astrologian rework

personally i do not like and not a big fan. please go back and try again. cards are supposed to be random and inconsistent. big fan of blowing my load of random cards and choosing who to give it to within a party's burst window or a melee or range during their 60s burst. even though the cards sometimes may not be in my favor, it is still fun to be on my toes and make decisions and i cant get that anywhere else. with the tools already at my disposal, the heal and mitigation cards that i will draw in dawntrail will probably just go straight to the trash before i can draw new cards again. we already have exaltation (10% mit + heal), two stacks of ED, two stacks of celestial intersection. unless we're getting more single target dmg from the bosses, the new cards won't be much help i dont think and i say this as a person who does the higher end stuff.

higher skill ceiling = good. it strokes my ego knowing that it took some effort to get to a certain mastery of a more difficult job relatively. if i wanted to play something easier i would play white mage. no hate to the whm bros.

ive only played EW ast extensively and small amounts in ShB but hearing about the complexity of the job in earlier expansions seemed very interesting in comparison to what we have currently. the unique buffs depending on the specific card you drew was cool and the different sects you chose in ShB was also neat. perhaps bring back the choice between two different forms on whether what sort of deck you get like a more defensive/heal cards vs a deck with more dmg/utility buffs but still keep that randomness of a certain set of buffs during a draw and minigame on who to optimally give the card to.

definitely too late to change anything for the release but im not excited or happy for the changes to my favorite job for the next few years. putting in my two cents tho.

Current AST mains are not the goal of the rework. Nothing they've done is what genuine AST mains wanted, but rather every change is designed for lazy or garbage players who saw (arguably) the best aesthetic out of the healers, but was too difficult to play or pick up due to its APM. A part of those players are also the ones who look back at stormblood with rose-tinted glasses and think ''damn having cards have different effects is so cool!'' when 4 out of 6 cards were useless in any meaningful content. What AST is becoming isn't even what AST in SB was, since you can't fish for the card you wanted and they're all forced on you in a restrictive manner every minute.

Considering the road of healers since HW/SB, and every expansion they've been getting easier, and easier, and easier to the point of boredom and braindead levels of skill, I should've predicted the AST rework would strip away the last morsel of difficulty within the healer role. They've said before they don't want healers to be a sore point in any party, and wanted to bridge the gap between good and bad healers, so AST being treated like this fits in line with the developers.

Like other AST mains I've seen on the forums, reddit, youtube, etc. I will be dropping the job and the healer role fundamentally, I hope the healer play rate tanks even harder to show the developers how fucking boring and meaningless the role has become.

Yep, AST rework was the one thing that I was looking into, as a potential way to keep me interested in the role, but this rework is absolutely 'not it', as the kids would say, so I'll try it for one dungeon run when the expansion releases, and likely drop the role entirely if it doesn't feel fun.

No idea why they thought that a Tarot inspired class should lose the randomness factor, imagine going to an actual tarot place and they always draw The World, The Hierophant, The Chariot, every single time. I'm not saying I could design a better AST but... No, actually, I might actually be able to, considering how low SE just set the bar:

Mainly reworks to cards, not adding more damage buttons.

Benefic1 upgrades to Benefic2. This means that Benefic2 would proc the 'guaranteed crit on next Benefic2' trait, helping in those panic-spamming situations. MP cost of Benefic2 is reduced to 500mp.
Helios upgrades to Aspected Helios, MP cost set to 900 for both

Major Arcana: now autodraws one every 30s. If you have a Major Arcana drawn and the timer hits 0, you 'Spread' the second one, holding it in reserve. At this point, the timer will pause, like capping WHM Lilies.

Minor Arcana: now autodraws a Minor Arcana every 15s. If you have a Minor Arcana drawn and the timer hits 0, you 'Spread' the second one, holding it in reserve. At this point, the timer will pause, like capping WHM Lilies.

