Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

I am starting to get worried SE/the devs are going to do something fundementally stupid in 5.2 and buff Ast again.

I do not want buffs for Ast at all.

It already has the strongest raid dps out of the healers by a good amount, its healing is fine(Nocturnal is Nocturnal) can certainly do everything that 5.2 will release with.

Yet I have a horrible feeling the devs will buff Ast just to improve their numbers.

I do not want a repeat of HW healer debacle it was not good back then it won't be good now.

There are major flaws with current Ast but it doesn't need a boost at all in its healing, dps, or its cards. Leave potency roughly where they are if you do any skill changing >_<

Mp economy is about the only thing that really can be improved without any major changes just leave it at that devs pls I beg you, do not overbuff Ast again. We don't need it.

Going to be honest, I am a bit worried about this.

The problem is how AST plays, how it feels. I hope SE doesn't interpret those issues as "we need to make AST even stronger."

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Going to be honest, I am a bit worried about this.

The problem is how AST plays, how it feels. I hope SE doesn't interpret those issues as "we need to make AST even stronger."

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All of this. The only thing AST needs is MP improvements; THAT’S IT. No more, no less right now.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

All of this. The only thing AST needs is MP improvements; THAT’S IT. No more, no less right now.

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MP management for sure, some could even argue and hope for a small Bard-Treatment with the cards to make it somewhat diverse.

Personally, hoping to get at least Time Dilation or Celestial Opposition's old effect reinstated to help with MP Management.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

I am starting to get worried SE/the devs are going to do something fundementally stupid in 5.2 and buff Ast again.

I do not want buffs for Ast at all.

It already has the strongest raid dps out of the healers by a good amount, its healing is fine(Nocturnal is Nocturnal) can certainly do everything that 5.2 will release with.

Yet I have a horrible feeling the devs will buff Ast just to improve their numbers.

I do not want a repeat of HW healer debacle it was not good back then it won't be good now.

There are major flaws with current Ast but it doesn't need a boost at all in its healing, dps, or its cards. Leave potency roughly where they are if you do any skill changing >_<

Mp economy is about the only thing that really can be improved without any major changes just leave it at that devs pls I beg you, do not overbuff Ast again. We don't need it.

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And put WHM in the same state it was in SB, which is the excuse for no new healer in ShB. We don't need an overbuffed AST again for them to use healer balancing for no new healer. While WHM isn't nearly as bad as the gutted WHM and useless lilies of SB, it shouldn't be put on the shelf at the end of ShB like SB. I agree with others, AST needs better MP management as both WHM and SCH have tools to recover MP while AST lost its only tool in the card rework. Maybe put 500 MP regen on Earthly Star or another of its oGCD skills to put it on par with Energy Drain and Assize would help.

The cycle of AST is to go up, then down, then up, then down.

The feel of AST and the choice of loss/gain with abilities is what bothers me. I've played it pretty much since release through all the buffs, nerfs, and tweaks, but it feels awkward this expansion and I've been using WHM for my healer.

Making a class stronger by not fixing it's core mechanic of this vicious card system will not change my disapproval of it. This whole change has destroyed all my love for it. The improvements they did to AST other than the card system was needed, the Regen effects were horribly bad before the change. As much as I want to have faith in Yoshi P and the dev team to make things right with AST.. I'm not sure we'll see changes in 5.2. They need to change the whole card system back to reflect its lore and what made it stand out from the other healers and it'll possibly take some time. I don't want my lore back if it's only going to be 3% on each card.. I don't want anything that's gonna remind me of this card system the way it is now. Royal road and spread need to come back, it'll make my life as an AST much easier now that we have redraw stacks. Perfecting AST gameplay is not fun, I'm not going to raid over and over and over just to improve my numbers. Maybe some day they'll find a way to make undraw not completely useless. Or better yet, make it so that the next card you draw won't be a defense or MP refresh. I just wish a little thinking outside the box was done before these changes happened.

I feel like aside from reworking the card system, they could stand to maybe add some mana management or continue to try and make nocturnal sect better..

But without adding anything to the other healers, yes! The balance right now is good and it'd be the worst if we lost all of the great things from Stormblood only to end up with the bad things from Stormblood all over again. No fun and no balance would be the worst possible outcome.

