AST: Suggestions on QoL

I just leveled AST to 90 this afternoon. I saved it as my last Healer to 90. Why? Too many buttons and I am on PS5 Controller.

I noticed 2 overarching problems I see brought up often with AST.
1. Too many buttons. As stated earlier.
2. RNG Seals when you can't get all 3.

Note I am not discussing its damage output.

I posted everything below in a reply to another thread and I wanted to post it in its own as well. I also added a few things here and there.
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My suggestions:

Have Draw able the user to draw 3 cards with their own buttons. One slot for each Seal. The only choice needed is if it's a Melee or Ranged card.

Once all three cards are used, Draw turns into Divination or a seperate Divination becomes available to activate.

(This assumes Play and Redraw are removed, leaving this as a +1 to buttons added for AST)

Some people may notice this sounds like Ninja Mudras, and yes that's how I thought about it. But it resolves three seals

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Then there comes the problem of being limited to Three Cards per Draw, thus three cards per 120s window for Divination.

To absolve this, have Astrodyne still as an ability to use three seals when Divination is on CD. And have Draw on 40 seconds CD? 60s? Not sure on this.
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The only challenge provided for the class in this case is playing cards on proper roles, the only RNG involved is the DPS distribution that queues into a roulette with you.

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Now then you have to resolve Button Bloat.

Couple Simple Suggestions:
1. Minor Arcana > Crown Play 1 button
2. Change Celestial Intersection to be 8% Mitigation instead of Shield. And it upgrades into Exaltation 10% plus delayed heal. AST doesn't need to match WHM with Aquaviel and Benison.

Just a couple abilities I personally don't find useful:
1. Synastry (I literally have used this 4 times since I started in Stormblood)

2. Horoscope
Perhaps let it be a lower level weaker/simpler Macrocosmos that becomes Macrocosmos?
-or-
Change it altogether and make it an evolved and stronger Divination at lv90 (higher than 6% party buff. Perhaps 8% or 10%)

[I think with everything I suggest, that's 3 buttons less?]

I'd rather:

- Undraw removed. It has no reason to exist.
- Draw + Play be one button; no other changes
- MA + Crown Play one button; no other changes
- Benefic 1 trait upgrade to Benefic 2

Synastry I like as an ability, but it needs more than just Benefic to interact with it. We have several healing abilities and spells that can. Why not allow it?

To fix my gripe with the redraw issue just make it so Clarifying Draw cannot draw the seal you just drew.

Horoscope and Macrocosmos don't need to be merged. (And if you're going to merge Macrocosmos into anything it'd be Earthly Star, please no)

Celestial Intersection being a weaker Exalt would be a personal change I want just to make AST more into a time healing mage since it already has the tools there but it isn't a necessary one.

Dyne is such a waste of a skill. The 3 seal cast is so underwhelming, there's literally no point in trying to fish for it and neuter your buff upkeep in the process, making Dyne a glorified lucid in a class that already had very little mp issues.

Why is undraw still in our skill book? If the devs are hellbent on keeping it for no discernible reason, at least make it do something, let it reduce the CD on draw or make so we can throw the card as an oGCD damage skill or make it work as a luck protection buff that guarantees us a different card/seal from the one we got before.

I also play on PS5 and I'm having the same issue. Far too many buttons for controller players. Don't even want to think about what will happen next time they increase our levels.

If it were up to me, I’d scrap Astrodyne and the seals all together. They exist only to keep 4/6 of the cards relevant. If the developers want everything to be crappier Balance, just reduce it to 2 cards. One melee. One ranged. Stop tacking on clunky mechanics.

I don’t want to see the cards go, but I don’t want this shadow of a card system. We won’t ever get the old system back, so at this point, just rip off the bandage and gut most of them. Or just leave Balance and make it a flat percentage. It’s only a matter of time before that happens, anyways, I think.

