Did people even ask for changes to AST, like they do / did for MNK and MCH?

I've been playing since....I don't know, when we could put points into stats and had to lvl two jobs to get our next job advancement. I've been on and off since then and haven't started seriously playing until 4.2ish.

During my time in 4.x, I've picked up AST and loved how the class played. People who didn't like it seem to just migrate over to SCH or WHM. As you can tell from my post activity, I've been mainly lurking around and never seen any uproars (possibly a few) regarding people asking for any changes to AST.

Looking at how much some people are liking the changes made to WHM, could all three classes have worked and been liked if SCH and AST were never changed (skills taken away / mini rework) in 5.x?

Would having a 4.x AST and SCH, with 5.x WHM have been desirable and functional today?

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Originally Posted by Reyna_Balmore

Would having a 4.x AST and SCH, with 5.x WHM have been desirable and functional today?

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I think people over all would be pretty happy with that.
Still want Aero 3 back and Fluid Aura gone though.

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Originally Posted by althenawhm

I think people over all would be pretty happy with that.
Still want Aero 3 back and Fluid Aura gone though.

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I wish there would be some sort of poll or discussion with the balance team and community before such changes are made. Just so they could see the positive or negative feedback and let the hardcore players play with the numbers, to see if the overall changes are good or bad.

Good grief if this happened the healer shortage would be over in an instant. The 3 changes people wanted on AST was to change spire into something more useful (which they needed to do anyway with tp removal), nerf balance to 10 or 15% and bring gravity in line with the other spell cast times.

The new AST actions are pretty good for the most part and they would synergise wonderfully with the old system (though horoscope and divination should get tweaks)

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Good grief if this happened the healer shortage would be over in an instant. The 3 changes people wanted on AST was to change spire into something more useful (which they needed to do anyway with tp removal), nerf balance to 10 or 15% and bring gravity in line with the other spell cast times.

The new AST actions are pretty good for the most part and they would synergise wonderfully with the old system (though horoscope and divination should get tweaks)

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When they mentioned the removal of TP and changes to MP, I though the only thing they would change were both the Spire and Ewer card. Having reworking the whole entire card system instead of making those two "simple" changes, was a head scratcher.

It literally seems like the "balance" team or whoever idea it was to make the changes, have quite a disconnect with the healing community. They saw a "problem" and when in there really wasn't one to begin with, just minor changes to adjust to the removal TP and changes to MP were needed.

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Originally Posted by Reyna_Balmore

Would having a 4.x AST and SCH, with 5.x WHM have been desirable and functional today?

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I think this is probably what 6.0 will look like. WHM will probably stay pretty close to what it is, while my money is on AST and SCH becoming more like their 4.x versions.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I think this is probably what 6.0 will look like. WHM will probably stay pretty close to what it is, while my money is on AST and SCH becoming more like their 4.x versions.

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I like the optimism, but do they have a track record of admitting they were wrong on a rework and reverting it back? Especially on a major scale, such as the the current AST card system?

I think they may be to proud to make such a change and they may continue to butcher the class until it's left behind when a possible 4th healer class comes along.

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Originally Posted by Reyna_Balmore

I like the optimism, but do they have a track record of admitting they were wrong on a rework and reverting it back? Especially on a major scale, such as the the current AST card system?

I think they may be to proud to make such a change and they may continue to butcher the class until it's left behind when a possible 4th healer class comes along.

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Yes, they do.

My favorite go to example is Bard. I got into bard right towards the end of ARR, when it was pretty good and pretty fun. Then heavensward dropped. Oops. As the expac went on, people on the forums just went "git gud and adapt" and fans of the class lost more and more hope. But come Stormblood they - thankfully - completely ditched the "bard mage" concept. And both bringing the concept about and then abolishing it again pretty much completely changed how the job worked and played.

With the enormous amount of feedback on AST cards, I don't think there's any doubt at all that the current system is a dead card walking for 6.0. Of course, I do understand waiting for the next expac is painful. WHM is the healer I play most and we just got out of Stormblood which was a hellish time for the job. But then, WHM serves as another example. SE was told many, many times what a terrible, horrible system lillies are, and in Shadowbringers it was thoroughly reworked and overhauled.

Back to AST cards again, the dev team already apologized in one of the earlier... interviews or LLs? I don't remember which exactly. They know people don't like it. Chances are they're already planning a redesign. It's just a matter waiting though again, I do relate to how waiting can be painful.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Yes, they do.

My favorite go to example is Bard. I got into bard right towards the end of ARR, when it was pretty good and pretty fun. Then heavensward dropped. Oops. But come Stormblood they - thankfully - completely ditched the "bard mage" concept.

With the enormous amount of feedback on AST cards, I don't think there's any doubt at all that the current system is a dead card walking for 6.0. Of course, I do understand waiting for the next expac is painful. WHM is the healer I play most and we just got out of Stormblood which was a hellish time for the job. But then, WHM serves as another example. SE was told many, many times what a terrible, horrible system lillies are, and in Shadowbringers it was thoroughly reworked and overhauled.

Back to AST cards again, the dev team already apologized in one of the earlier... interviews or LLs? I don't remember which exactly. They know people don't like it. Chances are they're already planning a redesign. It's just a matter waiting though again, I do relate to how waiting can be painful.

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THAT is excellent news, now I can't wait for 6.0 to drop!