Not me, I have more important things to worry about. You know, real life stuff

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

All of this. The only thing AST needs is MP improvements; THAT’S IT. No more, no less right now.

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Eh. I think the card system needs to be reconsidered. Changing it from Stormblood has not exactly sat well with a lot of people.

I have a question for those people that say AST is fine besides MP management, and play with a controller. What do you think of the card system?
I'm actually not against the cards all being straight damage buffs (though it would have been more interesting if they still had different effects, just balanced out so that they are the same potency).
But without Royal Road all cards are single-target, and Sleeve Draw is extremely annoying.
What are you thinking about having to target all the DPS with a controller all the time?

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Originally Posted by Limonia

I have a question for those people that say AST is fine besides MP management, and play with a controller. What do you think of the card system?
I'm actually not against the cards all being straight damage buffs (though it would have been more interesting if they still had different effects, just balanced out so that they are the same potency).
But without Royal Road all cards are single-target, and Sleeve Draw is extremely annoying.
What are you thinking about having to target all the DPS with a controller all the time?

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It's painful. Honestly, I prefer having all cards be straight dps buffs like now, instead of having variety for the sake of it but half the cards being useless or rr fodder. The fact that the probability of repeatedly drawing bole/spire/ewer (and spear, when it had that ridiculous cd reduction effect attached to it) was non-zero is what made chose SCH over AST in previous expansions.

However, having to manually target party members with a controller is extremely annoying and uncomfortable, especially in the opener or during sleeve draw windows.

This is easy to solve though. Very easy. It's just that healers are not really a priority for the devs, as is pretty obvious by now. One possible solution I just came up with is the following.

Introduce 2 new skills that can't be activated during combat (so you use them before the pull):

Sun's Favor: grants the sun's favor to the target. Any Bole, Ewer and Spire played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger ranged dps.
Moon's Favor: grants the moon's favor to the target. Any Balance, Spear and Arrow played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger melee dps.

Basically, AST's version of closed position. This way, you'd only need to specifically target a party member during the sleeve draw window or if someone's dead.
This would also be useful for M&K players, since it's let them get rid of play macros.

Sure, it may not be the most elegant solution, but it would work. However, I'm afraid it won't happen. The devs have shown that they don't really put much thought into healers' gameplay and balance. SB lilies, and 5.0 minor arcana convinced me of this. They'll probably just buff AST again until more people play it and that's it.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

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Or, like NIN and SMN, make Play a GCD.
Even a short GCD like Meditate would give you more time to switch targets (2.5s to target an ally, 1.2-2.5s to go back to the foe).

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Introduce 2 new skills that can't be activated during combat (so you use them before the pull):

Sun's Favor: grants the sun's favor to the target. Any Bole, Ewer and Spire played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger ranged dps.
Moon's Favor: grants the moon's favor to the target. Any Balance, Spear and Arrow played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger melee dps.

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I think this will only really be useful in high end gameplay or with statics. For DF or PF content I don't know before the battle runs for a while who the "best DPS" even is. For example if I put it on a BLM and MNK and after a minute I notice how the BLM is an ice mage and the MNK ignores positionals, I can't put that buff on another DPS. If I even managed to in the first place, because someone pulled the boss immediately anyway. It may work theoretically, but I can already see me being annoyed at it.

I'd rather have Sleeve Draw replaced with a skill that makes the next card AoE or something like that.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

Or, like NIN and SMN, make Play a GCD.
Even a short GCD like Meditate would give you more time to switch targets (2.5s to target an ally, 1.2-2.5s to go back to the foe).