/AST boomer rant over



As for the rest—

Draw/Play should be one button.
Same with MA/Crown Play.
Add a timer to the guards to track the cooldowns for Draw and MA.

Remove Undraw. It’s always been useless.

Horoscope should remain as is. It’s not meant to be Macrokosmos - the two abilities function differently and have different types of applications. It also isn’t meant to function as a damage buff. We already have Divination, and I don’t think it needs any sort of upgrade. AST rDPS is already incredibly strong when played correctly.

Synastry could stand to have more of the toolkit interact with it. Perhaps oGCDs can also trigger its effects; since they’re your go-to before GCD heals. However, I personally wouldn’t be sad to see it go.

CI and Exaltation should stay separate. They’re two separate abilities that function differently from one another. Both are incredibly strong and there’s zero reason to consolidate them just so WHM can have “variety”. (CI and Exaltation are already better than both of WHM’s “equivalents” due to the ability for CI to crit—and both also heal the target; Benison and Aquaveil do not heal—only shield/mitigate.)



I also play on controller - just some mild consolidations with the card mechanics will work fine for button space. I don’t think every other tool in AST’s arsenal needs to be consolidated. They could also just remove the useless ones like Undraw — and just delete Astrodyne. I haven’t seen any AST that actually enjoys the job mechanic.

while i wont touch this pale imation of astro with a 10ft pole, I can say there's room to improve

remove undraw, nobody ever used it

upgrade benefic 1 to benefic 2. Again nobody ever used it unless benefic 2 was unavailable

as i said back in shb and now in ew. scrap play and crown play, make the draw buttons play the damn cards. Nobody ran out of time choosing how to play them anyway or if they did, then its certainly not job design thats the problem when a player cant select someone to press a button within 30s


At the very least macroing crown play, deleting undraw and benefic 1 off the hotbar will free up 3 slots.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

If it were up to me...

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Completely agree with all of this.

I see Undraw mentioned a lot, but it's a minor issue for me because it's so bad it doesn't even go on a hotbar in the first place, so it can't cause bloat. The whole card system makes no sense though. 4 of the cards are clones so Seals exist to try to force them to be relevant. But Seals are worthless now that Divination is separate, so Astrodyne is tacked on to try to force it to be relevant. But the tiny self-buffs are worthless, so they pulled some of the 8% mana Play used to give and tacked it onto Astrodyne to force it to be relevant. But the main effect is a one Seal effect, so now Seals are still worthless so Redraw exists to try and give the illusion they're relevant (but in reality Redraw usage has less than 1% effect on your dps). Seals are still worthless though. Oh and wait, Astrodyne is just played on cooldown so there's no need to burn excess Seals so MA is useless, so they tacked on a weird 2 button rng version to try and force it to be relevant.

Basically the whole system is a bunch of useless effects all strung together with sellotape and chewing gum to try and make a functioning class core.

Undraw
An ability so bad it’s not even talked about…

That’s a huge issue. Fix undraw. Make it useful. It doesn’t have to be forgotten about. I can think of a number of things undraw could do.

I like the rng of the cards. Keep it. It makes the class more interesting and I like the tension.

Merging draw and play buttons? I’m not against it but really? All the things we could be pushing to have fixed and combining buttons is the big thing?

I’d they are combining buttons just go back to shdbbcard system while keeping astroydne.

But seriously… why have they gutted these jobs into husks that are not as fun as they were in previous expansions? Sure some changes have been good but overall if I had a choice between what we have now and what we had before. I’d rather have the 3.0 or 4.0 Astro.

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Originally Posted by glamazon

Merging draw and play buttons? I’m not against it but really? All the things we could be pushing to have fixed and combining buttons is the big thing?

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Oh I have PLENTY of issues with AST that I'd love to see changed!:

Earthly Star to either go back to its original radius or have its radius reduced. I may be the only one who thinks this, but the increased yalms actually make the ability WORSE to drop for me. Also I liked being rewarded for placing it down in the correct spot.

