As someone who hated AST in SB and who prefers the new card system

[Seoulstar]

I am a person who has played a lot of games that made me hate RNG...I'm staring at you Vindictus and BDO. With that being said, I loved the RNG behind the AST cards from previously, it was fun and I love making the best of what I get. I don't know what SE thought when they felt this was a good idea. For some reason I guess they believed the memes that AST's literally fished for balance when the reality was that most of us didn't. We used what we got. I assume the hardcore raider AST's and some others like this. But I feel they really upset way more people than they pleased with this change. Change the cards if they wish, but don't turn AST into a balance bot in the process of it.

[TankHunter678]

-snip-

Of the MP recovery options ewer was the best and most flexible balanced because of its RNG card nature. It was basically a lucid dreaming but with a longer duration you could throw on allies. Not to mention it was still part of your damage mechanic, because if you did not have need of it you could burn it to make you next buff AoE. Not that throwing it onto a SMN wont help them with their mana and let them maintain DPS. It was also a godsend in 24 man content or 8 man raids/trials outside of the optimized experience of the top. Where you had people die a lot to mechanics and you burned through MP like an alcoholic through their supply of booze.

As for Bole... other healers did have an equivalent "tank cooldown" they were just not as powerful but were instead more consistent. Sacred Soil and to a lesser degree Asylum (Regen stacking helped Asylum out, not to mention all the Holy spam). Which the AST consistent equivalent of them was CU which required the AST to stop casting completely to benefit from the DR. Bole was stronger but balanced for its strength and length by being a RNG card.

Keep in mind that AST was built on the concept of you had to work with what you got. One run it can be the DPS boosting god, the next run it could be a deficit compared to bringing a WHM for its pDPS. Not to mention, AST could not have strong DPS boosts if it could very easily toss them out. So the existence of stuff like Ewer and Bole balanced out the existence of Balance. Which is pretty obvious how after they were removed what DPS boost we did get was... butchered. We consistently pull DPS boosters and in return its pathetically weak to the point that on top of our weak potencies and pDPS we just are not worth bringing along.

I am a person who has played a lot of games that made me hate RNG...I'm staring at you Vindictus and BDO. With that being said, I loved the RNG behind the AST cards from previously, it was fun and I love making the best of what I get. I don't know what SE thought when they felt this was a good idea. For some reason I guess they believed the memes that AST's literally fished for balance when the reality was that most of us didn't. We used what we got. I assume the hardcore raider AST's and some others like this. But I feel they really upset way more people than they pleased with this change. Change the cards if they wish, but don't turn AST into a balance bot in the process of it.

Well they did piss off more then they made happy. That is evident by how rare AST is now in the ques, in the logs, and the continued sustained prevalence of the Healer in Need flag.

[Saefinn]

I agree that Divination is pretty tedious and clunky, but the Dances aren't a fair comparison. The dances and steps are on the GCD, so the potency per GCD is like 250. At least card interaction is oGCD, but I would like if Draw had 2 stacks.

Whilst not fair, I meant it as the closest comparison. And the payoff will stil bel lesser on an AST because they're less frequent. But fairdoes with the steps being GCD and something I hadn't considered in my post was that is that DNC can't weave attacks when they are doing this, so the 1000/1500 potency is kinda needed to compensate that handicap, so I was unfair there. Technical Finish, of course, is a nice bonus to my Esprit gauge too.


I like Divination mechanically, but it just doesn't feel worth it. It's giving me the need to have card choice and make decisions still, but the outcome is lackluster and feels less worthwhile doing. Either make it stronger or make it easier/more frequent is my thought.

[TankHunter678]

Whilst not fair, I meant it as the closest comparison. And the payoff will stil bel lesser on an AST because they're less frequent. But fairdoes with the steps being GCD and something I hadn't considered in my post was that is that DNC can't weave attacks when they are doing this, so the 1000/1500 potency is kinda needed to compensate that handicap, so I was unfair there. Technical Finish, of course, is a nice bonus to my Esprit gauge too.


