Question from a new player - can AST change back to what it was before ?

[Seoulstar]

AST has different cards. Certain AST's almost exclusively uses balance. SE makes every card balance, people complain about not having the cards they didn't use anyway.

I fixed that for you.

If everyone almost exclusively used balance, then there wouldn't be an uproar over this change. Most of us didn't actually fish for balance.

[TankHunter678]

You misunderstand me.
Of course their effects were beneficial, but relying on RNG to access them was not. We now have Celestial Intersection, and a more effective Lucid Dreaming.
Potencies could do with tweaking still, that's ASTs main problem now across the board, but the reliability of these skills is much better than hoping you draw a Bole or a Ewer.

There is really no effective difference to choosing between ranged/melee or crit/speed.

If you had a BRD/MNK/NIN, then you're giving them Crit.
If you had SAM/BLM, then you're giving them Speed.
The rest? Doesn't really matter, redraw for a chance at a Balance or just use Spear/Arrow on them anyway.
There's no superior decision making taking place. The effects of increase Crit/Speed might have 'felt' better, but for entirely irrational reasons, you weren't the one receiving the boost.

All of this "choosing between ranged/melee is trash" is utterly disingenuous, salty overdramatisation. It's just different targets, that's all.

It is not over dramatization when you realize that you could just change the current cards into their seals and remove the melee/ranged split you reduce the cards from 6 to 3, if you removed the seals and split it drops down to 1, it also feels like crap when you get all ranged for DPS or all melee for DPS and half of your cards become worthless when with the old system none of your cards became worthless.

Even your idea is the same. You could just turn the cards into their seals and remove the melee/ranged split resulting in you reducing the cards to just 3. The only benefit your idea has is at least each seal has its own effect. Unless the cards were brought down to 3 though you still suffer the issue of half your cards becoming worthless just due to party composition.

And sorry but Celestial Intersection is nice and all but it does not hold a candle to the amount of effective damage reduction that Bole gave which made the effective healing of regen effects or the effective durability of shields much better not to mention Celestial Intersection having weak potencies for its cooldown making it worse then an aspected benefic. Even with the current more effective lucid dreaming AST remains as the worst of the healers when it comes to MP management if it dares attempt to use Noct. Thanks to use having no access to a secondary source of MP recovery unlike the other two healers.

[Seraphor]

If you remove the melee/ranged aspect, then it literally doesn't matter who you give the cards to.
Instead of changing one choice for a different choice, you've removed all choice.
That's even worse than what we have now, even by your standards.
So yeah, if you remove half the choices you cut your choices in half, that's not a revelation.

That's literally overdramatising though.
"I don't like having to choose between A and B instead of choosing between 1 and 2, so may as well have no choices at all!"

And 'it feels bad when you have two ranged or two melee'?
So what? It felt bad drawing an Arrow if you had a Bard, Ninja and/or Monk.
It felt bad drawing Spire after Spire at all times.

It's just different choices. You get the card you don't want, use one of your MANY redraws.
And in the end, if you have to use a Balance on a Bard, so what? That's still 3%, about as useful as using an old Arrow on a Bard.
Although technically it's more effective to use your melee cards on the Tank.

It's literally all just flavour. It might feel worse because it's not what you've been used to, but it's just different targets for different cards.


Intersection isn't potent enough?
Then maybe POTENCIES need to change, you know, the thing they can and do regularly change.
AST suffers with MP more than other healers? LOWER ITS MP COSTS, or I dunno, reduce the cooldown on Lightspeed.
There are so many better options than 'give me back an rng MP card that I might draw once every 3 or 4 minutes if I don't use it for the AoE buff'.

[TankHunter678]

If you remove the melee/ranged aspect, then it literally doesn't matter who you give the cards to.
Instead of changing one choice for a different choice, you've removed all choice.
That's even worse than what we have now, even by your standards.
So yeah, if you remove half the choices you cut your choices in half, that's not a revelation.

With the new system it never was a choice because the only thing we can do with the cards is play them or arcana them to a stronger version. With the old system even a card that does not mesh well with the classes in your party can be turned into something useful, be it an oGCD attack, oGCD heal, or burned to provide a better effect to another card you play. Which was an actual choice in addition to playing the card anyways.

That's literally overdramatising though.
"I don't like having to choose between A and B instead of choosing between 1 and 2, so may as well have no choices at all!"

When you have the choice of play it optimally or play it there is no choice at all. Especially when the whim of the matchmaker leaves you with no optimal target.

And 'it feels bad when you have two ranged or two melee'?
So what? It felt bad drawing an Arrow if you had a Bard, Ninja and/or Monk.
It felt bad drawing Spire after Spire at all times.

It's just different choices. You get the card you don't want, use one of your MANY redraws.
And in the end, if you have to use a Balance on a Bard, so what? That's still 3%, about as useful as using an old Arrow on a Bard.
Although technically it's more effective to use your melee cards on the Tank.

It's literally all just flavour. It might feel worse because it's not what you've been used to, but it's just different targets for different cards.

You got any combination of BRD, MNK, or NIN in your part and draw an Arrow? You had the option of playing it though it was not optimal, burn it to double the effect time of your next card played, or minor arcana it for a chance of a oGCD heal or oGCD attack. All of which were viable options and choices that could be made. Not to mention that Extend from burning the Arrow could lead to you throwing a really long lasting Spear/Balance on them or Bole on the Tank.