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That would change very little, I'm afraid.
Currently, you need to press a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 6 buttons to give a card to a dps player + 1 more button to go back to the boss if you're dpsing or 3-4 buttons to target the tank if you need to st heal them. Your suggestion would give a little more time (like and extra second) to deal with those buttons after you played the card, but the amount of buttons to press would still be a little overwhelming, especially when compared with what the other two healers have to deal with.
A quick look at healers' CPM (which doesn't include target shifting) makes it glaringly obvious that AST is pressing way too many buttons right now when played correctly, and something should be done to address this; AST currently has to press more buttons than any other caster and most dps jobs if you're playing with a controller. Controller users can't even use macros because they'd need 4 macros for play and 4 for minor arcana, and at that point the button bloat would be unbearable.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

I think this will only really be useful in high end gameplay or with statics. For DF or PF content I don't know before the battle runs for a while who the "best DPS" even is. For example if I put it on a BLM and MNK and after a minute I notice how the BLM is an ice mage and the MNK ignores positionals, I can't put that buff on another DPS. If I even managed to in the first place, because someone pulled the boss immediately anyway. It may work theoretically, but I can already see me being annoyed at it.

I'd rather have Sleeve Draw replaced with a skill that makes the next card AoE or something like that.

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You're not wrong, but I'm not sure tunnig skills around the possibility of having terrible players in your party is a good ide. As long as other party members are not totally incompetent, the difference is actually very small. Also, that's why I included the possibility of manually selecting a party member and override the effect of the buff: if you realize that you gave the favor (or whatever you wanna call it) to a bad player, you can just select another player and keep playing as you'd do now. And after the inevitable wipe caused by the bad player, change the target for the favors.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Sun's Favor: grants the sun's favor to the target. Any Bole, Ewer and Spire played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger ranged dps.
Moon's Favor: grants the moon's favor to the target. Any Balance, Spear and Arrow played is redirected to the target if no other party member is selected -> You give it to your stronger melee dps.

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While I like the idea of this in theory. It has the unfortunate side effect of completely trivializing Cards—more so than they already are. At this point, Astro becomes a budget White Mage since you'd seldom interact with its core gimmick.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

While I like the idea of this in theory. It has the unfortunate side effect of completely trivializing Cards—more so than they already are. At this point, Astro becomes a budget White Mage since you'd seldom interact with its core gimmick.

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As you said yourself, cards are already trivial. There's a set priority system and you don't deviate from it. Right now, the only "challenging" aspect is the actual execution, in the sense that it's practically annoying to do. As much as I dislike how the game is becoming more and more easy in terms of rotations and such, AST is simply unjustifiably uncomfortable to play with respect to its peers, the biggest offender being manual targeting for cards allocation. Playing AST using a controller is nothing short of nightmarish.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

It's painful. Honestly, I prefer having all cards be straight dps buffs like now, instead of having variety for the sake of it but half the cards being useless or rr fodder. The fact that the probability of repeatedly drawing bole/spire/ewer (and spear, when it had that ridiculous cd reduction effect attached to it) was non-zero is what made chose SCH over AST in previous expansions.
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You still have RNG of dancing between melee and ranged dps cards. I've lost count how many times it has danced between arrow and balance back and forth wasting my redraw stacks as I'm trying to weave them in with malefic. People who loved AST adapted to it, people who were lazy and only fished for balance were sub par at AST, granted balance was the best card, it was not efficient to waste time going for it 100% of the time. You seemed to forgot that we had Minor arcana that turned our Spire or Ewer to a Instant heal card which was lovely to have on stand by since we did not have stacks of ED and the potency wasn't as good back then. Having the cards all straight dps buff does not reflect lore or bring any sort of uniqueness of gameplay to it. It needs to change, you can't respect lore of other things about FF if you cannot acknowledge lore of a class that its card system is the Main reason it stands apart from other healers.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

You still have RNG of dancing between melee and ranged dps cards. I've lost count how many times it has danced between arrow and balance back and forth wasting my redraw stacks as I'm trying to weave them in with malefic. People who loved AST adapted to it, people who were lazy and only fished for balance were sub par at AST, granted balance was the best card, it was not efficient to waste time going for it 100% of the time. You seemed to forgot that we had Minor arcana that turned our Spire or Ewer to a Instant heal card which was lovely to have on stand by since we did not have stacks of ED and the potency wasn't as good back then. Having the cards all straight dps buff does not reflect lore or bring any sort of uniqueness of gameplay to it. It needs to change, you can't respect lore of other things about FF if you cannot acknowledge lore of a class that its card system is the Main reason it stands apart from other healers.

