AST Adjustments 6.2

According to the patch reading notes for 6.1. Yoshi P said that Astro will be receiving major adjustments come patch 6.2. I am wondering what could they be doing other than maybe combining draw and play and minor arcana and arcana play. Maybe removing undraw.

But he said major adjustments. So wondering what else could the devs have up their sleeve for Astro.

What do you guys think?

The complete removal of Minor Arcana/Crown Play. If SE is willing to chop off something like Kaiten that has a fairly large impact on SAM for the sake of "button bloat", I fail to see why Minor Arcana would be safe. They haven't been able to decide WTF to do with the skill so I can see it being removed entirely. I can also see them removing the Seal mechanic and just making Astrodyne a 90s CD that has all 3 of its effects since the DPS gain from it is horribly low anyways and with the removal of Lord of Crowns, they can make adjustments as needed to buff up AST's damage a little more consistently without the whole song and dance of trying to align 2 Lord of Crowns in raid windows.

It's not ideal by any means but it's just something that I see happening.

I want them to consolidate Draw/Play and Minor Arcana/Crown Play into one button each. Then add Sleeve Draw back in to get one guaranteed, fully charged Astrodyne every two minutes.
I also want Benefic I to naturally upgrade into Benefic II but I made another thread on that topic.

Knowing their track record, delete another core button in all likelihood

I doubt it will be a repeat of the 6.1 patch which threw the whm some crumbs at last, if they want make a lot of ex ast players happy and return to the role, it is getting their cards returned

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Knowing their track record, delete another core button in all likelihood

I doubt it will be a repeat of the 6.1 patch which threw the whm some crumbs at last, if they want make a lot of ex ast players happy and return to the role, it is getting their cards returned

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I can only pray they see the resounding cries of happiness from ASTs in PvP about some card variety and give some of that back to us in PvE.

Pipe dream.

I want Astrodyne to be an instant GCD attack where we throw a flurry of cards at the target. AST has way too many ogcds to weave during 2 minute windows which may or may not be coinciding with a mechanic that also needs ogcd heals.

All good suggestions. It’s just whenever SE says “Major Adjustments” it usually means they are most likely changing the job almost completely like they did with summoner. If it was just consolidating buttons I think Yoshi P would of most likely of just said that. I have a worry that whatever they are doing it’s going to completely change Ast from what we know now.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

All good suggestions. It’s just whenever SE says “Major Adjustments” it usually means they are most likely changing the job almost completely like they did with summoner. If it was just consolidating buttons I think Yoshi P would of most likely of just said that. I have a worry that whatever they are doing it’s going to completely change Ast from what we know now.

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I would like to be hopeful but history doesn't indicate that they will make meaningful or positive changes to the job. Since the card system seems to be giving them so much trouble they may opt to remove it all together and just increase AST attack potencies to compensate, then add in even more oGCD heals because sure why not. I don't know why AST is the one getting major adjustments though. There are complaints sure, but of the healers AST isn't the one that has the most complaints. WHM seems to be the one that needs some kind of major adjustment.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I would like to be hopeful but history doesn't indicate that they will make meaningful or positive changes to the job. Since the card system seems to be giving them so much trouble they may opt to remove it all together and just increase AST attack potencies to compensate, then add in even more oGCD heals because sure why not. I don't know why AST is the one getting major adjustments though. There are complaints sure, but of the healers AST isn't the one that has the most complaints. WHM seems to be the one that needs some kind of major adjustment.

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What they might do, and I don't really know how accurate this realistically is as it's just a guess, is they might do something where the cards are separate CDs, and Draw becomes like Aetherflow where you draw one card and then manually choose The Balance, The Bole, etc. That sounds vaguely in line with how they've approached other jobs.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I would like to be hopeful but history doesn't indicate that they will make meaningful or positive changes to the job. Since the card system seems to be giving them so much trouble they may opt to remove it all together and just increase AST attack potencies to compensate, then add in even more oGCD heals because sure why not. I don't know why AST is the one getting major adjustments though. There are complaints sure, but of the healers AST isn't the one that has the most complaints. WHM seems to be the one that needs some kind of major adjustment.

