Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

[Punslinger]

The complexity of the current card system that is going away will only be missed by the AST's who enjoyed the fishing.

"Why do people waste time going fishing? Don't they know they can just, like, drive to the store and buy fish?"

Yes, the fishing was a big part of what made AST engaging. It certainly wasn't the healing, because every healer's toolkit is absurdly powerful relative to the pitiful amounts of incoming damage in FF14's fights. It certainly wasn't our mindless DPS "rotation" consisting of one button we push over and over and over and over and over and over and over. The ONLY unique and even remotely engaging thing about AST was the card system and the tools (TiDi, CelOpp) it had for playing with buffs. Otherwise, it's just a WHM reskin.

You said that "cards aren't jobs" and that we can't just have all BLMs because not everybody likes the BLM playstyle. Yet you see no problem with all three healers playing exactly the same way in 5.0? Having exactly the same "one DoT, one spammable nuke" DPS rotation that AST currently suffers from? Having no pet (SCH) or card RNG (AST) to manage during the fight, and instead just mindlessly pushing buttons to make moar deepz? SCH and AST are essentially glamours for WHM at this point, from the perspective of piloting the job (because I know you're going to bring up Chain Strategem and always-on Balance as "reasons we should ackschulallyly be happy because meta").

There is a vast middle ground between the status quo and the "everything's a Balance" abomination that is Nu-AST. Maybe, just maybe, Balance should have been nerfed instead of copy/pasted onto the other five cards? Maybe, just maybe, engaging gameplay is more important than raw effectiveness? Maybe, just maybe, if we can find room for ten different DPS playstyles, it's possible to find room for three different healer playstyles?

Nah. Don't ask questions, just draw cards and get excited for next cards.