Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

[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.

[Suishouhime]

So unfortunate as it may be, what matters to end game players does matter to casual players and non raiders as well.

The meta honestly doesn't touch non-Savage content at all, in the slightest. I see tonnes of off-meta classes played in pretty much everything except Ex primals and, even then, nobody really cares much if your class is meta or not, as long as you clear it. On the rare occasions when I do see meta classes, very few of them show any awareness of what the "meta" thing to do is, nor do they execute it perfectly. About half of the few NIN players I see don't even use Trick Attack, let alone align it with any other debuff.

The very fact that WHM is still a popular class outside of Savage content shows how little the average player cares about following the meta.

[SkyEdge1]

The meta honestly doesn't touch non-Savage content at all, in the slightest.

So I wanna be clear, I'm not insisting that Savage and speed kills are a 1:1 parallel to the game as a whole. What I meant is that the perception some classes get are heavily influenced by what is popular in Savage and above. Of course there will be non meta classes being played, savage clears and speed kills account for a very small portion of the community. However that small portion has a big say in how classes are developed and balanced, that is my point. A lot of the balance changes to classes come directly from their performance in savage as that is an easy number to track what classes are performing well and which ones arent. How they approach this information and make changes accordingly varies, from quick responses like with WAR, or slow changes like SAM/BLM OR worse off with a blind eye RIP MCH/WHM.
I'm not saying your concerns are invalid, merely that they are untested as we have no idea how the raiding community will tinker with the new playstyles.

[Suishouhime]

However that small portion has a big say in how classes are developed and balanced, that is my point.

And, as I've been saying for the last few pages, that's the whole problem. People are hyperfocusing on a meta that will never touch ~95% of the content in FFXIV, and then removing the unique character of classes that make running ~95% of the content as that class fun. Maybe Savage will be fun for the raiding community, and it does sound like it'll be a fun streamline for the people who're just interested in optimising their runs for FFLogs, but what about everyone who doesn't raid? What about the players who just want to do the regular Duty Finder stuff, and have now found that the main feature of their favourite class has been gutted, for no reason other than some ~1% of the community wants to do content a few minutes faster?

[KanameYuuki]

My biggest take away from this situation is that I would hate to run any kind of content with the AST I keep reading (not just here ofc), because apparently no balance = no card and just discarded them since it is the only good card there ever was, that they would rather see a bigger number on the corner of the screen go up for a few seconds than having a better and more fun / engaging (I know fun is subjective) minute to minute game play.

So baffled with the outcry of RNG when the class is literally based on it, it is like if someone would complain they hate using jumps on DRG or Muras on NIN, I just can't even, that's what made AST special, no encounter was the same because of that. Balance felt great when you finally got it, because when every card is rewarding no card really is.

Lots of comparisons to an Oracle but NU AST isn't even that, it is basically the post office, doing classification if your package (Card) is for a melee or range address and when you get the right stamps (seals) you can deliver a bonus package faster.

AST is what made me start playing this game and what keeps making me want to play it and while they didn't ruin it they completely gutted its cards and time buffs. But whatever, not like SE will change anything, just look at MNK: "We heard you loud and clear MNK players the class isn't fun to play" *proceeds to keep RoF / TK and adds yet another skill that slows down GCD*

[SkyEdge1]

for no reason other than some ~1% of the community wants to do content a few minutes faster?

I agree with you that its imbalanced, but I think the main reason they balance base on those high end players is because it matter at that point. No one parses dungeons seriously, very few players optimizes in dungeons, or care for optimal rotations or compositions, I mean hell half the player base is still wondering if healers should even use their DPS skills. So to them, "as long as its playable" is probably the most thought they give to any class when considering casual content. At that point any adjustments they make just wont matter as much because very few people will utilize it to any real degree. Whereas balance made to cater to high end raids has a clear measurement both from developers and from the community via the aforementioned FFlogs and parsing.

[Rahspdoy]

If you as a healer are forced to heal more often with your GCD then having a system in place to be able to continually contribute to rDPS passively make the most sense?