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I can tell you why, because despite AST having one of the strongest healing kits out of all of them not many people are playing it, it is in fact the least played healer in savage, dungeons and extreme trials according to FFlogs (outside of P3S since Macrocosmos turns an actual difficult healcheck into a cakewalk).

WHM on the other hand was/is still one of the most played healers, even when it couldn't do anything as good as the other 3.


This has been ASTs fate for several expansions now, getting major reworks every time because it just isn't popular enough for SE's liking.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I would like to be hopeful but history doesn't indicate that they will make meaningful or positive changes to the job. Since the card system seems to be giving them so much trouble they may opt to remove it all together and just increase AST attack potencies to compensate, then add in even more oGCD heals because sure why not. I don't know why AST is the one getting major adjustments though. There are complaints sure, but of the healers AST isn't the one that has the most complaints. WHM seems to be the one that needs some kind of major adjustment.

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If they remove cards from AST they may as well remove the job as a whole and rebrand it as Time Mage the healer.

AST's decline in popularity stems from SE's unwillingness to revert their homogenization of AST's cards. It has been very clear at least to me when I started in Shadowbringers AST mains do not give a single wit to how powerful we are. We just want fun (like the rest of the healers admittedly) and our damn cards back.

The PvP team made it work there. It's clear the PvE team can make it work here.

Maybe they are afraid to give AST that much power back from their cards. Maybe they are afraid of AST becoming a guaranteed spot for hardcore content again. They did say they don’t want any jobs like that. Maybe that’s why they gutted it so much.

But you guys are also right. AST is not getting enough love at all and it’s so sad. I miss old ast so much.

I think this highlights the downside to using popularity as your primary metric for balancing decisions. I see Square falling into this trap as often as they avoid it. They're pretty good at sprinkling universal rewards around all content to encourage playing for fun over reward grinding, but they're at the same time real quick to declare things good or bad based on participation. You're never going to bust the WHM supremacy with some ultra clever reworked design, nor I would argue should they try. WHM isn't primarily popular because it's GOOD. And if you dethrone its popularity through design I'd suspect it'd be more a comment on just how sewage-like WHM's design is for that theoretical patch. Square doesn't strike me as understanding that, in a landscape where all the jobs are flowing and fun and flavorful and intuitively designed to roughly equal satisfaction, WHM will be the breakaway hit among the playerbase. And that isn't a bad thing.

Balancing based on popularity only keeps WHM designed like doodoo for some misguided aim at balancing our job popularity instead of just making them all fricken' FUN FFS.

For me, I would like to see:
-Draw and Play be the same button.
-Astrodyne and Divination combined. Divination would still be cost free seal-wise but if you do have seals, they will be used up to grant you the Astrodyne effects. With this Astrodyne will be in your Divinaiton window (as appose to right now, where you'd theoretically get Astrodyne 30 seconds before Divination) and would give you more time to collect different seals.
-Minor Arcana reverted back to its ShB version. This will allow you to use up cards with seals you don't need and is far more useful then a 50/50 damage-or-heal effect.
-Sleeve Draw returned but with a 120 second cooldown to align with Divination. This would help with getting Seals for Astrodyne.
-Lightspeed have its cooldown reduced to 60 seconds, it grant 3 stacks instead of being timed, and for it to have 2 charges. I think this will make it more user-friendly and it would fit into the Divination burst window.

Remove Minor Arcana/Crown Play. I don't mind the idea of AST having a "coin flip" ability, but the flavor and effect of this is terrible for how little it does. The idea that we can draw *fewer* minor arcana cards than major arcana cards has always been incredibly dumb.