Sleeve Draw returns: A 2 charge, 60s charge time OGCD action. When you use it, your currently drawn Minor Arcana becomes a Lady of it's suit. More on Card Ranks in the Minor Arcana section.
Sleeve Draw's purpose is to be a 'bad luck prevention' system, which you can use to force the Minor Arcana you hold (preferably the ones in the burst window) to be the highest potency, so the burst window always feels satisfying to execute.

Draw, Play and Minor Arcana, are replaced with 'Play Major Arcana', 'Play Minor Arcana' and 'Sleeve Draw'. Playing Major Arcana is still OGCD, but Playing Minor Arcana are now GCD (to break up the Malefic spam). This means you can go Minor, Major, Minor Major (interspersed with Sleeve Draws as needed) in your burst window, should you be good enough to calculate ahead of the window who you need to target with each card at each step. If you need time to calculate your next move, however, you would be able to simply cast Malefic to buy yourself another 2.5s to consider the state of your cards

Your 2min burst window actions would be (GCDs in bold):
Malefic > Divination > Sleeve Draw > Minor Arcana > Major Arcana > Sleeve Draw > Minor Arcana > Major Arcana > Detonate Earthly Star > Malefic spam til next Minor Arcana is ready

Now for Card effects:

Balance: 10% damage, 15s

Bole: 20% damage mitigation, 15s. Additionally, grants 3 stacks of Bole's Bulwark, causing the enemy that strikes the bearer of this buff to take 10% of that ally's Max HP as damage and consuming one stack.

Arrow: Grants 10 stacks of 'Arrow's Assault' (12 if the target is PhysRanged), increasing Autoattack rate by 400%. One stack is consumed for each Autoattack dealt under it's effect, and upon consuming all stacks, the Autoattack rate returns to normal.
Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, grants 5 stacks of Arrow's Assault, speeding up the recast time of the AST to 1.5s for the next 5 GCD attacks, and making cast times of those spells instant.

Ewer: Grants 1000mp over 15s. Additionally, if the target is a Healer, grants 3 stacks of Ewer Overflowing, causing the next 3 attacks dealt by said healer to strike a second time for 100% of the spell's potency. Additional effects are not applied. This second strike cannot crit or DHit

Spear: 10% Physical damage, 15s. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, all magic damage dealt by the AST is instead considered physical for the duration, allowing them to benefit from this card's effect

Spire: 10% Magic damage, 15s

A Note on Minor Arcana: Knaves, Lords, Ladies are 7, 8 and 9 respectively. Due to not having a duration, these effects will last on the target until they are overwritten by another card, or KO removes them.

X of Staves: Increases the next 5 attacks dealt by the target ally by 60p. Additionally, increases the damage of the first attack dealt by target ally after this effect is applied, by 5 potency multiplied by the face value of the arcana.

X of Rings: Deals 100p in counterattack damage each time the target ally is struck, up to 3 times. Additionally, deals an additional 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana, for the first counterattack only.

X of Knives: Causes the next 6 Autoattacks to deal a second strike for 50p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first autoattack has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

X of Cups: Causes the next 3 healer damage spells to cost half MP, and to strike a second time for 100p. Additional effects are not applied twice. Additionally, the first of these spells deals bonus damage equal to 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana

X of Crowns: Increases the next 5 instances of Magic damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first instance of magic damage has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

X of Irons: Increases the next 5 instances of Physical damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, the next 5 instances of magic damage are instead considered physical, allowing them to benefit from this card's effect
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first instance of physical damage has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

The card effects (in terms of their damage output) have all been balanced against one another. In current Anabesios BIS, the Majors were tuned around all contributing roughly 30000 points of damage with their effect (numbers taken from several Samurai). Minor Arcana are balanced around dealing 300p, plus an additional 10-45p, based on RNG of the card and its Face Value. The one notable exception to this, which would be 'way stronger than anything else', would be Ewer and its effect of duplicating Healer spells, due to the difference between the strongest hit for SCH (Broil, 295) and SGE (Phlegma, 660). Or, if you prefer, WHM's Misery (1320). I could create some system wherein certain stronger skills consume more stacks than others to remedy this should it be such a pressing issue (eg it grants 5 stacks, Misery costs all 5 stacks, Glare and its equivalents cost 1, Phlegma costs 2, something like that)

Lastly, Minor Arcana would presumably also contribute Seals like their Major counterparts. As such, AST gameplay could revolve more around maintaining Astrodyne as a Huton style self-speed-buff, rather than the current odd 'slight buff for damage windows but it actually is a 90s effect in a 2min meta so it doesn't really fit very well'. Potencies of the Astrodyne effects would be changed to suit this, of course. I just haven't done the maths for that. Alternatively, we could just remove Astrodyne because it kinda sucks.