Astrodyne to be either useful in its buffs or removed along with the seals system. It isn't the RNG I have an issue with, but mana being the starting buff to me feels it should be on the ability when you press it and not a reward for it being a seal (make that something else) and haste... WHAT HASTE? Much like 4/5/6% was barely felt I barely feel it!

I want old cards back with changes. Aside from the seals system (which currently has no reason to exist other than Astrodyne) there is 0 reason for us to have 6 cards when two would suffice other than to no longer break the lore of AST. Functionally we have 2 repeats each of the same buff.

Draw/Play + MA/Crown Play should be 1 button because of button bloat and they make the class clunky for no reason. Its complained about the most because its the most simplest of changes and doesn't require a major rework (which healers still need but...)

Synastry should interact more with our kit. Lightspeed as well. Hells I'll even argue NEUTRAL SECT should bring back more of our Noct abilities instead of making just our GCD regens have a shield.

Any purpose Undraw could have had, in my honest opinion, was scrapped when they made Draw and Sleeve Draw in 5.0 give us back 800mp. If you can give the ability something else, more power to you, but AST has enough buttons as is, it can be straight up removed.

Obligatory Benefic 1 to 2 trait upgrade.

Clarifying Draw while under 6.0's umbrella should not redraw into the same seal you just drew.

I'm still on the boat waiting to sail that AST becomes a full regen healer and scraps shields and burst healing (cause AST being a stance dancer between shields and regens is gone, forever probably). But I'm also on that boat for Puppetmaster to join the class roster so... /shrug

It makes me sad that there are so many people here who want them to completely gut cards... Honestly, the card system is what drew (pun) me to the class in the first place, even though I joined after they had already been watered down.

I would honestly prefer if they went back to the old card system and made it so they all weren't just flat damage buffs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

It makes me sad that there are so many people here who want them to completely gut cards... Honestly, the card system is what drew (pun) me to the class in the first place, even though I joined after they had already been watered down.

I would honestly prefer if they went back to the old card system and made it so they all weren't just flat damage buffs.

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Me too
Why did they water down all the healers in 5.0

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

It makes me sad that there are so many people here who want them to completely gut cards... Honestly, the card system is what drew (pun) me to the class in the first place, even though I joined after they had already been watered down.

I would honestly prefer if they went back to the old card system and made it so they all weren't just flat damage buffs.

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Oh I certainly want the old cards back. I've been asking for them since I heard they got changed for Shb before I even started playing however long ago. The devs have flat out said they weren't coming back when we asked.

The problem with the Old card system is that it was too... random. Granting, the fishing we have in place already is, but it also has safety nets like "everything is The Balance, some are just stronger on a given role", so you generally always know what you're getting.

But what I mean is, the use cases of the cards were extremely different.

Back then, three of the cards were relevant: The Balance, the Bole, and sometimes the Ewer. The others were just fodder for Royal Road or Minor Arcana.
But, Balance is a card you would either want to either save until you could Royal Road it into a raid buff, or just use immediately. Bole and Ewer you would want to hold for specific moments. It's rather like the Minor Arcana system we have now (where we dump Lord immediately but Lady forces us to hold her and is rarely useful besides)... if you also had a 50% chance to just draw jack all.
So you had RNG determining not only your relationship to your cards, but your overall effectiveness and behavior within the raid, to a much more significant degree than just "I didn't 3 seal my Astrodyne".
Oh, and you had like twice as many actions devoted just to card control.

Even if they were going to bring back something like the old card system, they would need to remove certain effects (not least because old Spire would have no effect today), and probably rework the remainder for parity -- which is exceptionally hard since every job has different values on Critical Hit and Direct Hit and Determination and Sp/Sk Speed, and even in an ideal world where there's not one lording over the others to create another Balance card, that would mean the AST having to memorize what everyone wants.