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Originally Posted by Reyna_Balmore

It literally seems like the "balance" team or whoever idea it was to make the changes, have quite a disconnect with the healing community

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More like they just have a disconnect with the playerbase as a whole, but especially healers its most prominent given they never answer urgent questions and the huge threads we have since 2 expansions in a row all 3 got shafted in someway majorly.
Look at how dark knight, summoner and monk have been ignored as well, the devs have a massive disconnect because they are focusing too much on "balance" and homogenisation for accessability rather than diversifying and improving skillsets and identities

The devs really need to implement some sort of in game feedback, because at this rate their experimentation and dumbing down is going to cause more problems than they can ignore, particularly when there are lots of other big issues that are riling players that haven't been answered. The playerbase is gaining new players but at this rate, all they will be doing is replacing long time fans who have become too disgruntled

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Yes, they do.

My favorite go to example is Bard. I got into bard right towards the end of ARR, when it was pretty good and pretty fun. Then heavensward dropped. Oops. As the expac went on, people on the forums just went "git gud and adapt" and fans of the class lost more and more hope. But come Stormblood they - thankfully - completely ditched the "bard mage" concept. And both bringing the concept about and then abolishing it again pretty much completely changed how the job worked and played.

With the enormous amount of feedback on AST cards, I don't think there's any doubt at all that the current system is a dead card walking for 6.0. Of course, I do understand waiting for the next expac is painful. WHM is the healer I play most and we just got out of Stormblood which was a hellish time for the job. But then, WHM serves as another example. SE was told many, many times what a terrible, horrible system lillies are, and in Shadowbringers it was thoroughly reworked and overhauled.

Back to AST cards again, the dev team already apologized in one of the earlier... interviews or LLs? I don't remember which exactly. They know people don't like it. Chances are they're already planning a redesign. It's just a matter waiting though again, I do relate to how waiting can be painful.

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The problem here is that they have been fairly inconsistent with addressing some classes. Bard seems to be a favourite of the devs. They got a pretense of support back in 5.1 (2% buff? you can't even see that without a 3rd party tool) and they got their bowmage scrapped in Stormblood
Monk has had long standing issues since 2.0. They haven't really acquired anything since 3.0 as all the new skills seem to be replacements of the ones they lost over the years. (elixir field an ogcd that hits enemies around? that sounds familiar...)
Dark knight is another example, it used to be high skill class with lots of debuffs and altering properties of your attacks with dark arts. Two expansions later and we're a clone of warrior except with Fray instead of healing)

And the cards mentioned? that particular interview was 5.05, they had seen the feedback but they would not be changing the cards or adding mp back to noct, but they did apologise for how terrible AST's potencies were at launch. (IE unplayable)

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

More like they just have a disconnect with the playerbase as a whole, but especially healers its most prominent given they never answer urgent questions and the huge threads we have since 2 expansions in a row all 3 got shafted in someway majorly.
Look at how dark knight, summoner and monk have been ignored as well, the devs have a massive disconnect because they are focusing too much on "balance" and homogenisation for accessability rather than diversifying and improving skillsets and identities

The devs really need to implement some sort of in game feedback, because at this rate their experimentation and dumbing down is going to cause more problems than they can ignore, particularly when there are lots of other big issues that are riling players that haven't been answered. The playerbase is gaining new players but at this rate, all they will be doing is replacing long time fans who have become too disgruntled

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Yea, it's pretty unfortunate they're making changes to make things "easier" / "dumbing" it down to "please" the entire base by lowering the skill ceiling. There are enough classes for people to pick if they want an easier time. People who want to excel will study and look at guides to become better. People who want to play more casually will choose to play at the bare minimum will continue to do so. Those casual players may get some heat from other players, but hey, it's an MMORPG, somebody is going to say something you may not like.

The "dumbing" down of classes seem to have hit both the tank and healer role pretty hard. 5.0 looks like it was a great expansion for the DPS.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

The problem here is that they have been fairly inconsistent with addressing some classes. Bard seems to be a favourite of the devs. They got a pretense of support back in 5.1 (2% buff? you can't even see that without a 3rd party tool) and they got their bowmage scrapped in Stormblood
Monk has had long standing issues since 2.0. They haven't really acquired anything since 3.0 as all the new skills seem to be replacements of the ones they lost over the years. (elixir field an ogcd that hits enemies around? that sounds familiar...)
Dark knight is another example, it used to be high skill class with lots of debuffs and altering properties of your attacks with dark arts. Two expansions later and we're a clone of warrior except with Fray instead of healing)

And the cards mentioned? that particular interview was 5.05, they had seen the feedback but they would not be changing the cards or adding mp back to noct, but they did apologise for how terrible AST's potencies were at launch. (IE unplayable)

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So, look. I get it.

Bard is another class I like. 5.1 took away about 2k personal DPS while only giving me about 700 DPS back in raid buffs - though I'm not a particularly high end bard player and I hardly raid on it so that may be a factor. In any case, I hate it. I've hated other changes in the past too.

I'm simply making observations from how SE has acted in the past. When something like AST cards get this (high) level of negative feedback, in the past SE overhauls it for the next expansion, so I think that's most likely what will happen here. In the interim, you are right, typically they only make relatively minor changes - duration, potency, cooldown, maaaybe adding an ability or a slight mechanic change.

It's also not impossible they might overhaul it before 6.0, but they've never done something like that before. The pattern is such changes come with expac launches. It's also possible they could ignore it completely for 6.0, but that also doesn't fit SE's established modus operandi.