Come on SE, you're better than this

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I'm not saying I could design a better AST but... No, actually, I might actually be able to, considering how low SE just set the bar

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This is a hundred thousand times better than what the devs have come up with.

There are plenty of ways to reduce randomness if needed.
One of the easiest way is to give each card a buff of some sort, 2-3 cards are as good as balance back then is fine, other stuffs can be things like give your malefic 3-5 insta cast, mp or other minor stuffs
You draw your cards out of a deck, 6 cards, in random order, the deck resets once you have drawn all 6. give a big burst or something when you reset the deck.
That way you have a notion of what you might get next. the amount of damage buff is set, not random, so you dont really have to fish.

so 6 stacks of draw, a reshuffle skill on a 300s cool down (that also reset draws). you can plan out your cards, dont have to rush as long as you use all 6 before the cooldown reset.

other optional stuffs: a skill slot to hold one card, minor arcana same as now so you can dump the MP one or defensive one if you dont need it, bring back time dilation.

the cards were awesome and there are so many potential to do it right. what did AST mains ever do to deserve this bland as hell rework.

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Originally Posted by ArtemisSeraphin

This is a hundred thousand times better than what the devs have come up with.

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See, that's the sad part of all of this, we're told that we have to trust that the people who designed AST into the hole it's in for EW, will be the ones that design it OUT of the hole. It's entirely possible, and in fact 'more likely than not' that, rather than getting it into a better place, said people might design it to be even worse. Because if they were 'in touch' with what AST is meant to be, they wouldn't have made it be 'in the hole' for EW in the first place.

They need to assign someone to the job design team who actually cares about healer design, rather than getting the DPS mains to do it

Ah, right I forgot to add a small detail to that post, under that design, your 2min burst window actions would be (GCDs in bold):
Malefic > Divination > Sleeve Draw > Minor Arcana > Major Arcana > Sleeve Draw > Minor Arcana > Major Arcana > Detonate Earthly Star > Malefic spam til next Minor Arcana is ready

One thing I worry about with this new design is the 'speed' of the job, if we're playing way less cards for damage now, it's entirely possible that we'll be very heavily hit in the APM department, which would suck

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Originally Posted by KanataNanaya

There are plenty of ways to reduce randomness if needed.

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Indeed there are, such as 'you cannot Redraw a card of the same Seal type as the one you're throwing away', we already had RNG mitigation, but now we have 'RNG invulnerability' or something

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yep, AST rework was the one thing that I was looking into, as a potential way to keep me interested in the role, but this rework is absolutely 'not it', as the kids would say, so I'll try it for one dungeon run when the expansion releases, and likely drop the role entirely if it doesn't feel fun.

No idea why they thought that a Tarot inspired class should lose the randomness factor, imagine going to an actual tarot place and they always draw The World, The Hierophant, The Chariot, every single time. I'm not saying I could design a better AST but... No, actually, I might actually be able to, considering how low SE just set the bar

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If I were to rework the class it would be something to preserve the feeling of current AST but allowing for some of the RNG utility of old, while still allowing the class to feel unpunishing and not frustrating in current era fight design. I'd keep the cards exactly how they are now, with some minor changes. One, you can only hold one for a max of 30s, similar to PvP. Two, you do not start with one draw and cannot draw out of combat. Seals still exist, and contribute to astrodyne, but astrodyne is instead a purely utility buff. One seal mana regen, two seals healing amp, three seals instant casts for a short duration. Minor arcana is reworked entirely, into a new draw button that draws one of three utility cards, one for each seal. The seals contribute to astrodyne just as the dps cards do. Lightspeed would be removed in favour of dyne, allowing the astrologian to make a choice between using it for the healing amp, for movement, or easier weaves while also having to regularly activate it for mana. I'd also add sleeve draw back as a 2 minute CD, maybe.