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm disappointed with the current card system. Shadowbringers made the cards themselves boring and Endwalker made its rewards esoteric.
I'm just cognizant of the fact that while it's not as fun, it is a general improvement that makes our raid output less dependent overall on RNG.

Apologies for the double-post, but on the topic of QoL, I also wanted to drop this here from another thread:

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

I feel like AST's top priority problem is just the sheer volume of buttons it has, many of which don't feel impactful to use because they're just extra knobs for controlling the randomness of its card system... which just gets progressively busier each expansion.

So, a couple thoughts:

• Rework the Astrodyne effects. Each seal should have one specific effect attached to it (for instance, Haste on Celestial seals, Refresh on Lunar seals, Potency Up on Solar seals).
  For each additional copy of a single seal that you stack, the potency of that one effect given by Astrodyne grows, but with a diminishing return (so 3 of the same seal is only, say, 1.75x as effective rather than 3x). If you have all 3 unique seals, you get the spread of all 3 effects as now; if you have duplicate seals, you get a slightly stronger version of each effect you doubled- or tripled-down on to compensate.
  While still retaining the element of randomness and encouraging a spread for best effect, this should provide consolation so that bad RNG strings are no longer a punishment for the player.

• Rework Minor Arcana. Go back to the old system where it transmuted your active Major Arcana into a Crowns card, but have it provide a consistent effect regardless of what card you transmute, or at least have a trait where it does. Something where you don't want to necessarily game Minor Arcana over using Draw effectively, but can use it to safely dump a card you don't want without having to think further on it.
  For instance, when you activate Minor Arcana, the cooldown of Draw is reduced by a few seconds, in addition to changing the card and gaining its own effects.
  • Rework Lady of Crowns specifically, or remove it.
    Lord of Crowns is a semi-effective dump card since cards are always being drawn in a combat situation to enhance ongoing damage; if you get Lord during a pull, you dump it immediately without a second thought because oGCD damage is always valuable, even coming from the hands of an Astrologian. The current Lady of Crowns is, instead, ideally held for a scenario where healing is valuable... but its healing potency is so minor and niche so that it won't turn the tide even if you can use it without overhealing, and even in a scenario where all healing is "necessary", it's unreliable to obtain in the first place.
    Lady of Crowns' effect should instead be of equal value to Lord's -- which in this case is to say, consistent even if functionally inconsequential.
    If this cannot be done without making it the same effect as Lord or creating something players would try to game... then simply scrap Lady. Minor Arcana was made to mitigate the RNG of a 6 Major Arcana system; retaining two outcomes within that mitigation element is already extremely counterproductive. (And then Minor Arcana suddenly has a consistent effect.)
    And heck, if Minor Arcana only had one outcome, you could even save an oGCD and just have Minor Arcana activate its effects directly instead of using Play again.
  • Whether Lord of Crowns retains the current/original "direct damage" iteration or returns to Shadowbringers' "consolation buff" iteration is... largely irrelevant here and a matter of design preference. I have no objection to the current one staying as-is; personally, I even think having an alternative option that doesn't just tread the same ground as the Major Arcana is an idea with its own potential, even for niche scenarios.
    I will say if it does go back to the ShB iteration however, absolutely scrap Lady. Just have one card that gives a flat damage buff regardless of what job you use it on, slightly weaker than if you'd used a specialized Major Arcana but stronger than if you'd used one on the wrong role (so, 4-5%). If you don't have a ranged DPS in your party, choose whether to Minor Arcana away your ranged cards for a better buff on melee.

• Remove Crown Play and Undraw... and possibly Redraw. With the changes to both Astrodyne and Minor Arcana above, you wouldn't necessarily need Redraw.
  Not to mention repeatedly Redrawing just never feels good -- it wastes multiple oGCDs and feels like "RNG just screwed me over... twice." At least when you were discarding via Minor Arcana, you had a fallback.

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