I miss old AST cards

I don't care if it was a nightmare to BaLaNcE, it was fun. It had soul. Giving BLMs Enhanced Arrows and BRDs Extended Spears for more procs was so much fun. It wasn't all just AoE Balance. Throw a Ewer on your co-healer that just died and got res'd, laugh as you draw 6 Balances in a row and start dumping Enhanced Balances on your best DPS then extend it with your OGCD buff I forget the name of, Time Dialation?

I miss it so much. SB AST was best AST.

I agree. It was way more fun.

Let’s see what they come up with the rework of the cards in 7.0

I miss them too

Same. The decision making with the cards were more meaningful. Do I want to save for spread or enhanced? Extend buffs gave huge satisfaction. Now, the job is just a shallow busywork that rewards you carpal tunnel with that cursed opener.

It had such a neat gameplay loop to it. Got a useless card like Ewer or Bole? Recycle it with Royal Road, roll with what you got. Poker's no fun if every card in the deck is an ace. Trying to fish for nothing but Spears and Balances was just self inflicted torture.

I agree. It wasn't perfect, but it was much more fun. I liked having AoE Royal Road or extending the duration of the card. I even liked giving Bole to the tank. Now it's just bland because every card is basically the same. The only decision to make is whom to give it to which is always the same. Even if you only got "bad" cards, it still was more fun than now. I only didn't like Spread very much as it was kind of clunky.

I wish they would have just reworked them slightly. Make balance not as strong compared to other cards, tweak their effects a little, but keep the system the way it was.

Fun trumps balance any day and the old cards were more fun. Not only did you have to put a bit of thought into your cards, every card was useful and felt useful when done right which is something the game lacks- visible feedback that makes it feel like your buffs are doing something

the people who whinged that they wanted balance only were the ones wanting big parses

I do find it so ironic that ASTs padding one person for 'the god parse' was apparently okay, but DNC being able to give a permanent 5% dps buff was so outrageous and abuseable that FFLogs had to create the RDPS metric to address it. If we had RDPS back in SB as the default metric, what would it have revealed about the AST vs WHM balance? Would SE have needed to change the cards at all if it turned out they could tune WHM's output to be comparable to the average AST's luck with balance draws? I'm going to say 'probably not' because the 'hardcore' with huge air quotes players will see Class X does 4 dps less than Class Y and declare 'CLASS X IS DEAD AND TRASH AND GRIEFING' whereas actual hardcore players will just change to Class Y if it's that big a deal for the purpose they need that extra damage (speedruns mostly)

We unfortunately have to wait until it all blows up in SE's face before they will realise that chasing after 'its easy to balance' at the cost of fun is not sustainable

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

We unfortunately have to wait until it all blows up in SE's face before they will realise that chasing after 'its easy to balance' at the cost of fun is not sustainable

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Yeah. I wonder when they'll realise. It's a vocal minority yet we all play boring jobs because someone said so on the internet when they did the math.

If the cards were never changed, Astrologian would have been my alt's main heal job. :<

Agree, but I've always been underwhelmed with how the cards basically are just a side activity with AST.

The cards SHOULD have been the whole AST kit. Like the concept art.

Damaging enemy? - Throw magic cards at them Gambit (X-Men) style.

Healing ally? - Throw a card at them that heals them when they hit.

Buffing/debuffing? - Throw Cards.

AoE heal/damage? - Throw multiple cards.

The astroglobe thingy is a huge missed opportunity for what could have been a fun "gambler" type (Twisted Fate from LoL) style of class with some RNG to it.

I bellieve that one of the earlier concepts for ast was actually like that. This trailer shows that quite clearly

[QUOTE=Latandris;6129636]I bellieve that one of the earlier concepts for ast was actually like that. This

Yep, I've seen that trailer before and that concept is way better than what we got ingame.

There's a lot of garbage takes in this thread. Balance is more important for the health of the game. Someone's fun doesn't trump that

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Originally Posted by FireMage

There's a lot of garbage takes in this thread. Balance is more important for the health of the game. Someone's fun doesn't trump that

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Is that why Creator and all of SB was more balanced than this entire expansion?