The goal is to keep the fast paced and reactive style of the current version, include some elements of old AST that people keep begging for, and reduce some of the high amounts of weaving the class does in burst. All in all it has a new RNG set of utility cards, rng damage cards, and about 5-6 less weaves in burst than current AST, and dyne is reworked into a very adaptive and flexible multipurpose skill that can be used in burst but doesn't HAVE to be. You could also include the new divination followup as an instant cast gcd to give some more flexibility to your burst weaving. The job remains fairly similar and recognizable to its previous iterations, with an homage to each, while still being easy to access and less taxing during burst windows.

Like I can appreciate the idea you have of having each card have completely unique damage profiles but I think like... we gotta remember what game we're playing here. This is FFXIV. Things need to be kept more simple than having 12 entirely unique cards with entirely unique effects that also interact entirely uniquely with different classes. There is no fuckin' shot I'm remembering all of that stuff and you'd end up overloading a lot of people. But hey, I'll admit it. It's better than this dawntrail rework.

The only thing they need to do is going back to the original AST in Heavensward with some tweaks here and there. It was the best iteration for the job.

Same goes for DRK and MCH.

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Originally Posted by Zaytex

...but rather every change is designed for lazy or garbage players...

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The funny thing is that the "garbage" players couldn't handle throwing out cards at all- adding more buttons just exacerbates the problem. None of the rework actually makes the class easier to play for people who already couldn't play the original Ast. The whole rework is just a fail across the board. Did it make the class more accessible? No, because damage cards are still split between range/melee, still require weaving, and, arguably, require more memorization. Did it improve upon the gameplay for Ast mains? No, clearly not from all these anti-rework posts. Who was this rework aimed at...

"Garbage" teammates in low level content. No, I'm not kidding. After running duty roulette for the past week to grind up tomestones for Mandervilles- yeah, I would love to have had these extra mitigation/healing cards to make life easier when dealing with "garbage" players in low level content. The number of tanks who refused to mit, the number of DPS who die to the same mechanic over and over again... These cards were made to deal with that. It's sad that pretty much everything added to healers kits' is just to carry people who refuse to learn even basic mechanics through low level content. Yeah, I can prop you up until you get enough vuln stacks so any damage insta-kills you, but... Should I?

Should that be the game design? Hinging everything on the literal expertise of someone behind a healer? Because that's what the rework is fostering- incompetent teammates.

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Originally Posted by Ryskim

The only thing they need to do is going back to the original AST in Heavensward with some tweaks here and there. It was the best iteration for the job.

Same goes for DRK and MCH.

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This. For me, the ranged/melee DMG only cards are a lame iteration of the RNG everyone seems to want. The original card system with Royal Road + unique card effects (that all helped with damage, just in diverse and interesting ways) was by FAR the best version of AST.

I was kind of interested when I saw we could draw three cards at once. Then I saw that two of those cards were defensive/healing, literally the least valued things in ffxiv’s combat system, and my interest vanished lol. Especially seeing that one of them is literally just a regen.
Like they’ve reduced the amount we actually pull and somehow managed to make cards worse lol.

The saddest thing is there’s so many interesting ways they could’ve done a ‘healing support card’. I mean, MP regen is surely the pinnacle of ‘support for healers’ normally? Or a presence of mind / arrow card that helps them cast faster (not that anyone’s casting gcds lol but in theory). Or even a buff effect like Warden’s Paean that idk gives a shield when struck or something (I’d say Esuna but that’s properly worse than a regen lol).

There’s loads of ways they could’ve tried to make the defensive/healing card interesting to compensate for reduced draw frequency, but instead they chose the laziest and most easily balanced option possible. We Draw three cards at a time but it may as well just be one