Goodbye Astro

Astro is here to stay. The devs are not changing the cards, and do not care about the feeback cause they want this set up.

Well it's sad to main a class for so long only for the devs to ruin it for me.

They will eventually change it, it's matter of time until they realise how bad it is compared to WHM.

I suspect it's just at the back of the queue behind the DPS jobs that also need addressing.

At least they've actually been willing to touch on the healer issues this time round rather than outright ignoring them. Baby steps ;)

Canceled sub. Resources are not being put into the healing classes because the devs don't play healers. They see no need to change the clunky flavorless boring card system for ast. Collective unconscious. Horoscope autodetination? No reason for 6 images of the cards that don't make sense to keep since lore is out the door. Looks like homogenization is there route due to laziness to allocate resources to development. They are happy with the 2 healer dynamic of sch and whm.

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

They will eventually change it, it's matter of time until they realise how bad it is compared to WHM.

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lol how long did it take them to realise how bad WHM was comapred to AST? And did they even ever realized it or was it just an accident that WHM is now better?

However, it doesn't look like OP is talking about balancing and numbers, he is talking about gameplay. Especially the dumbed down card system.

I did not played AST, but I mained DRK for 4 years since HW and I understand the feeling. They ruined the gameplay and they will not go back. It's simply not the job anymore wich we started and begun to love back in HW. I switched to BLM now, hopefully Yoshi holds his protecting hands over his own mainjob xD

Very sad indeed - AST is the very job that got me so interested in the game when I started playing, so much so I made a bee-line to unlock it as soon as I possibly could

Put simply, the class just isn't what I fell in love with anymore, and that's pretty much all I have to say about it now at this point, since it doesn't look like they'll be changing their stance on the job for the foreseeable

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Originally Posted by Tint

lol how long did it take them to realise how bad WHM was comapred to AST? And did they even ever realized it or was it just an accident that WHM is now better?

However, it doesn't look like OP is talking about balancing and numbers, he is talking about gameplay. Especially the dumbed down card system.

I did not played AST, but I mained DRK for 4 years since HW and I understand the feeling. They ruined the gameplay and they will not go back. It's simply not the job anymore wich we started and begun to love back in HW. I switched to BLM now, hopefully Yoshi holds his protecting hands over his own mainjob xD

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Yeh that's pretty much it. If the cards needed a nerf so be it, but this new card system is braindead and feels like nothing is really happening.

Theres that and now the lore for Astro no longer makes sense. Every card had it's own lore. Now it's all the same

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Originally Posted by Almostward

Yeh that's pretty much it. If the cards needed a nerf so be it, but this new card system is braindead and feels like nothing is really happening.

Theres that and now the lore for Astro no longer makes sense. Every card had it's own lore. Now it's all the same

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Old cards were just as braindead and only gave the illusion of choice. You just had to fish for aoe balance (first best) or other aoe dps buffs (spear or arrow). Other cards were either useless (bole) or royal road fodder.
At least now they can balance jobs depending on a predictable rdps contribution provided by cards.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Old cards were just as braindead and only gave the illusion of choice. You just had to fish for aoe balance (first best) or other aoe dps buffs (spear or arrow). Other cards were either useless (bole) or royal road fodder.
At least now they can balance jobs depending on a predictable rdps contribution provided by cards.

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And you are the problem of why this happend. All cards had their uses. Bole was great for aoe attacks with the Aoe royal road.

Now our choice is...balance or balance or balance or balance

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Old cards were just as braindead and only gave the illusion of choice. You just had to fish for aoe balance (first best) or other aoe dps buffs (spear or arrow). Other cards were either useless (bole) or royal road fodder.
At least now they can balance jobs depending on a predictable rdps contribution provided by cards.

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Being fodder for royal road was still useful, and Bole could be clutch useful if you were with pugs or you mess up.

AST was the healer I enjoyed playing most in harder content specifically for the way cards worked, as long as you were throwing out A royal roaded buff every min, you were being useful, and if you drew optimally then even better.

The new cards have put me off leveling a healer this expac

The new card system is better.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

The new card system is better.