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but in regards to the original post: no, I don't think anyone actually demanded for AST changes. There were and always have been "Balance fishers," but they were (in my opinion) bad Astrologian players and should not have represented Astrologian as a whole - enough to warrant a total change to the class, anyway. I think Balance fishers were/are bad mix for AST because they completely missed the point of Astrologian as a class/concept and thus played it in a way that wasn't optimal for a class. Whenever I saw a Balance fisher in a raid (with me as cohealer because I used to play only AST until a few months before SHB came out), they would shuffle their cards more often than using them and then would either use them right away or hold onto the card until it was "strategic" to use, which ultimately made them not very useful... because they were rarely ever buffing. Using Arrow should have been fine on its own, because speeds up the players (i.e. more damage per second), or Spear which increased likelihood of critical hits (which was especially useful when BRD played songs), and so on.

In my 4 years of playing AST, I really never heard of anyone complain about the cards after their initial fix (because they did get fixed right after its original release - for the better, mind you) except for people who fished for Balance. But I think they were likely in the minority because I didn't see/read it come up that often in the forums or in the game. So, by and large: no, I don't think AST players asked for this change. Some disliked RNG, but again: same issue as Balance fishers, still in the minority.

For scholar, I think the main complaint was actually a lack of fairies (because SMN has/had so many egis whereas scholar only had two fairies) and the fact that Selene was basically useless even in situations where she would have been ideal because her CDs were just way too long and some other stuff. But they didn't ever ask "take away my DoTs! I can't handle all this DPSing! Take away my blue orby thingy! I have no desire for it!" If anything, I learnt from SCH in my early days was that sometimes DPSing was another healing tool in that the faster monsters went down, the less damage your teammates would like take. Which totally fits with the preventive healing style that is SCH.

As for WHM, I hate WHM so much that I just stopped listening/reading about it. x'D But the loudest thing that started to pop up (after the endless complaints of lack of DPS tools) was something to do with the lily system.

The big problem people never see to get with 'balance fishers' is they were playing sub optimal trying to be as optimal with the cards as possible.

Every redraw was 30s and every draw 30s so to not get either ewer, spire or balance in 1st draw is 50% then getting either balance or spire/ewer on second is 1/6 or 1/3 not the greatest of odds .
So anyone refusing to use the other cards except balance were not doing their job as an Ast.

You fished for balance within reason ie the draw/redraw and sleeve draw timeframe if you held off using cards for >30s to get balance you were sub optimal this is why I say balance was the best card but not the only one.

Exactly ! Imagine we have AOE Royal Road waiting for Balance.
If the player discards Arrow, then Ewer, for example, He would have lost one buff already.
That's why, in my case, I was waiting for Balance and Arrow, or Spear if burst time was coming.
It's already happened I launched a lot of Arrow, and my team did very well during speedkill.
From my calculations (with the help of a website), I estimated the Arrow being approximatively equal to 80% of Balance potency which is pretty good.
Even in some cases our best bursts (for example on Ultima Ultimate after Lahabrea) were done with an Arrow.

People complained because the balance was OP and the other cards were "useless". A simple solution would have been to simply change the balance to something else like direct hit, and adjust card durations so that AST would no longer be the king of healers. But they, in their infinite wisdom, decided it would be way better to completely overhaul the card system, and make every card into the balance.

The changes to redraw and celestial opposition were great and needed, but the new card system as a whole was not

Savage raiders moaned about balance fishing so as per mmo devs, they were bloody listened to. Pretty sure everyone else loved the job.

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Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

Savage raiders moaned about balance fishing so as per mmo devs, they were bloody listened to. Pretty sure everyone else loved the job.

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why does everyone keep blaming the savage raider boogeyman? people raid with the classes they enjoy playing. there also couldve been a million other things to deter or trivialize balance fishing but instead they chose to change everything

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Originally Posted by QooEr

why does everyone keep blaming the savage raider boogeyman? people raid with the classes they enjoy playing. there also couldve been a million other things to deter or trivialize balance fishing but instead they chose to change everything

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Averax was actually closer to the truth.

Even on these very forums where people are (now) claiming it never happened - so many people called anything other than balance useless. So some of the more useless cards got turned into DPS boosts. Then in 5.0... everything is a DPS boost.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

why does everyone keep blaming the savage raider boogeyman? people raid with the classes they enjoy playing. there also couldve been a million other things to deter or trivialize balance fishing but instead they chose to change everything

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When you have to think about it, AST card abilities allowed for different kind of play for different kind of situations. Leveling up AST with those card abilities felt amazing, fun and enjoyable. Now for anyone leveling AST, having all their cards just be a damage boost.. you have to ask yourself.. why? Dungeons you don't need damage boost, all of them are easily done as it is. For a development team to break a class lore because so called "Fishing for balance" was only for a small minority of players. They couldn't handle the RNG element of the class nor be bothered with other cards of its class. Your cards aren't worth using until level 70+ and with the DPS classes being buffed all around, we should get our lore and different card abilities back.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

When you have to think about it, AST card abilities allowed for different kind of play for different kind of situations. Leveling up AST with those card abilities felt amazing, fun and enjoyable

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No, when you actually think about it, it did not work that way in practice.

You had Balance, you had attack speed balance that fucked up rotations sometimes, you had crit balance, you had a defensive buff only good for dungeons, and then you had 'redraw this bullocks.'

You did not have more decisions than you do now. You were just fooled into thinking you had options by that Spire sitting there.

Be honest.

