Astro Card System

I know this topic has probably been beaten to death here and I apologise beforehand but are the team aware how finicky the card system is? The chance is rare as heck but it's twice that I've drawn three of the same seal now in raid and just been forced to astrodyne, redraws and all.

Couldn't we see redraw give you a seal different to the one you have? Lord and Lady I can cope with, but when I see five of the same seal.... god help me. Feels a bit off the mark how one of the healers with the most planning ahead also has the most in terms of rng elements. Also a bit painful how divination's radius feels still small in conjunction to these new larger arenas and I keep missing some players during certain mechanics...skill issue I guess?

(Also, why's undraw still a thing???)

If you're on the boss and you miss someone with Divination thats on them :p Like never being in AOE heal range, let them die and learn.

tbh specifically speaking it was intemperance 2 and honestly when the boss decides to be a bit of an awkward lad with ins and outs some people are going to have to have a bad time catching my buffs either way T-T

RNG has always been a big part of the AST card system and it would be boring if it were guaranteed to be right every time. I think it was better before when you could put your bad RNG into Lord/Lady but at least you have an opportunity to Redraw once.

Undraw has always been pointless because you can just press Draw to overwrite. I don't know why it exists.

Tbh yeah that's the issue exactly. I enjoy the rng and it would be boring if it was really always going to be the same, hell, at that point it wouldn't be astrologian anymore, but it's why I kind of like the idea of if you had for example a sun seal, you could get either full moon or crescent (unofficial names LMAO) from a redraw rather than a choice of all three to at the very least get you two different seals in your astrodyne.... rather than being astronomically unlucky and only getting one effect with all redraws used.

Really sleeve draw was the saving grace of shadowbringers astro in terms of rng and it feels like we lack that kind of thing now, as well as lord and lady being ways to hold your three seals till you used it or just to try your luck with something different. The new system is more restrictive with your rng and what you can do to mitigate it - not that I have to have sleeve draw back and I'm honestly having fun with the new card system despite my terrible luck, just I thought a slightly more efficient redraw maybe would be cool and tweak astro into something nicer imo, wondered if other people would vaguely agree.

And for god's sake remove undraw.

The timing of some movement heavy mechanics this savage tier almost seems to be deliberately right around the 2 minute burst window. P2S, P3S and P4S all have cases of this that can be awkward to deal with as AST.

The ShB system would have worked perfectly fine, and saved us a button.
EW actually made the system worse.

Also Astrodyne is a pretty pointless skill to optimise, you use it for the speed and MP more than the minuscule damage buff. If it was to be used for the damage then they wouldn't have uncoupled it from Divination.

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Originally Posted by Iddy_Dies

I know this topic has probably been beaten to death

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And yet, here we are.

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Originally Posted by Iddy_Dies

The chance is rare as heck but it's twice that I've drawn three of the same seal now in raid

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I mean this with no sarcasm: feature, not a bug. AST is a form of proc-based class, and the enjoyment of proc-based classes comes from the variance—especially the highs but also the lows. Variance is a core aspect in a lot of gaming (dice rolling, crits, etc.) precisely because it has consistently been shown to be an effective dopamine hit.

Some classes, like AST or BRD, have more variance than others by design. For people who like that sort of variance, those classes exist. For people who like less variance, other classes don't feature rotational variance (but still have more modest forms of variance like crits and direct hits). If you don't get the dopamine hit from AST card variance, I think that the solution is to play one of the other healers rather than to reduce the variance in AST (which, to be clear, is pretty modest in terms of performance over a 10-minute fight).

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Originally Posted by Iddy_Dies

tbh specifically speaking it was intemperance 2 and honestly when the boss decides to be a bit of an awkward lad with ins and outs some people are going to have to have a bad time catching my buffs either way T-T

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for intemperance 2 it's usually best to hold buffs until after just because of the in/out happening at the normal raid buff timer. it doesn't lose a usage and it's a short delay.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Some classes, like AST or BRD, have more variance than others by design. For people who like that sort of variance, those classes exist. For people who like less variance, other classes don't feature rotational variance (but still have more modest forms of variance like crits and direct hits). If you don't get the dopamine hit from AST card variance, I think that the solution is to play one of the other healers rather than to reduce the variance in AST (which, to be clear, is pretty modest in terms of performance over a 10-minute fight).

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I mean I've made it pretty clear here that I enjoy playing astro, and I play other jobs too. I'm not here for someone to tell me to play another job, I'm full well aware it's not a bug, which is why I'm propping up a possible solution that doesn't zap rng out of existence and trash its core job identity. BRD doesn't have astrodyne, so I don't really see how it's comparable. Radiant finale collecting coda, if that's what you mean, and chance procs, but there's no doubt that you can get three coda for finale. It's in no way affected by rng as much as astrologian.