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Thats like your opinion, care explaining why

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Old cards were just as braindead and only gave the illusion of choice. You just had to fish for aoe balance (first best) or other aoe dps buffs (spear or arrow). Other cards were either useless (bole) or royal road fodder.
At least now they can balance jobs depending on a predictable rdps contribution provided by cards.

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Even if you "fIsHeD FoR BaLaNcE AnYwAy" at the very least the old system was engaging and your "useles cards" are what made the atk ones work, I have literally fallen sleep while healing with how boring AST has become.

I can't wait for next expansion when they even notice there is no point of that ranged / melee nonsense and just make it a single target 30s cooldown buff and then a 2m party damage buff without any bs "mechanic" since that's all those are, seals are brain dead and not like getting whatever makes any difference.

Not jut cards, would have killed them to let Horoscope detonate on time out, what about a better MP management.

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Originally Posted by Almostward

And you are the problem of why this happend. All cards had their uses. Bole was great for aoe attacks with the Aoe royal road.

Now our choice is...balance or balance or balance or balance

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No they didn't, unless you were playing the job wrong. Relying on a rng dmg mitigation is the most ridiculous thing one could do in a game with predictable incoming damage. Relying on ewer/spire was foolish with skills like tactitian and refresh (in their old form), which is why they were just used for RR or lord/lady. Before you had: good dmg boost, meh dmg boost and weak dmg boost. Now we just have dmg boost + seals management. I'll take that, at least I won't roll my eyes anymore when rng decides to give me useless cards only.

I really don't mind the new card system. Half of the previous cards were damage buffs anyway, just slightly different flavors of damage buffs. However, while Bole especially was a neat card, I do have to agree with Lastelli that a damage mitigation tied to RNG system in a game with predictable incoming damage was dumb.

The main problem I see with the current card system is how little a difference there is betwee tank/melee and ranged/magic buff values. (Not to mention the difference with Divination buff values). On that front I would like small additional effects for cards when played on correct targets, to more encourage correct usage. What those effects could be, I'm not sure at the moment.

EDIT: Well, actually.. The additional effects could easily be something similar to that of the older cards.
* Giving the card to a tank would grant him some mitigation. This would greatly benefit in big pulls, or before tank busters. Even if it were like 5% dmg mitigation, it would still be something.

* Healers could receive MP regen for the duration of the damage buff.

* For damage roles, I'm not sure if also increasing direct or critical hit chances would be too much on top of the dmg buff, but it certainly wouldn't hurt?

Well, I guess that's one less job to worry about levelling this expansion. In a sense it's kind of a relief. Levelling AST in the hopes of having it ready when they fix it has been excruciating.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

The new card system is better.

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You are actually one of the few people I've seen who manages to defend almost every bad/unpopular design choice made with the 5.0 healers.

At first I thought I'd hate the new system, but after playing it I don't. It's mord consistent and you know you're always buffing someone's DPS vs. the old times when you'd get Spire after Ewer after Spire.

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We are truly sorry about the initial issues with the feel of the job. That said, card effects were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." It does indeed lower the feeling of "drawing a good card," but if we make certain cards significantly more powerful than others, then we'll just return to fishing for the good ones, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with this style for now.

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Okay I want to look the person in the eye who says 'We made Astro only draw useful cards' when my party has all ranged or melee DPS. I want to look them in the eye and hear them explain how 50% of all the cards we can get aka +3% buff are NOT 'Useless card'. The change makes it that we get not ONE but HALF of our total cards to be useless, instead of the old systems single card (which still had its uses for Royal Road!)

The Original developer of the Astro card system likely was moved away from the project, because right now CLEARLY SE has no idea what made Astro interesting, fun and flavorful to play. Since whoever wrote up this excuse has no idea what they're talking about.

The worst part is 'We plan on continuing with this style for now.' in other words, any hopes for major overhauls are likely gone till next expansion or THIS is the new 'Astro' forever. Extremely disheartening news indeed.

It's the same with Bard, less Flavor to the job. Now they became a brainless random dps.
No more Buff..
SE is going the casual way, they have done the same with FFXI when they was close to abbandon the game. 😢

P.s. sorry for the broken english. I main french language.