You never used Spire.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

No, when you actually think about it, it did not work that way in practice.

You had Balance, you had attack speed balance that fucked up rotations sometimes, you had crit balance, you had a defensive buff only good for dungeons, and then you had 'redraw this bullocks.'

You did not have more decisions than you do now. You were just fooled into thinking you had options by that Spire sitting there.

Be honest.

You never used Spire.

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Spire was royal road fuel and that was okay. And with the TP removal this expansion they could have made it something else. If we had kept the old card system we could have gone:

Balance = Damage Boost Direct Hit
Bole = Damage Reduction
Spear = Crit
Arrow = Attack/Spell Speed
Ewer = Refresh
Spire = TP Refresh Direct Cooldown Reduction (not passive like old spear)... or maybe even an OGCD HoT.


The problem with old Arrow is no longer existent with the removal of TP

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Originally Posted by Averax

Spire was royal road fuel and that was okay. And with the TP removal this expansion they could have made it something else. If we had kept the old card system we could have gone:

Balance = Damage Boost Direct Hit
Bole = Damage Reduction
Spear = Crit
Arrow = Attack/Spell Speed
Ewer = Refresh
Spire = TP Refresh Direct Cooldown Reduction (not passive like old spear)... or maybe even an OGCD HoT.


The problem with old Arrow is no longer existent with the removal of TP

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Oooo, I like this suggestion!

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

No, when you actually think about it, it did not work that way in practice.

You had Balance, you had attack speed balance that fucked up rotations sometimes, you had crit balance, you had a defensive buff only good for dungeons, and then you had 'redraw this bullocks.'

You did not have more decisions than you do now. You were just fooled into thinking you had options by that Spire sitting there.

Be honest.

You never used Spire.

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Actually Spire had uses back when TP was a thing and yes it WAS used. You either burned it for Royal road, threw it on a DPS that gave them TP or turned it into a instant heal card. Seriously did you even play Astrologian?
There was WAY more choices given to the player than now. You basically throw whatever card is best for what class and that's it for the measly 6% damage buff or if RNG hates you, 3%. It's horrible and needs to be changed.

One thing I don't see mentioned as much is the reduction in duration. By dropping card durations from 30s to 15s, (and dropping draw time as well) I feel like I'm just slinging cards around and don't even really care who gets what because it's so short anyway and new cards are coming soon. So then AST got so busy, it needed more oGCD space. I would've rather had fewer cards that last longer so they became more meaningful.

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Originally Posted by Averax

Spire was royal road fuel and that was okay. And with the TP removal this expansion they could have made it something else. If we had kept the old card system we could have gone:

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They also removed outside sources of MP generation, so Ewer needs to be changed as well.

Ewer = Refresh Increased Healing Received
Spire = TP Refresh | Direct Cooldown Reduction (not passive like old spear)... or maybe even an OGCD HoT. that’d also mess people up like old arrow.
The oGCD HoT would work, or a damage shield to keep a mitigation theme.

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Originally Posted by Averax

The problem with old Arrow is no longer existent with the removal of TP

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The problem was throwing people out of their rotations due to the GCD length change- SAM right now works in a very strict 60s cycle, so they’d have to adjust to getting an extra GCD (or a fraction of a GCD) after an unexpected Arrow.


Of course, all of this is implying that the RR values stay the same.

They shouldn’t.

Enhanced RR was 1.5x effect
Extended RR was 2.0x effect
Expanded RR was 3.0x effect (napkin maths puts it closer to 2.7, but the point stands)

People wanted to expand every card they drew, because of its stupidly higher multiplier, and the only card that was universally beneficial was Balance
(and Spear, but spear was weaker than Balance on everyone except maybe MNK/BRD)
So Balance got to shine. If the RR values were normalised to 1.5x effectiveness, you’d see more arrow/spear usage and less complaining (because you’d give arrows to people who wanted them, not have to apologise to the poor SAM)

Now on to nondamaging cards -
If they can be sacrificed to increase the effectiveness of damaging cards (RR), they’ll never be considered for optimisation.
If they aren’t available when you need them (gated behind RNG) they’ll never be considered for optimisation.

My solution would be a skill that’d let you use the most recent card you consumed for Royal Road (but at diminished effectiveness).
That way it’s on-demand (stored in a separate ‘spread’) and doesn’t affect the use for foddering cards.

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Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

Savage raiders moaned about balance fishing so as per mmo devs, they were bloody listened to. Pretty sure everyone else loved the job.

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There have been several raiders on here that have complained about the new system, and expressed that “Balance fishing” was not the only way to play the job. Hate to break it to you, but raiders can’t be scapegoats for everything.

Balance fishing was only really important in competitive speedkills—which, fewer raiders competitive speedkill than clear Ultimate. I have seen excellent ASTs utilize more than just AOE Balance, and have listened to them talk about excellent ways to use the older Arrow and older Spear (4.x Spear on a good BRD was monstrous if given to them while they were bursting). The worst instance of Balance fishing was likely attempting to speedkill A9S back in Creator: you were basically required to have AOE Balance on the pull, and you had to get another AOE Balance afterwards. If you didn’t, you wiped. And there have been raiders that complained how stupid that actually was. Of course, that was also back when the developers made Balance +20% for single target and +10% for AOE—essentially breaking the card.

Ultimately, there was a misconception that Balance was the only “good card” and all the other cards were crap. But those complaints likely came from ASTs that didn’t know how to play the job.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

So some of the more useless cards got turned into DPS boosts. Then in 5.0... everything is a DPS boost.