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That's a very biased way to look at it. In previous expansions, cards were an "all or almost nothing" mechanic. Either you got lucky with your draws, or you simply had to be satisfied with an extremely suboptimal result. Lord/Lady? They didn't even come close to the utility provided by an aoe balance.
Right now, even if you don't get the card you want, you're not losing much in terms of utility. This is always true, be it because you wanted a melee card instead of a ranged card, or because you couldn't prep 3 different seals for divination, bad luck doesn't screw you too much and you're losing very little in terms of actual support. In HW and SB, on the other hand, spire/ewer/bole direct effect (tp/mp regen and damage mitigation) had very little utility in most scenarios and were close to useless in a well coordinated party because tanks and healers would map all their cds to deal with all the dangerous mechanics.

I can understand if you tell me that you prefer variety. But the argument that "fishing is worse than before" or that "there were no useless cards before 5.0" is not convincing.

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw. Lore is already butchered in this game anyway.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw. Lore is already butchered in this game anyway.

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Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics. People can complain about those too of course but that's just what the devs thought would be fun.

For the cards, there was the random chance and ways to influence it, to make the most of what you got or adapt to a changing situation. Making arguments that such and such is useless in Savage/Extreme/Ultimate statics makes your argument invalid. 99% of the players don't live in those. You can't argue that class mechanic was too hard and then be calling the fights too easy. Doesn't work that way.

DPS have DPS buffs. Tanks have defense buffs. Healers have healing buffs. Then there are the weird and wonderful classes that have a bit of a mix. Instead of reveling in that or playing another class in the role that fit your notion of the play style, you wanted AST reduced to some uninteresting, "optimized" slurry.

If you can't stand that it won't always be "optimal", don't play it. I'd rather have my Healer Improvisation back.

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Originally Posted by Boomsmash

Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics.

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Cards are nothing like Dancer's mechanics for two major reasons:

1) You have no control over your procs, you just react to what you have, while following some very basic priority rules to make sure you don't waste any proc;
2) Procs only unlock other weaponskills or offensive ogcd (note how damage mitigation is totally out of the equation, because as soon as damage is an option, it will become the only desirable option) and since both proc rates and proc activation chances are high, at the end of the fight it evens out, so the variance in terms of dps is relatively small. This was not true with old cards, where you could have extremely variable rdps contribution depending on luck, which made it close to impossible to balance. And like it or not, balance is important in online games.

With the current iteration of the cards system, they fixed the balance. You don't like it? Then suggest how they can design a system that can be balanced and work with the scripted fights in this game. Hopefully something that won't turn WHM into a meme again, just because you want to have your fake "healer improvisation" back.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

All of this. The only thing AST needs is MP improvements; THAT’S IT. No more, no less right now.

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A slow effect on Gravity for Dungeons would be really nice. Needed, no. Welcome, very.

Lots of threads when the changes came out covered better ways, from being able to select which effect you would throw when the cooldown was up (which would surely make the optimizers happy), to having them vary based on what class you threw them on (encourages spreading the buffs around), and into having debuff effects if thrown on enemies (whee!).

All of those are better than the current system. I think my idea was using a rotator like the Magia board for AST's cards, dial and toss. If you only want damage, ignore the other cards. If you need MP, dial and throw. Cooldowns for making it AoE, a damage hit, or a heal burst.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

That's a very biased way to look at it. In previous expansions, cards were an "all or almost nothing" mechanic. Either you got lucky with your draws, or you simply had to be satisfied with an extremely suboptimal result. Lord/Lady? They didn't even come close to the utility provided by an aoe balance.
Right now, even if you don't get the card you want, you're not losing much in terms of utility. This is always true, be it because you wanted a melee card instead of a ranged card, or because you couldn't prep 3 different seals for divination, bad luck doesn't screw you too much and you're losing very little in terms of actual support. In HW and SB, on the other hand, spire/ewer/bole direct effect (tp/mp regen and damage mitigation) had very little utility in most scenarios and were close to useless in a well coordinated party because tanks and healers would map all their cds to deal with all the dangerous mechanics.

I can understand if you tell me that you prefer variety. But the argument that "fishing is worse than before" or that "there were no useless cards before 5.0" is not convincing.

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw. Lore is already butchered in this game anyway.