Someone mentioned how astrodyne was used more for the speed and mp buff than the damage buff - which is exactly why locking redraw into giving you one of the two other seals rather than giving you the current one you have drawn would be exactly what I wish for. 'Rotational variance' doesn't mean that a glorified lucid dreaming is really good haha, and it's not as if you won't be getting a dopamine hit if you get three different seals instead of two, there's nothing more satisfying than that.

Tbh it really comes down to the fact there is nothing to mitigate the amount of rng you get, which makes endwalker's cards dampen in comparison to shadowbringers for a lot of people. It won't stop me from playing my favourite job, but it feels like an easy fix for them. I hope to see some kind of change like it come 6.1.

rework astrodyne thanks SE :)

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Originally Posted by chirps

delete astrodyne thanks SE :)

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Give dps abilities instead, thanks.

This edition of the card system seems to load us up with buttons that are unnecessary just to satisfy some people who felt divination shouldn't be tied to the cards. I honestly don't understand it I never heard people complain about being unable to get all 3 seals for divination, and the tools we had in sleeve draw and 3 charges of redraw were enough to make up for the RNG. Maybe raiding changes things drastically but I know I never had any real trouble getting all I needed for divination, only a handful of occasions did I have to use it without all 3 seals ready.

I miss the old AST, IMHO the new system is pretty mindless and boring, and I can't give sick buffs, only the same ones(

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Maybe raiding changes things drastically but I know I never had any real trouble getting all I needed for divination, only a handful of occasions did I have to use it without all 3 seals ready.

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Yeah the old system wasn't really broken at all. You had rng but the chance of you not getting three different seals was highly unlikely with all your tools. It's like they thought now it's a personal buff that they can afford to put more rng into it, but the disparity between two seals and one seals in astrodyne is way too large.

The reason why I wanted Divination decoupled from seals is because 4/5/6% difference was stupid. I NEVER got a 4% damage buff on Divination and 5/6% is so miniscule what was the point in having three separate seals.

If they wanted to keep the seals with Divination there should've been more of a difference. What I wanted was for the Seals System to do something other than the crap with Astrodyne (for example, certain combination of seals would have different effects that you can use and then play) or for it to be removed because it was a dumb system to begin with and bring back some originality to the cards.

No, I don't want it back. And arguably it shouldn't be brought back.

SHB AST was better. Hands down. All they had to do was remove the nocturnal sect and it would've been fine. Divination could've been a permanent 10% damage buff and depending on how many different seals it does a 200/400/600 potency AOE and it would've felt amazing.

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Originally Posted by Iddy_Dies

Tbh it really comes down to the fact there is nothing to mitigate the amount of rng you get

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My view is that this sort of variance is part of the class; reducing it makes it more like the other healers and reduces the distinction between AST and the other healers. The variance is 'mitigated' by balancing the class around the median result over the course of an average boss fight (and by making the difference between one and three seals relatively modest with respect to, say, clearing an average savage boss).

For people who like lower variance, I think that the best solution is to have other healers with lower variance (which FF14 obviously does). That does mean that people who specifically like AST and low variance will have to choose which they like more, but it also means that players more generally have the option of high- and low-variance healers.

AST was enjoyable prior to 6.0 because it still had some amount of RNG protection in place, as does the other """high-variance""" jobs, DNC and BRD; no matter how bad their luck, it never inhibited the job's ability to play well because you have abilities in your toolkit that can make up for it.

New AST completely lacks this in any regard, that is the complaint here.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

My view is that this sort of variance is part of the class; reducing it makes it more like the other healers and reduces the distinction between AST and the other healers. The variance is 'mitigated' by balancing the class around the median result over the course of an average boss fight (and by making the difference between one and three seals relatively modest with respect to, say, clearing an average savage boss).

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It's really just a QoL wish of mine when the fact that three seals in a row is even possible - despite the fact it's the rare lmao it can still happen. I'm a casual player but I can't imagine how annoying this would be for people who care more. As said by many, astro in shadowbringers had variance but not to the point of this. The mp regen on the one seal effect on astrodyne is worth a lot and I can't take it for granted as a contributor to astro being such a good healer rn, but the frustration of only getting that when you see it fit in raidwide buffs is kind of annoying. Definitely don't reduce its variance to the point of being idk, a whm with buffs, but at least have something that can stop you from getting one seal only. It's more like a return to shadowbringers rng protection than becoming a 'low variance healer'.

Also bearing in mind these are nitpicks on a solid job. It's not perfect obviously. But there's simple changes that can make it feel better without obliterating rng variance as its niche.

Delete seals gimmick entirely.