn't exist) is a terrible move. Bc you know what stormblood was? It was fishing for the one, technically two cards that actually did something. Having two cards that say 'do more damage' and having four that say 'do not do more damage but get some beneficial effect that you can't rely on anyways' is terrible design for a game that's designed around being so deterministic. Like, if one of the cards was a 10% mit that's great and all but like... You can't put that into your mitigation plan. You only have a 1 in 6 to draw that, and if you don't, you need to make sure you can survive the raidwide that you were going to use it on. If you can survive that raidwide anyways, you didn't need the mit. And if you can't, well, have fun losing 5/6 of your pulls because of it. That isn't fun. And there's not enough utility types in this game that could actually matter, and most of them would be like consolation prizes for not getting the card you actually want. Which you could also make, say, cards that buff dh/crit/det instead... but then one type of card is objectively going to be better than others, and you have the same issue. Sure, you might say that having all cards do one of two things is boring, but the alternative is 'deeply frustrating to anyone who puts a semblance of care into their rotation'. And people who don't put a semblance of care into their rotation shouldn't get a say on how a job actually feels considering they're not like, y'know, actually playing it.

Like it or not, having RNG to the degree of stormblood AST in a game as deterministic as this will be more frustrating than anything else, because it'll feel like you're playing an unreliable class. Right now, never drawing a good card is like, a loss of maybe 5% of your overall DPS. With stormblood cards, never drawing a good card can mean anything from a dps loss, to deaths from healing/mit, to running out of mana, to whatever else they decide to add. And if they design fights around AST never getting the card they need, or they design the kit around it... Then what is the point of having cards in the first place. You might as well not even draw in that case bc it's so irrelevant.

So if people are going to complain about not drawing the best card all the time, why even have 6 cards? Why not just have 1 card that increases damage?

Having done high-end optimisation in SB on AST, when we didn't get a good card, we just rolled with it. Being able to roll with what you got and make the best of a bad card spread was what differentiated a good AST from a bad one.

Also, if someone really wanted a healer job with no deviation in their damage performance due to RNG whatsoever, well, WHM exists.

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So if people are going to complain about not drawing the best card all the time, why even have 6 cards? Why not just have 1 card that increases damage?

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Because it still requires some interactivity, and the penalty for a bad draw is not 'oh this card is functionally worthless, cool'. It's 'oh this card is slightly less effective'. I play *current* AST in ultimates and savage, and when I don't get a 3 seal dyne or exactly the card I want for max optimization, I also roll with it. But the difference there is that all I'm losing is some dps, I'm not losing out on mitigation or mana regen or whatever the fuck else they would give to the cards. DPS is always welcome, mitigation, healing, and mana regen aren't. And having the latter three tied to pure RNG just makes the class extremely frustrating to optimize bc you can't plan around any of it. The game is entirely deterministic, and they don't seem to want to change that (and even if they did, I doubt they're gonna go back and change all the old fights too, so it's still relevant). There's a reason no other class has RNG utility, and it's because it sucks.

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Having done high-end optimisation in SB on AST, when we didn't get a good card, we just rolled with it. Being able to roll with what you got and make the best of a bad card spread was what differentiated a good AST from a bad one.

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Good for you, but Stormblood was a very different game to now. AST had to work with what it had, yeah. Of course you had to roll with what you had, bc you had no choice. I'm not saying the current system is flawless, but it's a hell of a lot more engaging than just drawing dead cards 75% of the time. You say 'why not just have 1 card that increases damage', I mean... yeah. It wouldn't be fun, but there's no reason why they can't. Ohhh yeah bc the class is designed around an RNG damage profile. But at the very least, once again, the difference between current cards is that half do 3% less situationally. The difference between old cards is that 2 do damage and 4 don't. The other 4 cards are again, functionally useless in any kind of optimized play. Minor arcana is only a 400 potency heal, but I can't factor it into my heal plans at all bc it's unreliable. I have to make every heal plan as if I draw only lords, bc there's always a chance I do. It can, on occasion, replace a helios but I cast that so rarely it's practically worthless. Most times, even in current ultimate fights, I just discard it the moment I get it because I'm not gonna use it. That, extended to the entire card system means that a lot of cards will just be wasted, unless they bring back some sort of royal road type mechanic. But in that case like... everything is still about finding the Balance. Yippee.

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Also, if someone really wanted a healer job with no deviation in their damage performance due to RNG whatsoever, well, WHM exists.

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You could say that about current AST btw, and it's clearly not a valid argument. 'If people want a healer job that isn't busy, they can just play WHM'.

^on your last point that is a totally valid argument

If you want easy healers WHM and SGE are right there, hell SGE is literally designed as baby’s first SCH

I have problems how unfavourable AST is to controller players but saying “if you don’t want a high APM healer AST isn’t for you” is a perfectly valid statement and is why I personally don’t play AST

Yeah, I kinda think the easiest solution would just be to spread the burst out from the 2min to the rest of the kit and cut some of the bloat like MA and dyne. Kills two birds with one stone. The job is less unfriendly in the burst, and the job is more interesting during filler.

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Originally Posted by Kissune

But the difference there is that all I'm losing is some dps, I'm not losing out on mitigation or mana regen or whatever the fuck else they would give to the cards. DPS is always welcome, mitigation, healing, and mana regen aren't. And having the latter three tied to pure RNG just makes the class extremely frustrating to optimize bc you can't plan around any of it.

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If you think old AST was extreme frustrating to optimise, how is current AST any different? Your contribution depends entirely on whether or not your party crits under your buffs and Lord of Crowns is still RNG.

AST has always been frustrating to optimise, the only difference now is that you don't have to work around a bad card draw. Astrodyne is worthless and in a log run, you'd always have 2 melee and 2 ranged so you'd never have sub-optimal card plays.

Also, you're not actually losing anything with bad draws with the old card system. You're given so many tools to manipulate your RNG. So what if you draw less damage? It's not a big deal, just go again next pull. It's not any different from having a run where you get nothing but Lady of Crowns on current AST.

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Originally Posted by Kissune

You could say that about current AST btw, and it's clearly not a valid argument. 'If people want a healer job that isn't busy, they can just play WHM'.

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How is it not a valid argument? You're not talking about aesthetics or the rest of the kit. Your complaint is that the RNG makes your damage bad, so playing a job with no RNG is a perfect solution instead of asking for the job with RNG to have none.