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Welcome to RNG in a MMORPG, you're not always going to get lucky with what cards you were drawn. "Gameplay Consistency" is the talk of a person who only does raids for their parses which very small minority of this community, no we don't like these cards and thousands of people feel the same way. You're still fishing for certain cards for a certain divination seal, it feels worse than what it was. AST cards should not feel lame and disgusting to use for your "Optimal" Play

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Welcome to RNG in a MMORPG, you're not always going to get lucky with what cards you were drawn. "Gameplay Consistency" is the talk of a person who only does raids for their parses which very small minority of this community, no we don't like these cards and thousands of people feel the same way. You're still fishing for certain cards for a certain divination seal, it feels worse than what it was. AST cards should not feel lame and disgusting to use for your "Optimal" Play

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Now I have to interject and say those that raid and want to play optimal(currently where Ast controller issues stem from) have as much right to their opinion on matters but like those that play far less optimally they shouldn't be the only voice being heard.

They had to have been a balance between all the different voices (casuals,hardcore,speed runners etc etc), it just feels there wasn't this time for Ast and that is was a prominent voice that was heard above all others and this has hurt Ast far greater than the undertuning did in 3.0(undertuning is numbers, 5.X Ast is straight gameplay far harder to change).

It did not help that SE has been so silent about healers in general but particularly the reasons for the changes done to Ast and Sch have been so quiet we've heard nothing but crickets for months.

The only metric we players have access to shows Ast numbers are stupidly low compared to its counterparts in the least populated role(as in 3 healers etc) which also has 2 spots in parties on top. To say nothing about it being the stongest rDps healer as well.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Now I have to interject and say those that raid and want to play optimal(currently where Ast controller issues stem from) have as much right to their opinion on matters but like those that play far less optimally they shouldn't be the only voice being heard.

They had to have been a balance between all the different voices (casuals,hardcore,speed runners etc etc), it just feels there wasn't this time for Ast and that is was a prominent voice that was heard above all others and this has hurt Ast far greater than the undertuning did in 3.0(undertuning is numbers, 5.X Ast is straight gameplay far harder to change).

It did not help that SE has been so silent about healers in general but particularly the reasons for the changes done to Ast and Sch have been so quiet we've heard nothing but crickets for months.

The only metric we players have access to shows Ast numbers are stupidly low compared to its counterparts in the least populated role(as in 3 healers etc) which also has 2 spots in parties on top. To say nothing about it being the stongest rDps healer as well.

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Everyone has a right to their own opinion yes I agree with that. Sadly those opinions have made long time AST players hate, quit or just downright hate the card system as it stands.

Card system is beginning of something, I believe, is much greater. So I reserve my judgement till 6.0.

Just know the "RNG" nature of cards is gone forever and AST will ALWAYS consistently provide damage buffs at a constant rate.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Card system is beginning of something, I believe, is much greater. So I reserve my judgement till 6.0.

Just know the "RNG" nature of cards is gone forever and AST will ALWAYS consistently provide damage buffs at a constant rate.

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You say that but points to bow mage, people said the same thing there yet that was changed to the best version of brd in 4.0.

Quite literally anything could happen with 6.0 if however this current implementation of the card system remains, that will be when I drop the globe as that will show the Dev team will not budge on this design for Ast and I will stop supporting a job I have loved to bits as I would not care anymore at that point.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Card system is beginning of something, I believe, is much greater. So I reserve my judgement till 6.0.

Just know the "RNG" nature of cards is gone forever and AST will ALWAYS consistently provide damage buffs at a constant rate.

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Card system has never been at a all time low until now. There's something wrong when people are quitting the class they love to play because of the changes.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Everyone has a right to their own opinion yes I agree with that. Sadly those opinions have made long time AST players hate, quit or just downright hate the card system as it stands.

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Aye it unfortunately happens SE takes things they think we would like or what a few people like and are voicing for despite it being a huge turn off or cause problems for a far bigger portion of the player base.

At this point any card system changes are most likely for 6.0 if Ast gets them. But the controller issues remain the top priority that need to be sorted asap this expansion, so long as this remains Ast is the worst designed job of ShB (no other job alienates an entire peripheral) far above Mch's ping dependance, or mnk's cluster rotation.