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Originally Posted by Ubbernaut

Okay I want to look the person in the eye who says 'We made Astro only draw useful cards' when my party has all ranged or melee DPS. I want to look them in the eye and hear them explain how 50% of all the cards we can get aka +3% buff are NOT 'Useless card'. The change makes it that we get not ONE but HALF of our total cards to be useless, instead of the old systems single card (which still had its uses for Royal Road!)

The Original developer of the Astro card system likely was moved away from the project, because right now CLEARLY SE has no idea what made Astro interesting, fun and flavorful to play. Since whoever wrote up this excuse has no idea what they're talking about.

The worst part is 'We plan on continuing with this style for now.' in other words, any hopes for major overhauls are likely gone till next expansion or THIS is the new 'Astro' forever. Extremely disheartening news indeed.

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I...uhm...if you don't want that card, can I have it? Last time I checked 3% was better than 0%, I mean, that's like an almost-Dancer constant buff given for free. They are not really useless - they are less useful. They still have an impact.

Since everyone likes to talk Bole, let's talk Bole. Why tie defense to a RNG resource when a healer class should ALWAYS be able to count on it to save the party? An ability that transformed a damage buff into a defense buff, if things got hairy, now that would have been better - situational, yes, but better than just staring at a tree that doesn't progress anything. Now, MP restoration and TP restoration? Assume you already have Royal Road'd a previous one, in case you didn't. Do they have any use? Unless people died, quite unlikely. TP rarely did at any rate. Finally, ow we have three damage buffers. One increased base damage (arguably the better), one increased critical, one increased weaponskill/spell speed. Yeah, some might have synergized better than others with certain jobs (Spear>Bard/Monk, Arrow>Black Mage), but at the end of the day Balance still was the one serving the purpose better: increasing the damage dealt.


So: we had a resources split in six instances. Three were situational and three which served the damage increase purpose in different ways and had different impact according to classes.

What we now have a resource split in two instances. One increases damage and one increases damage - less, but it still does. Which means that each time you use Draw you are getting a benefit. You are clutching at straws when saying that a Bole could have saved the situation and that they reduced the usefulness of cards. They made them more reliable in a focused purpose rather than a roulette spin. While it sounds like a fun idea to have a random resource which comprehends many and more possibilities to support the party, this one can't work as the support part of Astrologian in this game. Either they removed the DPS buff (many more would have trashed the class) or they solely made it into DPS to make it less frustrating to use to support the others in the most efficient way - that would be, killing enemies faster most of the time.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Thats like your opinion, care explaining why

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It'd be more accurate to say "The new card system is exactly as boring as the previous one was".

But no one cares. They just say "My options" and wring their hands, while ignoring all those options effectively lost value -the better you got at the game-. How backwards is that?

After YoshiP said there won't be much changes to AST's cards in future, I know this is time to say Goodbye to AST.
The design of the new card system is very unfriendly for console players and has been criticized overwhelmingly by players, and yet that's their decision.
So be it. I may continue play my DNC and GNB for some time but will not join healing anymore.

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Originally Posted by IanFrench

After YoshiP said there won't be much changes to AST's cards in future, I know this is time to say Goodbye to AST.
The design of the new card system is very unfriendly for console players and has been criticized overwhelmingly by players, and yet that's their decision.
So be it. I may continue play my DNC and GNB for some time but will not join healing anymore.

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Care to elaborate on how exactly is the new card system unfriendly for console players?

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Originally Posted by Dnc

Care to elaborate on how exactly is the new card system unfriendly for console players?

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target selection, you have to go through party list one by one, means multiple hits to select a target in the meantime judging his job is melee/ranged, and everytime I use sleeve draw, it just feel shit this is just too much work

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Originally Posted by IanFrench

target selection, you have to go through party list one by one, means multiple hits to select a target in the meantime judging his job is melee/ranged, and everytime I use sleeve draw, it just feel shit this is just too much work

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At least before you would have a lot of breathing room being able to just self aoe the cards, now every 30s targeting back and forward, Sleeve draw window is a nightmare, the skill that used to be my favorite and felt empty running lv 70- content without now became something I dread using.