I also suspect that based on the PvP card abilities, that over the years they have had more time to think through the possibility space of card abilities. So there is a small chance they might revamp cards.

Ideally, remove seals as well. Or remove Monk's Solar/Lunar Nadi. It mildly bothers me that the devs reuse motifs when they generally don't need to.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

If they remove cards from AST they may as well remove the job as a whole and rebrand it as Time Mage the healer.

AST's decline in popularity stems from SE's unwillingness to revert their homogenization of AST's cards. It has been very clear at least to me when I started in Shadowbringers AST mains do not give a single wit to how powerful we are. We just want fun (like the rest of the healers admittedly) and our damn cards back.

The PvP team made it work there. It's clear the PvE team can make it work here.

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Legit, after Shadowbringers and 6.0 I settled back nicely into AST. It was so nice to be able to flick cards around for fun and just occupy my time. People sometimes yelled at me for not healing right but like. Only time they ever died was when people yelled at me for not healing right. :v

I took a peek at ast pvp cards and laugh as I see the balance and ewer is old stormblood effects minus spire which is still good that it increase limit gauge. It seem under the quiet SE admits that storm blood cards was the best even if some was nitche so jist give us back for pve already!! lol

I'm guessing it won't be major/minor arcana as theres nothing busy about that.

The only thing busy about AST is weaving the targetting of a party member and playing on them.

We literally do that as often as casting combust. If theres anything to be considered "busy" about AST what else could it possibly mean?

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Originally Posted by DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise

I'm guessing it won't be major/minor arcana as theres nothing busy about that.

The only thing busy about AST is weaving the targetting of a party member and playing on them.

We literally do that as often as casting combust. If theres anything to be considered "busy" about AST what else could it possibly mean?

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the burst windows? theyre like 6 double weaves in a row and they hog up all the uses of lightspeed. i really disliked the trick attack change because before i could give an extra card at the 1 minute mark to someone to make the reopener a bit easier on myself without it being too big of a dps loss, but now im pretty much obligated to save all 3 cards for the 2 min burst. i really dislike draw having charges because of this side-effect.

and lightspeed could use a cd reduction + charges since divination hoards up all the uses anyways

Yeah but the targetting too, if you factor that in, can be very busy.
Personally I have macro keys that auto-target last enemy before casting dot/nuke (not ingame macros), and have 8 play macros that cast on party slots without targetting them.
IF someone were to play ast without any assistance, it can be very very busy when factoring in manual targetting, just looking at actions user has to perform.

That’s what I mean by draw/play being what is truly busy

Nuke
Draw
Look at card
Nuke
Target correct dps
Play
Target last enemy
Nuke

Do the card buffs (6% on a single player...assuming optimal play) even make up for the lack of personal DPS?

AST had highest rdps of the healers in 5.x iirc

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Originally Posted by DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise

AST had highest rdps of the healers in 5.x iirc

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But now they are the lowest:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44#class=Healers

Yeah that def needs fixing, sch and ast should be ahead in rdps, behind in personal
Do you think that is possibly due to act development catching up with log/ability changes at the beginning of a new expansion?

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Originally Posted by DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise

Yeah but the targetting too, if you factor that in, can be very busy.
Personally I have macro keys that auto-target last enemy before casting dot/nuke (not ingame macros), and have 8 play macros that cast on party slots without targetting them.
IF someone were to play ast without any assistance, it can be very very busy when factoring in manual targetting, just looking at actions user has to perform.