Yet nothing ever gets said that I feel they do not know how bad it really is. I honestly think mch and mnk will have their issues sorted out before ast has their controller issues looked at. Certainly the impression SE has given me since media tour.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw.

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While this is basic statistics and factual in terms of numbers: It doesn't change that it's not enjoyable to play as a card game, takes way too much time away from healing, and is literally painful and requires a frustrating amount of effort to play well with controllers, which is why there is a recorded drop in AST players in statics. They would have to rollback the ogcd timers and potencies, and restore royal road or add an "potency(.7) to all party member or within AOE radius of targeted player" to just deal with the issues for controllers and reducing the time allocated from healing. And, the card game aspect was basically just calculating risk/reward on the spot based on player jobs and card that was drawn with abilities to help manipulate the results, which is what is seen in TCG's deckbuilding. Also, totally what Boomsmash said

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Originally Posted by Boomsmash

Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics. People can complain about those too of course but that's just what the devs thought would be fun.

For the cards, there was the random chance and ways to influence it, to make the most of what you got or adapt to a changing situation. Making arguments that such and such is useless in Savage/Extreme/Ultimate statics makes your argument invalid. 99% of the players don't live in those. You can't argue that class mechanic was too hard and then be calling the fights too easy. Doesn't work that way.

DPS have DPS buffs. Tanks have defense buffs. Healers have healing buffs. Then there are the weird and wonderful classes that have a bit of a mix. Instead of reveling in that or playing another class in the role that fit your notion of the play style, you wanted AST reduced to some uninteresting, "optimized" slurry.

If you can't stand that it won't always be "optimal", don't play it. I'd rather have my Healer Improvisation back.

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Hey guys,

I have to say that a lot has changed at AST.
But now to a few of the points / wishes that I had read the days in the forum and I will be happy to answer:

- I want the time aspect back -> The problem here is that extending buffs are cool, BUT the problem I told over 3 years is that HoTs to extend is great (hey Diu) but not shilds. I belive SE found no great way to make it great for Noc and they wanted to nerf the buff system in FF14 so it way to deal with.

- The "healing" is hard -> The heal is the best way SE can make for the AST. The AST is now in a place that he is not the WHM with cards.

Celestial Opposition is the same like Aspected Helios that stacks together:

So if you make in Diu this combo and you make a normal helios you have the same Healpower like a Vita III (200HP (Hots) + 330 HP = 530HP) for 15s also 5 times. Thats great!

In Noc its like you that 2 times the same shild -> Thats a 500 HP shild! Thats much.

The Mana costs from Helios (900mp) and asp. Helios (1000mp) are not compaire anymore. Its allways better to make a asp. Helios instand of an Helios. For Noc its the like allways if you need a shield and for Diu its like did I make asp. Helios (and no Neutral sec.) than make helios.

But the Collective Unconscious is rubish in Noc, Marius! -> Its not if you think what is the task as noc to medigate that the whm can make more dmg because you medigate so much you can. The buff can is 20s long but you can extend it 38s with 10% less dmg for a 60s CD thats much. But no worry there is not a fight were I would stand 18s hehe but 9s happend. ^^

What is with the cards, you should be unhappy, like us! True the Idea to boost dmg is a call from the raid community and the rng from the Seals is nerfed thats okay. 4 -> 5 -> 6% is okay the rng do not so hurt.
But I want something like my old bole back if you ask me. ^^

I think for a lot of you it feels hard to play the cards now. It costs me a night to make find a solution I can live with that:

- PC player:Guide from me Marius Heilstos, but the basic idea is from Bokchoy

- Contoler Player: Guide from Aly/Erdene click me!

But if you ask me what is the Problem now for the AST or what is a think SE should do in your view, Marius?

-> At the moment I play my AST with 2175 Piet and use the pixibear Tea -> So I have a mana reg from ~300 mana. My other healer do not need a so high manareg. because the have both mana tools instand of lucid.

What is the answer of that mana problem? -> SE made a thing in PVP in the time the AST gets mana back if he pick up a card. And if Yoshida like the Idea that we draw a card often maybe its cool that the AST get mana (e.g. 500 mana = 5% of max. mana) back if he AST draw a card (no card with Sleeve Draw!!)