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The only card that was changed in this way was Spear—and that was because the old effect was incredibly bad and very hard to effectively use. It only reduced the cooldown of abilities used while it was applied to a target—and single-targeting it on a DPS would cause their burst windows to misalign with raid windows. Changing it to +10% crit/+5% crit for AOE was so much better than “ability cooldown reduction”.

Even Spire had more use (in HW, at least) than OG Spear. Because HW actually required DPS jobs to monitor their TP, and we didn’t have TP refresh on as many jobs as we did in SB. Only NIN could use Goad, Invigorate couldn’t be cross-classed on every DPS, and BRD/MCH TP song came at the cost of their personal damage rather than being a freebie.

Essentially, SB AST had 3 offensive cards and 3 utility cards; and I liked it that way. I’d give anything to have Boles back for dungeon pulls or Ewers back for my MP—because AST still has the worst MP economy of the healers, and they only have 1 way of regenerating the resource (compared to WHM, which as 2; and SCH, which has 3).

I like ShB's AST over StB's.

I did not ask for a change specifically, but now that the change has been implemented, I would have to say I like it more.

Sure it is "dumbed down", but yet overall it just seems to flow better and easier. AST was already the most frenetic healer class to play, and StB's card system just seemed so weird. We had buff cards that nobody cared about (who cared about Spire or Bole cards? Seriously. And Ewer was usually LOL as well), which were only RR fodder.

Given there's what, 6 cards? and 3 of them are junk? That's 50% chance that any card you pull is going to be junk.

With the new system, the first card is useful 100% of the time, 66% the second time, and 33% the third time. Yes all cards do the same thing, but at least you're not throwing away the vast majority of the cards you pull unless Divination is on cooldown and you somehow got lucky and got another Divination ready before the cooldown arrived (and even then you're not "throwing them away", you're simply converting them to Lady/Lord cards to save your Div progress).

Every now and then I'll get this spurt where I'll need (insert type here) and not get that for 8, 9, 10 draws but these are thankfully rare. Usually I'll get the full Div stack within 5-6 draws. It's certainly better than trying to fish for Balance back in StB and usually having to settle for Spear (or that other one) instead at times because it just won't give you Balance when you need it.

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For a development team to break a class lore because so called "Fishing for balance" was only for a small minority of players.

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I'm a very casual player, and even I know that 20% Damage Buff is way better than the other 5 buffs. Why on Earth would I want anything other than 20% damage buff? I mean... 20% recast on something that takes two seconds... um.... ok? That's not even noticeable hardly, and besides, most things you use either have no cooldown, or the cooldown was the same as the GCD. 20% GCD? Eh, maybe? I'd say that was the only real competition Balance had. TP regain? Who ever cared about that unless you were spamming AOEs back in HW? MP Regen? I can't remember ever running out of MP unless things really went south (then MP Regen wasn't going to cut it anyhow). That just leaves 20% damage reduction. If I was solo as AST, well I'm a healer. I got Aspected Benefic, which would pretty much heal me through anything I was meant to solo, anyhow.

And throwing a Bole card on a tank in a dungeon? I remember the Bole Card being referred to as the "Card of Shame" because the only healers who threw those cards around did it to either insult the tank, or they were a newbie healer, or the tank genuinely sucked at mitigation usage.

So I highly doubt a "minority" of players was Balance Fishing because it just seems so.... obvious.... that 1 card was far more powerful than the others. Ironic they chose to call it "Balance" when it was anything but Balanced.

EDIT: I am obviously talking about StB, I do not know how it was in HW because I didn't play AST back then.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Sure it is "dumbed down", but yet overall it just seems to flow better and easier. AST was already the most frenetic healer class to play, and StB's card system just seemed so weird. We had buff cards that nobody cared about (who cared about Spire or Bole cards? Seriously. And Ewer was usually LOL as well), which were only RR fodder.

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The only card out of these that was arguably fodder was Spire. TP stopped being an issue in SB—too many jobs had access to TP refresh tools (either personal or party-wide), and there were very few instances where Spire could actually be used for its intended purpose. Having a Ewer for yourself was actually very nice, because AST had the worse MP economy of the three healers in SB (and still does in ShB). Especially if you were killed. Bole on a tank in dungeons was amazing.

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Given there's what, 6 cards? and 3 of them are junk? That's 50% chance that any card you pull is going to be junk.

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None of them were “junk” when you take into account Minor Arcana. That was the best skill AST got in SB because it turned cards you didn’t need at the time into something more useable. You no longer had to throw them away as useless.

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With the new system, the first card is useful 100% of the time, 66% the second time, and 33% the third time. Yes all cards do the same thing, but at least you're not throwing away the vast majority of the cards you pull unless Divination is on cooldown and you somehow got lucky and got another Divination ready before the cooldown arrived (and even then you're not "throwing them away", you're simply converting them to Lady/Lord cards to save your Div progress).

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While all the cards are now “useful”, your percentages are not really how the Seal RNG works. And, personally speaking, the Divination+Seals mechanic is just transferring the “Balance fishing” to “Seal fishing”. Nothing really changed.

The cards are all the same and it’s boring. There’s no decision making to them now—it’s “highest melee DPS card” and “highest ranged DPS card”. No more giving BRDs Spears to give them insane bursts. No more giving BLMs Enhanced Arrows for more explosions. And Minor Arcana is just more of the same. No more free damage card or free mini-Tetra. I’d rather variety, even if you have that one card that’s basically fodder. Makes things far more interesting. Of course, the theme of ShB was to dumb down jobs that had any sort of complexity to them....

