Astrologian Cards Can't Be a Coin Flip: A petition

[Veis_Alveare]

The new AST cards are incredibly lacklustre and boring by the sounds of it... why fix something that wasn’t broken? If people want to fish for AoE balance, then let them. I however always preferred the AST’s who use Boles on squishy tanks, Ewers on those who need MP etc. It adds so much more fun to the game. It really was the only thing that made AST unique imo, but now that’s been stripped down massively. Taking away all that choice is pretty bad...

That's all well and good but you can't expect the game to be balanced around what is suboptimal play at the end of the day. It's kind of like saying you like SCHs who keep shields up on the party 100% of the time; will that occasionally result in saving someone from a death? Sure! Is it the best use of their time? Literally never.

The best thing for an AST to do was fish for a balance, preferably AoE. If you didn't get one Spear was really the only comperable option, Arrow was significantly less impactful and actually potentially a negative for classes like MCH, MNK, NIN and PLD. Bole, Ewer and Spire were basically RR or minor Arcana fodder.

Having this predetermined use of cards meant that there were few situations in which you drew something and didn't reflexively know what to do with it. It made cards in dungeons almost more interesting than cards in raids if only because you would sometimes have a use for one of the garbage cards even if things weren't going horribly.

The things that make AST unique now are increased mobility and weaving potential with Malefic III, consistent rDPS buffs to single targets, the entirety of Essential Dignity (which is one of the most interesting healing CDs in the game) and Earthly Star (which sits right behind ED in that same tier) sooo... it's still definitely unique and has its own signature kit, it's just that that kit doesn't revolve around Balance anymore.

Which is a good thing.

I have to accept these changes and most likely pay a netflix subscription so I don't sleep while playing.

Anyone who needs a Netflix sub to heal isn't a good healer.

[Melorie]

Anyone who needs a Netflix sub to heal isn't a good healer.

Well, if pressing 211111211111121111 and throwing a heal here and there really grabs your attention and keeps you interested, I'm glad for you.

[Melichoir]

Well, if pressing 211111211111121111 and throwing a heal here and there really grabs your attention and keeps you interested, I'm glad for you.

Could always try out more difficult content then, like savage.

This being said, again, isnt this all speculation? "Omg, I saw the skills so it will for sure be boring to play!" I get people can be worried about teh changes, but I think decrying it as a step backwards without seeing it in context of the xpac gameplay itself is somewhat silly.

[Cheremia]

Okay but what about the seals you have to manage to get even more buffs out of your cards?
What about those?

[ZoeZephyri]

Okay but what about the seals you have to manage to get even more buffs out of your cards?
What about those?

You have 180 seconds with multiple redraw charges to collect 3 different colored seals for a 6% aoe damage increase. If you only collect 1 or 2 seals, you get a 3% aoe damage increase. There's really not much to manage there.

[Melorie]

Could always try out more difficult content then, like savage.

You do realize that even on savage fights, healers have a lot of downtime in which they'll be mostly spamming 2111121112111, right?

Besides that, in order to not press only 2111121121111 I should only try the hardest content on the game?
Casual players are not allowed to actually do something that will make them pay attention to the game and feel engagement?

If you want to believe that they'll absolutely revamp the way fights are done on this game... Well, okay. You're allowed to do that. I don't believe that this will happen, but even if it DOES happen, the only relevant content that is not a snoozefest and which I don't have time to spam 21112111211 while doing nothing in-between besides throwing a heal is the expac content? What about the rest of the game? You can't make changes only thinking about the new expac. You have to see the game as a whole.

FFXIV is a good MMORPG. But it's also a game with a very rigid structure, so unless they change the way they design fights entirely, no, it's hardly just speculation. And it's very unlikely they'll change the game that way, and even if they do, it doesn't fix the problem because you have a bunch of content that will still suffer from this.
So it's surprising that some people aren't that hopeful.
And we know it's boring to play because we've already played like that. This is not a new type of boring - it's a well-known boring.