That's what people have been referring to when they say the new card system is a clunky boring mess. Why not just have 2 seperate skills that buffs range and melee instead of this uninspiring draw system

I just wonder which group would be louder if they hadn't changed the cards at all.

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Originally Posted by ColdestHeaven

-snipe-

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If you do 10k DPS on your MCH then that 3% is an extra 300 DPS. That is lower impact then throwing the non-optimal card from the old system on you. It also only lasts 15 seconds so you wont even feel it because it effectively has no impact at all. They are useless. It is better to minor arcana it and throw it on a healer or tank of the appropriate range then throw it on the wrong DPS. Cause if your tank is only doing 8k DPS then that 8% Lord of Crowns card boosts their DPS by 640 compared to 400 if it was tossed on your MCH at 10k DPS. Even without Minor Arcana it is better to toss a melee card onto the tank when you have no melee to put it on. If you have a co-healer and only Melee DPS then any ranged card is better tossed on the co-healer.

The reason why a low power boost like the Dancer standard step buff and the old AoE Balance buff were worthwhile was because despite only minorly boosting damage they did so over a long duration. AST could boost the duration so the entire party had 40 seconds of +5% damage and boost the top DPS to have 55 seconds of +5% damage. Dancer buffs themselves and their partner throughout the entire fight as they need to use Standard step on cooldown as an attack as much as a buff. The sheer duration is what makes the buff worthwhile the lower the strength goes.

Now the reason why the old DPS buff cards could be so strong and impactful was because there were utility cards mixed in as well. Which also meant the utility cards could be strong. Sure in optimized 8 man savage raids Bole was seen as useless because they only wanted AoE Balance, though that was not the only content and in all other content Bole was useful for a wide range of reasons. Ewer in optimized 8 man savage raid was not very useful aside from being an AoE burn, but in all the rest of the content it was useful because in 24 man raids or 8 man normal raids deaths were common and in 4 man dungeons gravity spam ate you MP like hell. Spire had the most niche use and was indeed the one mostly useless card, it needed a rework.

Overall yes the new cards are "reliable" in that they are generally useless for the given amount of busy work that you need to do. Their durations are too short for the strength of buff they give. As they lack utility cards to be counterbalanced against they cannot be permitted to be strong, as such they remain feeling impactless. They also made it just as frustrating if not more so, because while there was minor disappointment in not getting the card you wanted previously you are getting handed literally useless cards that feel worse to use if you have the wrong class configuration in the party. It is not amusing when the only person I can buff is the tank because the cards are pointless on every other person in the party.

Well, there it is. Scratch one job off my 'want to level' list. So long AST. Wish I could've played you in 4.X

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Thats like your opinion, care explaining why

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

You are actually one of the few people I've seen who manages to defend almost every bad/unpopular design choice made with the 5.0 healers.

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Yes, I have my own "bad" opinions that do not align with the "community-approved" ones.

The old system was an unreliable pile of RNG mess. You had Balance, two worse Balances and three utility cards. The (very few) moments where you needed one of the utility cards, you had 1/6 chance to get them.

The new system is something you can actually control. It's better for balancing and it has plenty of room for optimization. That's all.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Yes, I have my own "bad" opinions that do not align with the "community-approved" ones.

The old system was an unreliable pile of RNG mess. You had Balance, two worse Balances and three utility cards. The (very few) moments where you needed one of the utility cards, you had 1/6 chance to get them.

The new system is something you can actually control. It's better for balancing and it has plenty of room for optimization. That's all.

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This is my thought exactly. I completely get missing the highs, lows, and thrills of the old system, but I consider this one far healthier of a class design, enough room for RNG but not to the point it can utterly restrict the flow of the class.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

This is my thought exactly. I completely get missing the highs, lows, and thrills of the old system, but I consider this one far healthier of a class design, enough room for RNG but not to the point it can utterly restrict the flow of the class.