You weren’t throwing away the vast majority of cards before because you should have always been Minor Arcana-ing cards that weren’t being used on a party member, for a Spread, or for a Royal Road modifier.

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I'm a very casual player, and even I know that 20% Damage Buff is way better than the other 5 buffs.

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Balance hasn’t been 20% since early SB. That was quickly reverted before the first Savage tier released. It was +10% for single-target and +5% for AOE since AST was released (3.0) until 3.4 when they broke it in an attempt to draw people to the job. The 20% was reverted back to original potencies in the same patch Deltascape dropped (4.05).

Mathematically, it was the best because nothing beats straight damage increases. But that doesn’t mean that the other cards were useless because Balance was “the best one”. If you were throwing all of your cards away to fish for just Balance, then you were playing the job incorrectly. Balance fishing ultimately only mattered for top-tier speedkills and for people seeking Balance-padded parses.

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I mean... 20% recast on something that takes two seconds... um.... ok? That's not even noticeable hardly, and besides, most things you use either have no cooldown, or the cooldown was the same as the GCD. 20% GCD? Eh, maybe?

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Are you talking about original Spear or Arrow here? Because Spear was changed from cooldown reduction sometime in SB to +10% Crit (+5% for AOE). The cooldown reduction was literally worse than Spire—and they changed it. A Spear on a BRD or a MNK was a good play—it was insane how good it was on those jobs, especially if they were bursting (BRD + Minuet/Raging Strikes + Spear was an unbelievably good thing).

Arrow was arguably only good on certain jobs (SAM and BLM usually) because it could cause clipping with other jobs and mess with rotations. But that was part of playing AST properly—knowing when and where it would be effective.

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MP Regen? I can't remember ever running out of MP unless things really went south (then MP Regen wasn't going to cut it anyhow).

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SB AST (and ShB AST) had the worst MP economy of all the healers. A Ewer was far more useful than you’re giving it credit for. ShB AST would kill to have it back, honestly. They seem like they’re MP negative if you try to keep up with ABC.

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That just leaves 20% damage reduction. If I was solo as AST, well I'm a healer. I got Aspected Benefic, which would pretty much heal me through anything I was meant to solo, anyhow.

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The damage reduction was less beneficial in solo play and more in party play. Giving it to a tank in a large dungeon pull was pretty great. Whether they were a great tank or a poor one. And, as cheesy as it may sound, my UwU clear had an AOE Bole during the primal roulettes before Ultima begins charging up his enrage. It might have been RNG, but it saw some use.

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And throwing a Bole card on a tank in a dungeon? I remember the Bole Card being referred to as the "Card of Shame" because the only healers who threw those cards around did it to either insult the tank, or they were a newbie healer, or the tank genuinely sucked at mitigation usage.

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LMAO. No. Having an Enhanced Bole on a tank for a large pull was a godsend. It basically gave you free reign to AOE the trash down—especially if you stacked HoTs on them and extended the durations with Celestial Opposition. I could do that even to the worst kinds of tanks and not have to heal them most of the time. Giving them a Bole wasn’t an “insult”—I have no idea where you even heard that from. It was literally a free cooldown.

Not an AST, never been an AST, but just peering in from the outside, wouldn't having all the cards be equally good all the time kind of make the RNG/astrology/divination aspect of the system a bit pointless?

After all, the fates are not always kind.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

None of them were “junk” when you take into account Minor Arcana. That was the best skill AST got in SB because it turned cards you didn’t need at the time into something more useable. You no longer had to throw them away as useless.

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Not like we don't have Minor Arcana now, right?

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While all the cards are now “useful”, your percentages are not really how the Seal RNG works. And, personally speaking, the Divination+Seals mechanic is just transferring the “Balance fishing” to “Seal fishing”. Nothing really changed.

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Unless they do some skewing, you have 6 cards. There's 2 Sun Cards, 2 Moon Cards, and 2 Sky Cards. You want 1x Moon, Sun, Sky for Divination. When you draw the first card, the first is 100% useful. When you draw the second card, you get a 4-in-6 chance, or 66% chance of getting one of the two you didn't get the first time. When you draw the third card, you get a 2-in-6 chance, or 33%, of getting the remaining seal you didn't have.

Unless of course, the game does some trickery, like "If the player has Sun and Moon, -10% chance of getting sky" or some crap.

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The cards are all the same and it’s boring. There’s no decision making to them now—it’s “highest melee DPS card” and “highest ranged DPS card”. No more giving BRDs Spears to give them insane bursts. No more giving BLMs Enhanced Arrows for more explosions. And Minor Arcana is just more of the same. No more free damage card or free mini-Tetra. I’d rather variety, even if you have that one card that’s basically fodder. Makes things far more interesting. Of course, the theme of ShB was to dumb down jobs that had any sort of complexity to them....

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......on the job that was already the most complicated, and still is the most frenetic to play of the healers? Before asking for yet MORE complexity to AST, you should look at WHM sometime.

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You weren’t throwing away the vast majority of cards before because you should have always been Minor Arcana-ing cards that weren’t being used on a party member, for a Spread, or for a Royal Road modifier.

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Minor Arcana is about the same thing as throwing it away, in terms of each individual card being useful or not. If you Minor Arcana a card, you don't care WHAT the card is, you're just going to dump it into MA. This means all cards are basically the same, which is exactly what you are complaining about with ShB.

