AST Suggestion: Allow us to pick the card BEFORE fight?

So basically "Held" can be done before fight, and now every time like 2 hours before we go in raid I just start playing the RNG game trying to get the right card held. It's just a pointless process, why not just allow AST to pick the card before fight? Similar to how stoneskin II is made for making WHM's life easier.

Balance issues, likely, and people trying to rig the system. Especially given that AST will be getting a rebalancing soon, this could be a very hard thing to do without making them more useful than WHM or SCH.

I think the most effective thing to do, personally, would be to add a skill that allows you to pick a card of your own choosing. Perhaps it can have a long cooldown (120-180 seconds) to justify it, but it would certainly make AST more viable*. As it stands now, I hate when I draw Ewer twice in a row (even with a shuffle) when I have a Warrior, Bard, and Ninja in my party.

And then I use Royal Road and draw it a third time.



*This isn't to say that AST isn't viable; I love the class, but it does have a much harder time picking the party up after a mistake than, say, WHM.

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

Balance issues, likely, and people trying to rig the system. Especially given that AST will be getting a rebalancing soon, this could be a very hard thing to do without making them more useful than WHM or SCH.

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I am filled to the brim with rage every time I see this sentiment. WHY is it so completely unacceptable for AST to be better than WHM or SCH in ANY WAY. AST are currently worse than both classes in every way. Why is that possibly seen as acceptable?

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

I am filled to the brim with rage every time I see this sentiment. WHY is it so completely unacceptable for AST to be better than WHM or SCH in ANY WAY. AST are currently worse than both classes in every way. Why is that possibly seen as acceptable?

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Because based on how AST works they can EASILY become Over powered, They even said they were afraid people would start bringing double AST to all content, and i can certainly see how, if the healing and cards were to strong. WHM is highly desired because it is unmatched in Raw healing Power. if AST could come close to doing the same, there would be little point in WHM.

But you can already "pick" the card simply by waiting it on or doing it during downtime.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Because based on how AST works they can EASILY become Over powered, They even said they were afraid people would start bringing double AST to all content, and i can certainly see how, if the healing and cards were to strong. WHM is highly desired because it is unmatched in Raw healing Power. if AST could come close to doing the same, there would be little point in WHM.

But you can already "pick" the card simply by waiting it on or doing it during downtime.

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It's not just raw healing power but emergency healing and cooldowns to boost healing throughput that AST lacks.

Without those, it cannot save bad situations in raids like WHM/SCH can.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

I am filled to the brim with rage every time I see this sentiment. WHY is it so completely unacceptable for AST to be better than WHM or SCH in ANY WAY. AST are currently worse than both classes in every way. Why is that possibly seen as acceptable?

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That was actually what Yoshi P. said, not me. I'd have to find a link, but he said during what I believe was an interview with Famitsu that they are going to rebalance AST, but they don't want it to overpower WHM or SCH and make them irrelevant, or make them seem like a worse choice. I didn't play FFXI, but I do recall reading quite a lot about one particular class being so outdone by all the others that players who chose it would be kicked from parties without a moment's notice. Perhaps they're trying to avoid that scenario?

That being said, as I mentioned in my first post, I want to see AST buffed. I really enjoy the class. I only became a MCH because I was excited for it for so long and loved the idea, but I was always a healer before that. As Blood-Aki and RichardButte said, it's very easy for AST to become preferable to the other two healer classes and cause people to favor seeing them, similar to how a lot of parties I was in didn't want to see a Warrior at all.

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

I didn't play FFXI, but I do recall reading quite a lot about one particular class being so outdone by all the others that players who chose it would be kicked from parties without a moment's notice. Perhaps they're trying to avoid that scenario?

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It happened just about every time they introduced new content to some class or another. FFXI's content wasn't really as structured as it is in modern "theme parks" like FFXIV or WoW, so a given type of content could have wildly different party compositions and strategies from another (whereas in XIV, the same basic party structure works for just about all content). Whatever content was all the rage tended to support certain classes, and classes that weren't favored for it simply weren't used for it.

I can think of numerous examples, but the most relevant (and broadest) probably concerns tanks: from early Rise of the Zilart (first expansion) to sometime in Aht Urghan (third expansion), NINs were used by just about all serious groups instead of PLDs for tanking. (PLDs could survive by using NIN as a subjob for some fights though). Then, during Aht Urghan, traditional tanking fell by the wayside in a lot of ways--NIN, which could repurpose as a passable (and survivable) DPS, survived the transition okay, but PLD had no such option. They eventually did change things, but new content came around (Abyssea) where PLDs were essentially never used and NINs (and MNKs, actually) were the tanks du jour.

Similar things happened with various DPS classes, too (with DRGs generally being undesirable) and some classes essentially never being welcome in parties.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Because based on how AST works they can EASILY become Over powered.

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Yeah, instead of creating an unique job they decided to create a hybrid, one of the most annoying type of job to balance.
Seriously, i wanna grab whoever had this brilliant idea at the SE team and give one big slap in the face.
-_-

This is why spread started in combat only, they didn't want people to feel they had to stack the deck and farm a card. Not that I'm suggesting they change it back or anything.

