Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

[Gemina]

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.

I understand that frustration, and know how it feels to have your job gutted. Thing is though a lot of those card buffs were going away one way or the other. We simply could not continue with AST and SCH being able to increase dmg, crit, and speed. Those are all variations of a rDPS increase. Plus they can also increase rDEF on top of that. What truly makes zero sense is they didn't give at least AoE haste to WHM, or AoE cleanse from SCH to WHM? These stay in the realm of their 'pure healer' concept and they just blasted them into space.

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?

This is a separate issue. I know it is relative to your statements, but answering the questions would veer things off topic. However, I did brush over my thoughts on AST DPS in my initial post in the thread.

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?

The problem IS the Balance. It's a virus within the card system. I actually think letting healers have any form of rDPS is implosive for the healer role in general. The balance is ironically preventing the balance. I think the cards should have different effects too, but none of them are a rDPS increase. Leave that for the DPS. They should get healer related buffs: MP refresh, AoE cleanse, mDEF increase, increased healing from healing magic, ogcd heal, self-haste; there are all kinds of effects they can give to those cards, even if they wanted to keep the 3-seal system they're going with. But I can't emphasize or repeat enough that rDPS increase from healers needs to go away completely.

[Punslinger]

The problem IS the Balance. It's a virus within the card system. I actually think letting healers have any form of rDPS is implosive for the healer role in general. The balance is ironically preventing the balance. I think the cards should have different effects too, but none of them are a rDPS increase. Leave that for the DPS. They should get healer related buffs: MP refresh, AoE cleanse, mDEF increase, increased healing from healing magic, ogcd heal, self-haste; there are all kinds of effects they can give to those cards, even if they wanted to keep the 3-seal system they're going with. But I can't emphasize or repeat enough that rDPS increase from healers needs to go away completely.

On this, we can agree.

There's a lot of design space for meaningful buffs that allow for interplay with healing abilities, and that the dev team chose not to pursue any of these possibilities is maddening. Maybe they'll eventually rework healers into something awesome in 6.0, but for 5.0, they've left everything gutted and half-finished.

Sometimes, it honestly feels like DPS is the only role Square actually cares about. They get well-designed classes with complex rotations, while healer job design seems like it's an afterthought undertaken with the least possible effort.