I will give you that RR did care about which cards.

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Balance hasn’t been 20% since early SB. That was quickly reverted before the first Savage tier released. It was +10% for single-target and +5% for AOE since AST was released (3.0) until 3.4 when they broke it in an attempt to draw people to the job. The 20% was reverted back to original potencies in the same patch Deltascape dropped (4.05).

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Fair enough, I suppose. Still.

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Mathematically, it was the best because nothing beats straight damage increases. But that doesn’t mean that the other cards were useless because Balance was “the best one”. If you were throwing all of your cards away to fish for just Balance, then you were playing the job incorrectly. Balance fishing ultimately only mattered for top-tier speedkills and for people seeking Balance-padded parses.

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Or your average clueless players in Duty Finder, which is where I do most of my group play. Doesn't matter what is really what, if a large portion of the public believes otherwise. You know how your average Duty Finder Hero worships +Damage output, or you surely do?

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Are you talking about original Spear or Arrow here? Because Spear was changed from cooldown reduction sometime in SB to +10% Crit (+5% for AOE). The cooldown reduction was literally worse than Spire—and they changed it. A Spear on a BRD or a MNK was a good play—it was insane how good it was on those jobs, especially if they were bursting (BRD + Minuet/Raging Strikes + Spear was an unbelievably good thing).

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Memory is somewhat foggy, I will admit. I dont' remember when exactly I was leveling AST during StB.

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SB AST (and ShB AST) had the worst MP economy of all the healers. A Ewer was far more useful than you’re giving it credit for. ShB AST would kill to have it back, honestly. They seem like they’re MP negative if you try to keep up with ABC.

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Odd, I never noticed any real problems. Popping Lucid seemed to solve most of my problems? I can't say I ever thought "OMG YES A EWER!" after, say, Lv50 or so. Maybe some early levels back before I got into the hang of playing it and I was wasting MP on the wrong spells maybe.

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The damage reduction was less beneficial in solo play and more in party play. Giving it to a tank in a large dungeon pull was pretty great. Whether they were a great tank or a poor one. And, as cheesy as it may sound, my UwU clear had an AOE Bole during the primal roulettes before Ultima begins charging up his enrage. It might have been RNG, but it saw some use.

LMAO. No. Having an Enhanced Bole on a tank for a large pull was a godsend. It basically gave you free reign to AOE the trash down—especially if you stacked HoTs on them and extended the durations with Celestial Opposition. I could do that even to the worst kinds of tanks and not have to heal them most of the time. Giving them a Bole wasn’t an “insult”—I have no idea where you even heard that from. It was literally a free cooldown.

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Again, Duty Finder, general public. Personally? I loved the idea of throwing a short duration Rampart on a tank in a Trash pull. But you know, I kept hearing about the "Card of Shame" and all that, and didn't want people getting mad at me, so RR/MA it is anytime Bole came up.

If any card was called the card of shame in SB(none were this is actually the first I have heard of this moniker) it would've been Spire, with how they changed tp if a spire was needed, oof, just oof.

Only 1 card was functionally useless Spire, it had 0 use for solo play and so incredibly small use (literal so many deaths in short time frame everyone used tp restores etc) that it was either RR or MA 99% of the time, Ewer and Bole however fared much better they had more Consistent uses Bole for mass pulls in dungeons or big hits in trials, Ewer for your own mp Gravity spamming or your Co healer if they died etc.

Thing with these cards though is they indirectly increased damage rather than directly so people didn't see the effects of these as well but every card apart from Spire(and this is SB only in HW mnk would love the Spire) increased damage dealt just Balance was the best for it.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

If any card was called the card of shame in SB(none were this is actually the first I have heard of this moniker) it would've been Spire...
Only 1 card was functionally useless Spire

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Spire and Ewer were two of the strongest cards because of their Royal Road effect (~3x power). It wasn’t as effective in solo or light party content, but none of the RR effects were great in that scenario either.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Not like we don't have Minor Arcana now, right?

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The point of what I was saying clearly went completely over your head.

I never said we lost MA. I said it gave use to the cards we did not need at the time. And it had a lot more variance to it then than it does now. Now. It’s all just lore of the same. I’d rather have my old Lord and old Lady back. Having an extra single-target oGCD was nice, and it felt more rewarding to turn an unneeded-Spire into a free oGCD damage card.

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Unless they do some skewing, you have 6 cards. There's 2 Sun Cards, 2 Moon Cards, and 2 Sky Cards. You want 1x Moon, Sun, Sky for Divination. When you draw the first card, the first is 100% useful. When you draw the second card, you get a 4-in-6 chance, or 66% chance of getting one of the two you didn't get the first time. When you draw the third card, you get a 2-in-6 chance, or 33%, of getting the remaining seal you didn't have.

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That’s not how probability works in practice.

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......on the job that was already the most complicated, and still is the most frenetic to play of the healers? Before asking for yet MORE complexity to AST, you should look at WHM sometime.

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Heaven forbid we have complexity and decision-making involved in a job. You can also drop the WHM strawman because we aren’t talking about WHM. AST is only cumbersome now because of how the cards function—and things like the new Sleeve Draw making it a nightmare for controller users. It’s not complex in terms of decision-making. Cards go to the highest damage dealers with no real variance. You don’t make strategic plays anymore.