As for the suggested new ability, I don't think it's really necessary, but if they did do it I think it'd need a really long cooldown or a really long cast time. Otherwise it'll just get spammed in dungeons between pulls.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Because based on how AST works they can EASILY become Over powered, They even said they were afraid people would start bringing double AST to all content, and i can certainly see how, if the healing and cards were to strong. WHM is highly desired because it is unmatched in Raw healing Power. if AST could come close to doing the same, there would be little point in WHM.

But you can already "pick" the card simply by waiting it on or doing it during downtime.

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No it really isn't. It's not anywhere close to being OP. Almost EVERY SINGLE ability AST has is just "X but worse"

Synastry is just a bad fairy with a 20% uptime.

Luminous Aether is Shroud of Saints with a worse aggro shed.

Disable is a bad SCH Virus.

Benefic 2 procs are almost always better off being ignored.

Cards, which we have FOUR buttons dedicated to, are in practice weaker than just casting Fey Wind, and that's compounded withour AST's already inferior dps toolkit.

Collective Unconsciousness is nigh-unusable.

Celestial Opposition gets your card target the chance to use two more abilities or lets your Aspected Helios be stronger, but not equal in range, to Medica II by 40 potency every two and a half minutes.

Now that I mention cooldowns, my GOD the cooldowns. You could probably slash most of the CDs in HALF and they still wouldn't be OP. A 33% uptime on a bad fairy, being able to shuffle every other card, an increase of 100 potency on aspected helios every 75 seconds? Woah nelly, some one call the balance police because this isn't just OP, it's worth bringing DOUBLE ASTs even though Noc is completely unusable.

The only tools an AST has that are worth note are Lightspeed (which isn't needed, doesn't improve throughput, but it is rather convenient) and Essential Dignity, which is our only spell that can possibly be said that's better than another job's spell(Tattragramaton).

Honestly I have both AST, WHM, and I even have SCH, just because I really really love healing. I hate how people are hating on AST ever since it came out. Yeah, whm is stronger in healing power, but AST has the power of the cards, I wish we could choose the cards and that not be a random thing, but there's not much you can do about it.

I've only leveled up my sch to 52, so I'm not sure how much I'm going to like it versus whm and AST. I really do wish AST had more kinds of moves though.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

But you can already "pick" the card simply by waiting it on or doing it during downtime.

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This may be a little off-topic, but while I agree with your statement to a degree, this isn't always possible. I'd wager a good number of tanks don't understand how AST works and won't really give you time to pull a card beforehand because they are too concerned with speeding through the dungeons. I've encountered a few.

Of course, this shouldn't have any bearing on how AST gets updated, but the lack of consideration from party members hits AST's performance far harder than it does, say, WHM.

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Originally Posted by Muahbec

Yeah, instead of creating an unique job they decided to create a hybrid, one of the most annoying type of job to balance.
Seriously, i wanna grab whoever had this brilliant idea at the SE team and give one big slap in the face.
-_-

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This.

I also remember reading an interview with Yoshi P and he said he wanted to introduce "more" hybrids to the game, because he likes the idea.

The man needs to give his head a shake, or give the keys to someone else.

Go home Yoshi P, you're drunk.

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

Balance issues, likely, and people trying to rig the system. Especially given that AST will be getting a rebalancing soon, this could be a very hard thing to do without making them more useful than WHM or SCH.

I think the most effective thing to do...

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How can people rig the system more than they're already able to if we can pick the cards before a fight? What could we possibly gain as an advantage from this except saving time? By this logic, Stoneskin II is overpowered because it allows groups to rig the game in their favor. What does stoneskin II actually do? It merely saves time.

Also, your suggestion is already wrong. The thing crippling the class is the very thing you're skirting around by saying there's a balance problem: The class is constantly pretending to either be a WHM or a SCH. As long as that is true, the class will never be balanced.

The very first thing that must be done to fix the AST is to kill the stances and turn them into something else (for example, mutually exclusive cooldowns to help the AST out with its appalling lack of cooldowns). Everything else is of secondary concern to slaying the concept of the AST being a hybrid.

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Originally Posted by DkDerek

This.

I also remember reading an interview with Yoshi P and he said he wanted to introduce "more" hybrids to the game, because he likes the idea.

The man needs to give his head a shake, or give the keys to someone else.

Go home Yoshi P, you're drunk.

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Please don't be true....Hybrids don't work. Hell, when WoW did it, all it did was it inevitably forced the "hybrid" class into a specific role. You remember those Paladin hybrids? Yeah, they were all healers. Druid hybrids? Also healers.

The "hybrid" system was solved in much the same way the SMN/SCH hybrid system was "solved." They gave each spec a unique skillset apart from the opposite set, and gave them a unique playstyle on top of it.

The Arcanist is a great example of how hybrids should be done, while the AST is a great example of how hybrids shouldn't be done.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Please don't be true....Hybrids don't work. Hell, when WoW did it, all it did was it inevitably forced the "hybrid" class into a specific role. You remember those Paladin hybrids? Yeah, they were all healers. Druid hybrids? Also healers.

The "hybrid" system was solved in much the same way the SMN/SCH hybrid system was "solved." They gave each spec a unique skillset apart from the opposite set, and gave them a unique playstyle on top of it.

The Arcanist is a great example of how hybrids should be done, while the AST is a great example of how hybrids shouldn't be done.

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I meant to say "support" and not "hybrid"...

Hybrids are fine, support classes are not.

My bad.

I dont think it would be terribly difficult to have draw or redraw have no cooldown outside combat.