I think thats okay in the stressful way that card have to play. Befor a WHM or SCH comes on the way that would be unfair compair the less mana costs.

Thanks for reading the wall of text and I agree with Risvertasashi the AST heals in great way atm and do not need to be stronger in healing or need dmg buffs or card buffs. The cards feels clonki till you use Macros (look in the Guide and try it out!)

your Marius Heilstos from Odin =)

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

"Buff Extending" Section

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If the extension skill was called 'rewind', it could give X seconds back (to a maximum of Y) to regens as well as giving X potency back to shields (to a maximum of Y) - bringing back shields that were broken.

Chances are it was removed because it was hard to consistently get the full usage of both card and regen extending.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

"Healing is Hard" Section

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I'll be honest - I'm not sure what you're talking about here.
Are you saying that it's good that AST is unlike WHM? If so, why are you immediately showing ways to 'duplicate' Cure3?

And when you bring Nocturnal in - is it still a WHM comparison? Because SCH is the other 'shielder', and Noct is far behind SCH because SCH has loads of health healing tools, shields are pretty pointless in this game.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

"Collective Unconcious" Section

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Compared to Temperance and Sacred Soil, CU is rubbish.
Temperance has +Healing and no range requirement, at the cost of a longer recast.
Sacred Soil has a 600p regen and a 30 second recast time at the cost of 5s of mitigating.
And the whole channeling part of the CU needs to just dissappear. I don't think there's ever any need to hold it for longer than the weaving window.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

"Card Usability" Section

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The point is - We shouldn't need guides for handling the ease of an integral part of our kit.
We shouldn't need to dedicate 2 hotbars to 2 skills.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

"Mana Issues" Section

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I have no issues with most of the paragraph, but I want to focus on this:

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

AST heals in great way atm

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Diurnal AST heals fine.
Nocturnal AST needs more health healing to make it a viable counterpart to Scholar.

My Addition
Horoscope, Synastry and Neutral Sect need looking at. The rest of AST's kit promotes oGCD usage, but Synastry and Neutral Sect only benefit GCD heals, and Horoscope interacts only with (Asp.)Helios, despite CO being identical. That seems like conflicting design to me.
Do they want us to be an oGCD healer? Why do Synastry and Neutal Sect not affect oGCDs then?
Do they want us to be a GCD healer? Why is there no damage return on GCD healing actions like WHM has?
Do they want us to sometimes use GCD actions, when our oGCDs aren't enough? Why are the oGCD tools all so damn strong?

I think my favorite parts of threads like these are "AST NEEDS BETTER MP MANAGEMENT, WE NEED THE EWER TO GIVE MP AGAIN".

MP management should not be dictated by RNG.

I am done worrying how they will screw up AST (or other healers) further. I canceled my subscription, and have said good bye. AST was my favorite healing job in any game before they shredded it. The Dev's with the recent changes and a portion of the population have made it clear they want healers as pets, rather than letting the people who main healers get the same challenge other classes do. All the classes are becoming homogenized and have lost challenge, but healers took it the worst. I have been much happier as I stepped away. I loved the storyline from ShadowBringers, but the game play I enjoyed is gone.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

You say that but points to bow mage, people said the same thing there yet that was changed to the best version of brd in 4.0.

Quite literally anything could happen with 6.0 if however this current implementation of the card system remains, that will be when I drop the globe as that will show the Dev team will not budge on this design for Ast and I will stop supporting a job I have loved to bits as I would not care anymore at that point.

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The people who enjoyed HW BRD still miss it and want it back too.

I think people are missing the important point here and that is that the changes were made because RNG buffs at this point in the game are unacceptable. Buffs that matter need to be reliable, period. The old card system could not support this and was changed. Any further changes will never go back to what it was. As someone that played AST for 4 years, this was a big problem with the job and made it impossible to finely tune as it is currently. Personally, I think if sleeve draw just filled your deck with all different seals that remain, then it would fix a lot of my issues with the current iteration, but otherwise I think it's solid.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Card system has never been at a all time low until now. There's something wrong when people are quitting the class they love to play because of the changes.