Now sit.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Is that why Creator and all of SB was more balanced than this entire expansion?

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Strawman, do try again. Also healers were far more imbalanced prior to ShB. Maybe educate yourself?

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Is that why Creator and all of SB was more balanced than this entire expansion?

Now sit.

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Probably best not to bother trying to interact with FireMage, his takes are so bad even GameFAQs knows he should be ignored, I guess they wised up to his antics so much that he can't get his jollies there anymore so now he's trying his luck here

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Probably best not to bother trying to interact with FireMage, his takes are so bad even GameFAQs knows he should be ignored, I guess they wised up to his antics so much that he can't get his jollies there anymore so now he's trying his luck here

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Strawman. Combat my point instead of spreading disgusting rumors

One of the reasons Aglaia is one of my favourite alliance raids in spite of how undertuned all the fights are is because we literally walk across the spire and the balance

pity our cards are meaningless now and healers so shit to play

also wow, not seen a troll so blatant since titanmen. *adds to blocklist*

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Probably best not to bother trying to interact with FireMage, his takes are so bad even GameFAQs knows he should be ignored, I guess they wised up to his antics so much that he can't get his jollies there anymore so now he's trying his luck here

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Oh I know, it's just really fun to prove him wrong with irrefutable facts and evidence then see him fail by incorrectly claiming logical fallacies as he doesn't even comprehend their definitions, then uses logical fallacies himself to try and support his claims. He discredits himself, good times.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Oh I know, it's just really fun to prove him wrong with irrefutable facts and evidence then see him fail by incorrectly claiming logical fallacies as he doesn't even comprehend their definitions, then uses logical fallacies himself to try and support his claims. He discredits himself, good times.

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You've never posted anything to prove me wrong though

I wonder how the old cards would work in EW. Obviously Spire would have to change. Arrow too since Skill Speed trolls some jobs like NIN and DNC. Ewer might have some strong interactions with DRK but I think it would be a cool card to have too if they eliminated other sources of MP for AST.

Also, I think fun is way more important than balance, especially in a PvE game. Unique job identity is preferred by more players than homogenized balance, we saw that with the PvP rework. But that isn't to say balance should be completely disregarded. WHM should've been brought up to the level of the other healers instead of punishing SCH and AST for existing.

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

Also, I think fun is way more important than balance, especially in a PvE game.

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Well it's not. Also this is multi-player PvE. That vastly changes things

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

I wonder how the old cards would work in EW. Obviously Spire would have to change. Arrow too since Skill Speed trolls some jobs like NIN and DNC. Ewer might have some strong interactions with DRK but I think it would be a cool card to have too if they eliminated other sources of MP for AST.

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I think the entire game around GCD and two minute buff meta needs to be reworked. You should never feel punished or nerfed for having haste buffs, it should only be strict DPS gains. Ewer didn't work on DRK in HW, as Dark Side prevented any external MP regen (including Mage's Ballad) so it meant DRKs had to maintain their own MP. It was really fun, because if you were careless and spammed Dark Arts too much, your Dark Side would fall off at 0 MP as it constantly drained MP and needed to drain MP to keep up. As for Spire, I think Bole should be physical damage reduction and Spire be magic. Ewer can continue to give MP, and just throw it on healers or mages. Not every card has to be useful for every job.

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

I wonder how the old cards would work in EW. Obviously Spire would have to change. Arrow too since Skill Speed trolls some jobs like NIN and DNC. Ewer might have some strong interactions with DRK but I think it would be a cool card to have too if they eliminated other sources of MP for AST.