That’s what I mean by draw/play being what is truly busy

Nuke
Draw
Look at card
Nuke
Target correct dps
Play
Target last enemy
Nuke

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i understand what youre saying because i used to refuse to macro cards. however in shb targeting people used to be manageable. its kind of telling i caved in and made card macros in endwalker because of how busy burst windows had become with draw charges, astrodyne and minor arcana added

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Originally Posted by D6Damager

But now they are the lowest:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44#class=Healers

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thats misleading. if you check healer combined damage (the metric that actually matters), you see ast being in 2 spots of the top 3 healer comps at 95th percentile and above, along with ast+sch at the top for the #1 parses.

ast is better in coordiated groups and worse in pugs where whm/sage shine more. its a fine balance.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

i understand what youre saying because i used to refuse to macro cards. however in shb targeting people used to be manageable. its kind of telling i caved in and made card macros in endwalker because of how busy burst windows had become with draw charges, astrodyne and minor arcana added

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Dude I have to. I used to do all of that shit only to play the card on myself then targetting the party member and wasting all that time.

But if I’m honest, now I don’t even look at the cards anymore I just use act and play it on the highest dps no matter what it is.
Even in burst window I just save the extra card for the highest dps. I’ve embraced the suboptimal life~
What even does redraw do? ;P

Hey Guys,

AST should get changes with patch 6.2 So here is my idea. However, I am of the opinion that we have to find a compromise between utility cards and DPS push cards. So that the players don't turn their backs on the AST!
I know that my suggested solution may not be the best. However, I hope to find a way to enable AST playing styles.

Let's start:

My Idea is that pure

Idea for the Tooltipp:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...98/unknown.png

Bufficon:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...68/unknown.png

My idea of the pure DPS push is based on enabling this ALWAYS when play is used. Here, the AST should serve as a pivot point. This has the advantage regardless of melee / ranged cards (what is if you have no of this jobs like in DF), sleeve draw and the missing card for the pull. These are all problems that are now occurring in SHB.

The balance team can think about the balance of the XX% and the range of the AoE around the AST. (Maybe like the BRD with 30y?)
I think in terms of gaze to Bard its a not a bad idea to make the push to a Trait for Play. That makes the AST playstil in the early better (in my eyes) and give the push that the people want for everyone.
If Divination is a trait now delet the Lvl 50 skill that can compair in the XX% push. And if every card is in a 30s window it lines up in all buff windos well!

Now we come to the Crard that give the utility a part of the Comunity misses atm:

The Cardrules

- Draw is allowed to use out of Combat. BUT "Play" is not use anymore out of Combat. (No way to fish the Best Card [in your eyes])
- "Play" activates divination (as a trait)

The Balance

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...84/unknown.png

The balance is a card that has increased the damage in SB or HW. This should continue and this is where I find the idea of integrating Ninja’s 80s talent. This is easier to balance than to give a broad percentage gain. So the further you call the strength of the card as too strong. Here you can balance by maintaining the stacks and the stack power. And it might ruin the thought that balance is the only right thing in the deck of cards.

The Arrow

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...84/unknown.png

The strengthening of certain jobs with this card depends on the situation. However, there are jobs that shine through these cards and it is was the effect of the card from SB. Maybe a BLM or SAM will be happy if this card comes back like this.

The Spear

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...14/unknown.png

After the Spear became a Crit-Card, its popularity increased. I think that the card can also show its effect in this way. The 5% are just a placeholder and a task for the balance team. Taget means here the AST himself!

The Bole

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...66/unknown.png

In view of the fact that the AST is losing its power to use shields in a picky way. Can he use The Bole to reduce the damage Tank or himself instead. Also the same effect like in SB and HW. This is a good idea for dungeons and okay for raids because the DPS push is still there because the trait of Divination and the Healing increase from 5% - 10% (Balance Placeholder -> Task for the Balanaceteam). True to the motto, if the tank can withstand more damage and heal, the AST can do more damage.

The Ewer

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...59/unknown.png

The Ewer the old acquaintance of the mana addict healer. This card needs its old effect again.

The Spire

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...20/unknown.png

It's a shame that there is no longer a TP. No ... OMG that was a joke. The Spire needs a new effect and I think improving Direct Crit is one.