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Unpopular opinion, but all jobs don't have to be popular. People are free to swap jobs if they prefer something else. Perhaps the new healer will be more to their liking. People that love the job will play it regardless of what it becomes. People who only loved the play-style won't.

Nothing wrong with people wanting the feel back from the old system, but people really need to understand the big flaw with it that just can no longer be tolerated. The game is moving more towards standardization across all jobs/roles. RNG systems have to be limited in use.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

The people who enjoyed HW BRD still miss it and want it back too.

I think people are missing the important point here and that is that the changes were made because RNG buffs at this point in the game are unacceptable. Buffs that matter need to be reliable, period. The old card system could not support this and was changed. Any further changes will never go back to what it was. As someone that played AST for 4 years, this was a big problem with the job and made it impossible to finely tune as it is currently. Personally, I think if sleeve draw just filled your deck with all different seals that remain, then it would fix a lot of my issues with the current iteration, but otherwise I think it's solid.

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As in - Sleeve Draw just gives you the 3 different seals?
That's boring as hell my dude. It means you only need to do the seal job mechanic for 1/3 divinations.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Unpopular opinion, but all jobs don't have to be popular. People are free to swap jobs if they prefer something else. Perhaps the new healer will be more to their liking. People that love the job will play it regardless of what it becomes. People who only loved the play-style won't.
Nothing wrong with people wanting the feel back from the old system, but people really need to understand the big flaw with it that just can no longer be tolerated. The game is moving more towards standardization across all jobs/roles. RNG systems have to be limited in use.

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Then instead of standardising the cards, they could have standardised draw. Guaranteeing one of each card over 6 draws.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Unpopular opinion, but all jobs don't have to be popular. People are free to swap jobs if they prefer something else. Perhaps the new healer will be more to their liking. People that love the job will play it regardless of what it becomes. People who only loved the play-style won't.

Nothing wrong with people wanting the feel back from the old system, but people really need to understand the big flaw with it that just can no longer be tolerated. The game is moving more towards standardization across all jobs/roles. RNG systems have to be limited in use.

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If you think that's an opinion, then you're sadly mistaken. Take a look at multiple forum threads that express dissatisfaction towards this card system. There are 3x more WHM and SCH players than current AST player base.
You're wrong, many people love the job but have quit over the changes to it such as myself. People want their class to be fun, not catered to a specific category of the game.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-expansion-pls

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Unpopular opinion, but all jobs don't have to be popular. People are free to swap jobs if they prefer something else. Perhaps the new healer will be more to their liking. People that love the job will play it regardless of what it becomes. People who only loved the play-style won't.

Nothing wrong with people wanting the feel back from the old system, but people really need to understand the big flaw with it that just can no longer be tolerated. The game is moving more towards standardization across all jobs/roles. RNG systems have to be limited in use.

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This could have had more weight if they hadn't used "the people who like it now" excuse because it straight up opens them to criticism from the camp who liked it before the changes, if that camp is bigger vocally (usually is as your more likely to voice complaints than satisfaction) then when comes to 6.0 changes do they listen to the large dissatisfaction of ast voices or go with their supposed numbers. Do also bear in mind the only metric we have as players shows Ast have a massive drop off in ShB compared to SB and Ast again is the strongest rDps healer.

Also 6.0 can straight up completely change things again, HW added, SB gived and took(especially whm), ShB took more than it gave(and what it gave can be argued as reskin of old abilities or unnecessary for most content), 6.0 could just add or it can reshuffle or it could completely rework the healers from base. Anything could straight up happen, I brought in bow mage for that very thing it was a radical difference between ARR brd -> HW brd -> SB brd who is to say what will happen to ShB ast come 6.0 except the devs themselves.

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Originally Posted by Malmstrom

I think my favorite parts of threads like these are "AST NEEDS BETTER MP MANAGEMENT, WE NEED THE EWER TO GIVE MP AGAIN".

MP management should not be dictated by RNG.

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I actually think WHM/SCH should have their MP regeneration nerfed, rather than buffing AST. Does nobody else miss savage fights where you actually had to think twice about your MP? Or are we still on that "make everything as easy and dull as possible" bandwagon?