You dont play a healer, soo.. what 'do' you play? Tank? or one of the dps's? If its a dps, then yes i can understand why at the basic 'lets not think to deeply into it' level, your happy for every single card being balance.

But what if your a bard? You know how Bloodletter gets to 'skip' its cooldown right? Its based off your Dots 'critting'. Your dots critting are based off your crit chance. How much 'more' damage are you going to do using Bloodletter 4 times vs only 2? How about Repertoire? Same thing, its based of your dot critting, which is based off Crit chane. Does Balance help that? No.. Spear does. A Balance cycled for the 150% boost effect to use on a Spear helps even more.

It may not be quite as exciting but it is a HELL of a lot more consistent. Before was it not just either YAY I got a Balance OR well no Balance guess I'll use this instead??

Its more 'consistent' because it 'cant' fail. it requires 'no' thinking. It requires 'no' card system at all. They can replace the entire thing with just 2 buttons. 1 being a insta-cased, 3-charge skill with a 10-15s cooldown that gives the new 'balance' buff, and a second skill thats on the 180s cooldown that gives the 'group' buff to everyone.

The entire 'reason' for having cards is gone. The UI element may as well not exist, the 'cards' may as well not exist.

[ElZombo]

Fun is subjective though, what you consider to be boring other players may see as a better playstyle.

It'd only be more fun for some because its much easier, and those who were intimidated by the class previously - will now not need to worry about making less effective decisions, at the cost of even the slightly more experienced Astro players. Also with this new system, the Astro's have less time to heal; there's THREE charges of redraw, and every card must be played, as well as positioning yourself, and possibly others for that lame AoE 6% damage buff, which is supposedly the pay off at the end.

How would you feel if they removed Dragoons jumps, and replaced the damage with a simple DoT attack, because i complained that my miss-timed jumps were killing me. DoTs would mean plenty more rDPS, but bye bye class fantasy.

[KanameYuuki]

But what if your a bard? You know how Bloodletter gets to 'skip' its cooldown right? Its based off your Dots 'critting'. Your dots critting are based off your crit chance. How much 'more' damage are you going to do using Bloodletter 4 times vs only 2? How about Repertoire? Same thing, its based of your dot critting, which is based off Crit chane. Does Balance help that? No.. Spear does. A Balance cycled for the 150% boost effect to use on a Spear helps even more.

While I play BRD or MNK with a fellow AST, Spear will always feel way more empowering and much more noticeable than Balance would ever be, or playing Tank with a Bole and enemies doing no damage, they just didn't ruin fun for AST players, they also did it for all the other players who loved getting buffed by them, MNK just lost IR so Spear would have been their new substitution.

[SkyEdge1]

You dont play a healer, soo.. what 'do' you play? Tank? or one of the dps's?

But what if your a bard? You know how Bloodletter gets to 'skip' its cooldown right? Its based off your Dots 'critting'.


Its more 'consistent' because it 'cant' fail. it requires 'no' thinking. It requires 'no' card system at all. They can replace the entire thing with just 2 buttons. 1 being a insta-cased, 3-charge skill with a 10-15s cooldown that gives the new 'balance' buff, and a second skill thats on the 180s cooldown that gives the 'group' buff to everyone.

I play tank and DPS, and though tank has more percieved responsibility, I do find that on DPS I'm more focused on trying not to eff up

I play bard as well, and for ShB it no longer procs off crits, which brings me to my earlier point that we will not be sure of any synergy or lack thereof because we have such a small sample preview.

Though I feel for the loss in complexity for you, isn't it now more about how you use your existing kit to consistently keep the highest damaging party members buffed? Or vice versa take the risk at buffing those mot doing enough to try and level out the outgoing DPS? More so linking up Lord and Lady (I think that's the one) to align with tighter windows and get the most out of the cards while dealing with healing mechanics or checks? Whereas before it was more or less hoping that you would be able to try and contribute within those windows cuz if RNG screwed you, you kinda sat there with "hey at least Lord can go out "