I’d rather decision-making return to AST than be like: “Oh? Balance? SAM card.” “Bole? BLM/SMN card.” “Not the Seal I need? Minor Arcana for another damage card for the SAM/BLM/SMN.” It’s a lot more engaging to draw something like an old Spear and consider if it would be strategic to play it on the BRD or MNK, or opt to Redraw instead.

Besides, I’m not a fan of single-target padding. Which is all you do now.

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Minor Arcana is about the same thing as throwing it away, in terms of each individual card being useful or not. If you Minor Arcana a card, you don't care WHAT the card is, you're just going to dump it into MA. This means all cards are basically the same, which is exactly what you are complaining about with ShB.

I will give you that RR did care about which cards.

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Disagree. Minor Arcana’s addition in SB was wonderful for giving things we didn’t need a use. You did have to care about whether or not you MA’d a card or did something else with it—it was all part of that decision-making aspect of AST that has been sucked out of it.

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Or your average clueless players in Duty Finder, which is where I do most of my group play. Doesn't matter what is really what, if a large portion of the public believes otherwise. You know how your average Duty Finder Hero worships +Damage output, or you surely do?

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No, Balance fishing didn’t matter in “the average Duty Finder”. I ran all kinds of content on AST in HW and SB. I was never once complained at for not Balance padding someone’s dungeon pull.

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Odd, I never noticed any real problems. Popping Lucid seemed to solve most of my problems? I can't say I ever thought "OMG YES A EWER!" after, say, Lv50 or so. Maybe some early levels back before I got into the hang of playing it and I was wasting MP on the wrong spells maybe.

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I take it you never did anything beyond a dungeon? Because it was relatively easy to feel MP strains in something like a 24-man or an 8-man if one was simply trying to keep up the Always Be Casting mentality. Even without having to do much Raising.

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Again, Duty Finder, general public. Personally? I loved the idea of throwing a short duration Rampart on a tank in a Trash pull. But you know, I kept hearing about the "Card of Shame" and all that, and didn't want people getting mad at me, so RR/MA it is anytime Bole came up.

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I played AST more than any job in SB. Never once had a tank cry at me for giving them Boles. This sounds like you dramatically skewing things you read about a couple times on the Internet.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

Spire and Ewer were two of the strongest cards because of their Royal Road effect (~3x power). It wasn’t as effective in solo or light party content, but none of the RR effects were great in that scenario either.

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I think they’re talking more about using it for the TP regen as opposed to Royal Road. Spire was pretty useless in terms of its intended card effect in SB. Not so much in HW, though.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Not an AST, never been an AST, but just peering in from the outside, wouldn't having all the cards be equally good all the time kind of make the RNG/astrology/divination aspect of the system a bit pointless?

After all, the fates are not always kind.

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The cards don't have to be equally good all the time, but if they're situational then RNG is a hindrance. The change that I think AST needs along with more varied cards is the ability to choose which card you get. Balance fishing didn't come from nowhere, it was the result of DPS being more useful more often than anything else. The other cards had at least some value, but if they came up at the wrong time they were useless. We had some tools to mitigate that like MA, but for me it felt like a loss to convert an unwanted card.

As far as how being able to choose cards would work in the lore, we have the echo which lets us avoid unfavorable situations already, why couldn't we apply it to AST cards?

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

The cards don't have to be equally good all the time, but if they're situational then RNG is a hindrance. The change that I think AST needs along with more varied cards is the ability to choose which card you get. Balance fishing didn't come from nowhere, it was the result of DPS being more useful more often than anything else. The other cards had at least some value, but if they came up at the wrong time they were useless. We had some tools to mitigate that like MA, but for me it felt like a loss to convert an unwanted card.

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I guess I just always assumed it was part of the appeal of AST, a gamblers job, with all the highs and lows that would imply.

Don't get the joys of an awesome streak of excellent cards without sometimes experiencing the lows of string of bad luck.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Odd, I never noticed any real problems. Popping Lucid seemed to solve most of my problems? I can't say I ever thought "OMG YES A EWER!" after, say, Lv50 or so. Maybe some early levels back before I got into the hang of playing it and I was wasting MP on the wrong spells maybe.

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You don't know MP Struggles until you have people dying in your savage raid parties as an AST. One Rez is enough to crush your MP regen to dangerous levels. On Titan? You'd wish you had that Ewer Card.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I guess I just always assumed it was part of the appeal of AST, a gamblers job, with all the highs and lows that would imply.

Don't get the joys of an awesome streak of excellent cards without sometimes experiencing the lows of string of bad luck.

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This is honestly a mood.

It could be incredibly annoying to get a Spread Spire, Drawn Spire, AOE Royal Road with Lady of Crowns in a Sleeve Draw—and you’d just be sitting here like “ugh what are these cards”. And then the next time you use Sleeve, you get the god-tier Sleeve of Spread Balance, Drawn Balance, AOE Royal Road with Lord of Crowns. I liked that about Sleeve. The lows made the highs great.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I guess I just always assumed it was part of the appeal of AST, a gamblers job, with all the highs and lows that would imply.

Don't get the joys of an awesome streak of excellent cards without sometimes experiencing the lows of string of bad luck.

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I've never liked gambling, so maybe it's a me problem partially. One of the things that I found myself enjoying with AST, and still focus on with the current version of the class, is supporting the rest of the party. It was never about luck, but helping everyone achieve the best that they could. The more control I have over that, the more accomplished I feel for succeeding and the more I feel the drive to improve when I fail.