Even drawing spire after spire you could burn them for the aoe or minor arcana them for the oGCD attack/heal. Granted everyone agreed that Spire needed a rework. A common suggestion being to make it Det which would at least make it useful in all situations. My personal suggestion being to make it improve the gain/recovery rate of class gauge systems.

Oh and despite having up to 3 redraws... I have had plenty of times where I had only ranged DPS in my party and despite redraws got 70% melee cards.

Intersection isn't potent enough?
Then maybe POTENCIES need to change, you know, the thing they can and do regularly change.
AST suffers with MP more than other healers? LOWER ITS MP COSTS, or I dunno, reduce the cooldown on Lightspeed.
There are so many better options than 'give me back an rng MP card that I might draw once every 3 or 4 minutes if I don't use it for the AoE buff'.

You could give Intersection a 1000-2000 potency shield and it still wont compare to a 55 sec Enhanced Bole or a 85 sec Extended Bole in effective damage reduction. It is nice to have to let a diurnal sect AST put down a shield to help withstand a TB (as weak as it is) but that is it. The ability would be more or less fine if it sat at the potencies of an aspected benefic in conjunction with the old card system.

You could lower the MP costs of AST's spells... which would also mean that the potencies get lower to balance out the cheaper spells. You could reduce the cooldown of Lightspeed... which means the potencies of its healing and DPS get lower to balance it out. Give Ewer back its MP recovery? Well now it is in line with the other healers but provides more MP due to the RNG nature of the cards.

[Risvertasashi]

I fixed that for you.

If everyone almost exclusively used balance, then there wouldn't be an uproar over this change. Most of us didn't actually fish for balance.

I mean... I did a number of AST log reviews and I cannot recall a single one that wasn't fishing for balance. If you were trying to optimize, that was definitely the card you wanted.

[TankHunter678]

I mean... I did a number of AST log reviews and I cannot recall a single one that wasn't fishing for balance. If you were trying to optimize, that was definitely the card you wanted.

Yeah in savage raids and EX trials you wanted Balance above all else if you can get it. In the rest of content you used everything equally, except Spire which was just for wall to wall pulls to help a physical DPS or tank be able to keep AoEing or to AoE your cards.

[BahamutxD]

You wanted balance BUT you still could use the rest of cards almost ALWAYS, be it for dps or to Royal Road it.

Now you seek something and you are failing if you don't get it.

[Ceasaria]

Balance was the ultimate card but it was not the only (offensive) card played in every content.
I looked at parse too, and I saw several mindsets of AST : only balance, balance/spear, balance/spear/arrow...

I can tell you, I'am not from those.
After hundred of hours of AST play (every content, progress/speedkill), I have adopted this mindset : balance/arrow.
During SB, I have read an interesting comment saying that only balance and arrow can guarantee a gain of time.
Of course, I have tried the three offensive cards in every situation possible, and at the result with my observations and from website analysing raid buff, Arrow was equivalent to 75-80% of the Balance (Spear was somehow around 40%).
And the best opener my team had done is with Arrow (happened very very few times but it's there). I remember particularly on Ultima burst at the beginning of his phase because we have reach 1% below than with Balance (2-3 times).

So fishing for Balance is nice, but discard everything else is not.
Arrow was still very good and it's better to have 1/3 chance to play a card than wait for the 1/6.

It was my unpopular experience and opinion about Arrow

[Fawkes]

You wanted balance BUT you still could use the rest of cards almost ALWAYS, be it for dps or to Royal Road it.

Now you seek something and you are failing if you don't get it.

Royal Road isn't really a valid use though, you're kinda just tossing a card you don't want. I got plenty of worthless spires and royal roaded them, only to end up with a spire or bole or ewer that I would feel embarrassed to have to AoE onto the party. Or just keep royal roading every card away, either way nobody is getting any useful buff at any point.

In this new system you're at least giving someone a buff, even if it's not the optimal buff. I doubt people who don't play AST are even going to know which cards are which, so you don't even have to feel bad about it.

[ErryK]

It is not over dramatization when you realize that you could just change the current cards into their seals and remove the melee/ranged split you reduce the cards from 6 to 3, if you removed the seals and split it drops down to 1, it also feels like crap when you get all ranged for DPS or all melee for DPS and half of your cards become worthless when with the old system none of your cards became worthless.

You still have tanks and you still have healers to use those cards on... and if they're not DPSing well that's another issue entirely.

With the new system it never was a choice because the only thing we can do with the cards is play them or arcana them to a stronger version. With the old system even a card that does not mesh well with the classes in your party can be turned into something useful, be it an oGCD attack, oGCD heal, or burned to provide a better effect to another card you play. Which was an actual choice in addition to playing the card anyways.

This seems like a non-issue, they just turned the cards into a damage buff which is always good, especially if you had people dying and you're trying to beat the enrage.

You wanted balance BUT you still could use the rest of cards almost ALWAYS, be it for dps or to Royal Road it.

Now you seek something and you are failing if you don't get it.

What? All cards are useable in any party setup...