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I wonder how interesting it'd be if Spire was reworked to be 'grants job identity resource', like it gives Ninki to a NIN, Kenki to a SAM, one Aetherflow to a SCH, etc. Imbalanced as heck but it'd be very unique. Also there's a reddit thread I just checked that says Ewer used to give 1325 MP over its duration (base form), so even if Ewer gave, say 3000 MP over 15 seconds, I don't see how it'd be too bad balance wise for DRKs, one extra Edge at the cost of a card that could have been a Balance instead seems not so bad for balance in the grand scheme of things. FFlogs can probably have a formula added that says 'oh the DRK had Ewer X times, remove X casts of Edge from their RDPS and attribute it to the AST'

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I think the entire game around GCD and two minute buff meta needs to be reworked. You should never feel punished or nerfed for having haste buffs, it should only be strict DPS gains. Ewer didn't work on DRK in HW, as Dark Side prevented any external MP regen (including Mage's Ballad) so it meant DRKs had to maintain their own MP. It was really fun, because if you were careless and spammed Dark Arts too much, your Dark Side would fall off at 0 MP as it constantly drained MP and needed to drain MP to keep up. As for Spire, I think Bole should be physical damage reduction and Spire be magic. Ewer can continue to give MP, and just throw it on healers or mages. Not every card has to be useful for every job.

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Congrats you just overcentralized Balance and heavily punished ASTs for having bad RNG, just like from HW to SB

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Originally Posted by Mithron

You should never feel punished or nerfed for having haste buffs, it should only be strict DPS gains.

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If we don't get Royal Road back (and I assume the devs prefer Div for balancing purposes), it'd be fine right? You just choose to dump the Arrow on someone who isn't screwed up by haste effects. Alternatively, I guess they could do like, IDK make Arrow be 'autoattack speed is increased' so you want to put it on a melee, and Spire could maybe be 'magic damage increased by X% for Y seconds', so you'd have a caster specific card to throw out (or maybe it'd work out to be better to throw it on PLD or DRK depending on circumstances? (Imagine that, optimization decisions).

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

If we don't get Royal Road back (and I assume the devs prefer Div for balancing purposes), it'd be fine right? You just choose to dump the Arrow on someone who isn't screwed up by haste effects. Alternatively, I guess they could do like, IDK make Arrow be 'autoattack speed is increased' so you want to put it on a melee, and Spire could maybe be 'magic damage increased by X% for Y seconds', so you'd have a caster specific card to throw out (or maybe it'd work out to be better to throw it on PLD or DRK depending on circumstances? (Imagine that, optimization decisions).

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I think that's my problem, you can choose to screw someone up by overloading their SkS, it'd be pretty funny but I'd rather have the only troll button to be Rescue. I never played FFXIV before ShB, but AST in SB sounded really fun with Royal Road enhancing, storing a card to use later, extending an effect with Time Dilation, etc. I wonder why they couldn't take simple effects for the cards instead of Astrodyne which is both finger-breaking and boring somehow. The only real troublemakers were Spire and Arrow, those effects you said (magic damage increase & autoattack speed increase) were really just the straightforward choices. But of course, that requires thinking, and we can't have that on healers now can we?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

If we don't get Royal Road back (and I assume the devs prefer Div for balancing purposes), it'd be fine right? You just choose to dump the Arrow on someone who isn't screwed up by haste effects. Alternatively, I guess they could do like, IDK make Arrow be 'autoattack speed is increased' so you want to put it on a melee, and Spire could maybe be 'magic damage increased by X% for Y seconds', so you'd have a caster specific card to throw out (or maybe it'd work out to be better to throw it on PLD or DRK depending on circumstances? (Imagine that, optimization decisions).

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I don't really have an easy or convenient alternative solution to haste, I just wish it didn't "screw over" some jobs (like it did PLD and MNK in HW). I loved getting Enhanced Arrows on BLM. Can you imagine what it would do for MCH during Hyper Charge now? Maybe they could pop off like 8-10 shots lol.

The auto-attack (like Riddle of Wind for MNK) buff and magic damage increase do sound like fun alternatives. Sure Balance would still be best, but that's fine, that's the point of AST: random factors, high highs and low lows.

Well, MCH Hypercharge sets the GCD to 1.5 and the engine cannot go lower than that (you can try it in Bozja, it's like a hard coded limit), the interesting thing to me would be that PLD could generate extra gauge off of an autoattack speed buff, as it's the only class that still gets gauge from it's autoattacks. Would getting Sheltron more often be cool? Who can say, I guess now it's got the regen attached it could be interesting to have more uptime on that

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I don't really have an easy or convenient alternative solution to haste, I just wish it didn't "screw over" some jobs (like it did PLD and MNK in HW). I loved getting Enhanced Arrows on BLM. Can you imagine what it would do for MCH during Hyper Charge now? Maybe they could pop off like 8-10 shots lol.