Minor Arcana

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...42/unknown.png

Minor Arcana should get his ability back before SHB. Only that no RNG should come in here. So the goal of Minor Arcana decides what happens either healing or DMG!

Note to the dev side if they read it. The minor arcana skill changes when you have a card to the icon of Lady of Crowns when aiming at a friendly target and to the Lord of Crowns when aiming at an opponent.

Spread for the SHB Divination

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...29/unknown.png

Spread strikes back. At the place of divination, Spread comes back. This skill should be able to delay divination or the card of the AST. Here the AST should decide when to play it. Important Spread also triggers divination as a trait.

Sleeve Draw

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...06/unknown.png

Sleeve Draw should again feel like a hand full of cards. I know it can be stressful to play as a controller. To play this, however, I think this is okay without the compulsion to have certain seals because you have the freedom to play the card consciously.

Conclusion

I think the outsourcing of the percentage gain through divination as an AoE around the AST removes the old RNG (which was rightly criticized in SB). You always have this push now as it is now in EW.
The cards have a utility factor which they had in SB and which many players liked to use. There may still be a best card, but this can be fixed quickly. The DMG push from the card itself is supposed to be a small bonus and make it easier to use the cards. We don't have that with pure melee and ranged cards!

I think that a middle ground could be struck here between DPS cards and utility. This is not perfect that should be clear to everyone. But numbers are a matter of balance and the idea should aim to keep a large number of AST players in Endwalker.

greetings

Marius in good health from the server Odin

Unless they give me my damn cards back I don't care what they do.

I think the pvp cards are a small preview to what the major AST adjustments coming in 6.2. I think all cards will become aoe. They know allot of people left AST behind when they changed the cards. It’s the lowest played healer now.

Hopefully after 2 expansions of this current version we will finally see AST come back to where it was in HW and SB. I also hope they give us back some time related skills. I miss time dilation and old celestial opposition.

I really want people to stop bringing back the idea of attack speed buffs on the cards. If you give me attack speed while I'm Dancer, I will Standard Step on your unmentionables.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really want people to stop bringing back the idea of attack speed buffs on the cards. If you give me attack speed while I'm Dancer, I will Standard Step on your unmentionables.

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I would welcome it actually as someone playing dancer. I don't know why they fiddled with the step buttons but they feel slow now, not to mention it would be nice to have during a tech step so the window feels busier again rather than the stealth nerf we got in EW

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

I would welcome it actually as someone playing dancer. I don't know why they fiddled with the step buttons but they feel slow now, not to mention it would be nice to have during a tech step so the window feels busier again rather than the stealth nerf we got in EW

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Echoing to ty_taurus, it definitely feels satisfying when you can successfully pull off steps > 12 GCD > stps > 12 GCD. Atk speed buff, unless it's fast enough to fit in another full GCD length of time, it will 100% force you to wait a few split second so you won't drift that step. I think this is why atk speed buff feels so bad on DNCs.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Echoing to ty_taurus, it definitely feels satisfying when you can successfully pull off steps > 12 GCD > stps > 12 GCD. Atk speed buff, unless it's fast enough to fit in another full GCD length of time, it will 100% force you to wait a few split second so you won't drift that step. I think this is why atk speed buff feels so bad on DNCs.

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Hmm, I generally got my satisfaction out of getting all my procs and juggling the sabre dances that appeared in said tech step burst. Getting more in the window rather thant he large downtime between it.

I'm not really a builder/spender player but dancers feels good to me to squeeze in all the bursts. Can't say I've had a problem with drifting unless I derped and used a proc instead of my standard step when it came off the cd

Each to their own. I just want my 4 procs from flourish again

I remember when SE cared more about fun. Nowadays it's x% DPS increase. PvP was a pleasant surprise but I'm not holding my breath.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Can't say I've had a problem with drifting unless I derped and used a proc instead of my standard step when it came off the cd

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You will drift or clip with SkS because your GCD's don't divide evenly into the 30 sec cooldown of Standard Step (at 0 SkS, they divide perfectly into 12 GCD's). This isn't actually as much of an issue due to the 6.08 DNC buffs but it can still feel bad and misalign your rotation.