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People exaggerate the old system's RNG aspect...since AST had tools at its disposal to help with RNG like Shuffle and Sleeve Draw etc. It was not as unstable as some people assume.

Fin it truly was optimal to balance fish, then the system needed rebalancing. That, and they needed to replace spire with something actually useful. That said, that could have been achieved without totally gutting the system. Just nerf balance to the point that it's optimal to try to use whatever you get to its best potential (using tools like royal road and shuffle) and maybe add new tools for using unwanted cards. My personal suggestion was to keep divination but have it charge by sacrificing cards to it, such that after you sacrifice 3 cards to it you get an aoe damage buff that will give slightly less dps than using 3 individual arrows or spears. Now every card can be a dps buff, but you still have the versatility of the old kit, and have different offensive options.

What we didn't need was a new system where optimal play is so slightly better than non-optimal play that you start to wonder whether it's more optimal to ignore trying to play optimally in favour of better applying your rules attention elsewhere. It's better than a system that could be played (pretty much) optimally by a program with only two if/else statements.

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Originally Posted by Miste

People exaggerate the old system's RNG aspect...since AST had tools at its disposal to help with RNG like Shuffle and Sleeve Draw etc. It was not as unstable as some people assume.

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And I may be wrong but I think I remember they changed several times cards odds behavior so it was "better", people still using the spire after spire hyperbole when in 4 years of playing that never happened to me even once and you always had redraw anyways, and let's not get on a high horse thinking this system is perfect, I keep playing dungeons with 2x of the same type of DPS and only cards of the opposite appearing, or burning redraws and getting the same seal over and over, hopefully they work on that.

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Originally Posted by Miste

People exaggerate the old system's RNG aspect...since AST had tools at its disposal to help with RNG like Shuffle and Sleeve Draw etc. It was not as unstable as some people assume.

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Unless even those tools decided to screw you over too.

"Alright, Sleeve Draw is ready to go, I bet I'm going to get something awesome!"
-activates Sleeve Draw-
-gets Spire in main hand, Spire in Spread, Expanded Royal Road, and Lady of Crowns-
"Darn it! Wait... I have Redraw ready. Come on Balance, I'll even take Spear at this point!"
-activates Redraw and gets an Ewer-
...-jumps off edge-

Admittedly, those were funny occurrences. But I don't miss them. :P

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Originally Posted by Arcari

Unless even those tools decided to screw you over too.

"Alright, Sleeve Draw is ready to go, I bet I'm going to get something awesome!"
-activates Sleeve Draw-
-gets Spire in main hand, Spire in Spread, Expanded Royal Road, and Lady of Crowns-
"Darn it! Wait... I have Redraw ready. Come on Balance, I'll even take Spear at this point!"
-activates Redraw and gets an Ewer-
...-jumps off edge-

Admittedly, those were funny occurrences. But I don't miss them. :P

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Not to mention that if they wanted to help alleviate that they could have done 2 things:

1) Implement a second spread slot
2) Implement 2 abilities, one functions as a "stance" to "align" with a given constellation (card) and a second button to act upon that allowing you to forcibly draw that card once every minute.

All of a sudden that RNG is a lot less troubling and you can plan around situations even better.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Not to mention that if they wanted to help alleviate that they could have done 2 things:

1) Implement a second spread slot
2) Implement 2 abilities, one functions as a "stance" to "align" with a given constellation (card) and a second button to act upon that allowing you to forcibly draw that card once every minute.

All of a sudden that RNG is a lot less troubling and you can plan around situations even better.

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I've seen that second suggestion here before, but it was Diurnal/Nocturnal Sect that would have a direct impact on the cards you drew instead. Thought it was a neat idea.

This. I used to use Bole on the Warrior in A12S as a means for them to tank their final large add safely in Deliverance whilst I solo healed at that stage. I don't think I ever remember a clear where I didn't open with Balance and then get a Bole in my pocket in time for those two adds.

I completely get why SE went with the new card system. It's undeniably more consistent and they've actually got a chance of balancing this setup unlike the old one. It just feels so stale in use to me though, the button bloat and APM requirements around Sleeve draw just put me right off it.

Bye