The auto-attack (like Riddle of Wind for MNK) buff and magic damage increase do sound like fun alternatives. Sure Balance would still be best, but that's fine, that's the point of AST: random factors, high highs and low lows.

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It would do literally nothing. Heat Blast has a GCD of 1.5 seconds. The lowest possible in the game. At least learn how things work before coming up with poor suggestions.

You can have your haste and other meme cards in a limited job version of AST or whatever. Go nuts there. In normal content though - get your grubby hands off my rotation. Your fun does not justify making my gameplay unfun.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

It would do literally nothing. Heat Blast has a GCD of 1.5 seconds. The lowest possible in the game. At least learn how things work before coming up with poor suggestions.

You can have your haste and other meme cards in a limited job version of AST or whatever. Go nuts there. In normal content though - get your grubby hands off my rotation. Your fun does not justify making my gameplay unfun.

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Then break the coding, remove the spaghetti and update the engine. This game has made what, billions of dollars? No excuses.

I'm not an AST main, and I probably wouldn't become one even if it went back to SB style, but I have a hard time believing you're actually having fun right now as AST especially since you don't say it's your main in your profile. Your gameplay is 'unfun' currently when it wasn't before. If you think otherwise, your definition of fun is incorrect. :^)

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Well, MCH Hypercharge sets the GCD to 1.5 and the engine cannot go lower than that (you can try it in Bozja, it's like a hard coded limit), the interesting thing to me would be that PLD could generate extra gauge off of an autoattack speed buff, as it's the only class that still gets gauge from it's autoattacks. Would getting Sheltron more often be cool? Who can say, I guess now it's got the regen attached it could be interesting to have more uptime on that

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Imagine that. Job interactivity… supporting your team. The horror.

For real though this sounds like a cool way to help out tanks, even if it’s niche and DPS-negative. Maybe Ewer too if it worked with DRK, even though it only gives 1.3k MP total, could help them get Blackest Night faster in time for the next TB if things are going south. The more I imagine what AST could’ve been, the more anxious I get for 7.0. It’s really going to be a make-or-break moment for me and the game.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Heat Blast has a GCD of 1.5 seconds. The lowest possible in the game.

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The Dancer's Steps during Standard or Technical are all faster at a 1 second base GCD. So you're wrong: GCDs actually could, and do, go lower.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I have a hard time believing you're actually having fun right now as AST especially since you don't say it's your main in your profile.

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My understanding of their post is that they're afraid of AST hurting their rotations on their DPS classes, and not that they main AST.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

It would do literally nothing. Heat Blast has a GCD of 1.5 seconds. The lowest possible in the game. At least learn how things work before coming up with poor suggestions.

You can have your haste and other meme cards in a limited job version of AST or whatever. Go nuts there. In normal content though - get your grubby hands off my rotation. Your fun does not justify making my gameplay unfun.

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The point of fun for ASTs with old cards was knowing which classes wanted which card. So XYZ class doesn't need/want it we give it to ABC is all. You can lose the attitude.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

The Dancer's Steps during Standard or Technical are all faster at a 1 second base GCD. So you're wrong: GCDs actually could, and do, go lower.

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Steps are abilities in all but name. Square kludged together their reclassification as weaponskills solely because of RPR whining. But thye've never changed their basic function as abilities.

They are also not affected by any haste effects either.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

The point of fun for ASTs with old cards was knowing which classes wanted which card. So XYZ class doesn't need/want it we give it to ABC is all. You can lose the attitude.

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Your average XIV player has mental capabilities of a freshly assembled chair. Knowing anything about what you are actually supposed to do is considered a pleasant bonus in this community.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Steps are abilities in all but name

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But are GCDs nonetheless.

Eukrasia is 1s too.