While you might like an attack speed buff for a "feel good" in casual content, an experienced DNC would hate it. SkS and SpS is usually the sort of stat that jobs either avoid like the plague or stack to very specific amounts for a specific rotation. While it would be nice to be able to just hit things faster and not worry, mathematically it can turn out to be a loss due to how the game is designed.

No class should be able to apply an unplanned buff that can disrupt other players rotation. It's just not a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

You will drift or clip with SkS because your GCD's don't divide evenly into the 30 sec cooldown of Standard Step (at 0 SkS, they divide perfectly into 12 GCD's). This isn't actually as much of an issue due to the 6.08 DNC buffs but it can still feel bad and misalign your rotation.

While you might like an attack speed buff for a "feel good" in casual content, an experienced DNC would hate it. SkS and SpS is usually the sort of stat that jobs either avoid like the plague or stack to very specific amounts for a specific rotation. While it would be nice to be able to just hit things faster and not worry, mathematically it can turn out to be a loss due to how the game is designed.

No class should be able to apply an unplanned buff that can disrupt other players rotation. It's just not a good idea.

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Not just in casual content, I've took dancer into DRS and both 5.0 and 6.0 savages, and its one of two jobs I've progged ultimate in, so I'm hardly a casual dancer player. (I might not have as many parses btw because I do my hardcore content on ps4)

Then again, I'm not as zealous an optimiser nor super high skilled as some people. It was that 6.08 changes that made me think that the sks buff would be a good thing, because its not permanent having a card buff on, and it feels slower as a result of said changes.

I will concede that the sks buff may be better for me as someone with high ping so lag doesn't affect me as much compared to an equally experienced dnc player closer to the servers.



An alternative to the arrow i would like to suggest though to return to flavour if we cant agree on old arrow: give it paladin's double autos or instant casting speed. Still a speed buff but a more approachable one
Old arrow would also be good in the current situation for healers tbh. squeeze out more glare/broil/malefic/dosis. but thats just me being bitter again

I think the question right now is wether we're gonna see a pvp astro moved to pve. Maybe we'll have cards being aoe and their cd bumped so we don't use them as often. At the very least they will make draw/play the same button. Probably will remove crown play, ease the rng on getting seals or rework the whole system entirely. I don't see them touching astrodyne at all, but we might see some changes to it as well.
All I can really hope for is them adressing button bloat WITHOUT making the job easier, but judging by the recent changes to some classes new astro is going to be awful and I'm ready to switch for 6.2 to something else.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

I think the pvp cards are a small preview to what the major AST adjustments coming in 6.2. I think all cards will become aoe. They know allot of people left AST behind when they changed the cards. It’s the lowest played healer now.

Hopefully after 2 expansions of this current version we will finally see AST come back to where it was in HW and SB. I also hope they give us back some time related skills. I miss time dilation and old celestial opposition.

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Yes I 100% agree storm blood ast back!!!!! pvp is proving they know they messed up big only reason I kept with ast in shadow bringers was cause how they buffed up noct stance good since I was more a noct lover over dirunal. Now as ew come I ran so fast to sge and then deposit my globe in the dresser never to look back at ast since its a full whm clone now with even more worst cards . Lost it identity. Friend ask me wow you wouldnt even try its changes and new stuff. Am like shall I start my ever repetitive story about best ast = stormblood and I want it back to you again?

Those who say they dont want old arrow back, am sure a person is gonna be smart to not use it on certain classes, its obvious that arrow is honestly would be more useful on healers or blm cause of healers 1 spell or blm for them to save their ley line on more potent matters, I agree that make the card not all that but meh am all for faster res casting or 1 1 pressing, maybe I can finally out dps the blm!!!! (joking)