I like Divination mechanically, but it just doesn't feel worth it. It's giving me the need to have card choice and make decisions still, but the outcome is lackluster and feels less worthwhile doing. Either make it stronger or make it easier/more frequent is my thought.

Though the steps are GCD they also happen to have the second shortest GCD in the game, only NIN Mudras are faster. So you can fit an entire Standard step within 1 normal 2.5 sec GCD. Technical within 2.

[Ceasaria]

The SMN of my groupe told me that now SMN and RDM have hard time to rez people because by doing so they struggle more than before with mana management now, because of mana song removed.
So yeah, Ewer is needed more than ever for progression at least.

[Eisenhower]

The point that changes happened doesn't surprise me - and if I was on the developer side I'd push for the same. The old cards, regardless of intent, in practice funneled players into the practice of dismissing a good half of the cards (if not more). Even if the Ewer and Spire weren't useless, I would say that most players saw them as "failures" when drawing. That's probably why the new cards are so homogenized in their effects. SQEX want all cards to feel useful, for players to always feel like they've drawn a prize.

I firmly believe that their current implementation is bad and misguided.

Variance in card effects is important to convey the feeling of choice and agency. Yet such variance is what high-end play strives to avoid; having a DPS or mitigation buff randomly available is terrible in the scripted encounter environment we play in. The solution to this isn't homogenization of effects. Rather, we should have been given tools to manipulate the draw results beyond the simple "redraw" and force the result - albeit at a cost further down the timeline. In physical card games, you are sometimes allowed to draw from your deck until you come across a card you're searching for. The associated cost could either be a game-specific resource such as "mana", having to discard the cards you've moved past and risk emptying your deck, or revealing information to your opponent. In the same way, I believe it suitable for an AST to force a result and pay in some way down the line: having to play the card you're overwriting without a chance to reroll, take a resource penalty, or suffer reduced effects in what you're forcing.

Overall, the approach taken by SQEX seem to point towards a preference of homogenization in an attempt to "balance". Whether this is due to lack of resources or a lack of vision is unclear.

[Typhoria]

I like Divination mechanically, but it just doesn't feel worth it. It's giving me the need to have card choice and make decisions still, but the outcome is lackluster and feels less worthwhile doing. Either make it stronger or make it easier/more frequent is my thought.

The seals seem forced. Having no other class interaction with it makes it feel pointless.

"Use 3 different colored cards once every 3 minutes. Then use Minor Arcana until you need those seals again."

The busiest part of Astro is on boss pull, where you have to fish cards with Sleeve Draw for Seals to use Divination. Even with Redraw, there is a chance to not get 3 unique seals within the first 4 (assuming the CD is refreshed before the pull begins) card plays.

Honestly, they should increase the card buffs to Minor Arcana levels and rework Minor Arcana to use seals when you don't need them for Divination. They could even have it similar to Stormblood. Solar seal would be Lord of Crowns, dealing damage at X potency. Lunar seal would be Lady of Crowns, healing at X potency. Celestial seal could be based on the Astro's last cast. Lord if Malefic/Combust, Lady if Benefic/Helios.

[PyurBlue]

The point that changes happened doesn't surprise me - and if I was on the developer side I'd push for the same. The old cards, regardless of intent, in practice funneled players into the practice of dismissing a good half of the cards (if not more). Even if the Ewer and Spire weren't useless, I would say that most players saw them as "failures" when drawing. That's probably why the new cards are so homogenized in their effects. SQEX want all cards to feel useful, for players to always feel like they've drawn a prize.

I firmly believe that their current implementation is bad and misguided.

Variance in card effects is important to convey the feeling of choice and agency. Yet such variance is what high-end play strives to avoid; having a DPS or mitigation buff randomly available is terrible in the scripted encounter environment we play in. The solution to this isn't homogenization of effects. Rather, we should have been given tools to manipulate the draw results beyond the simple "redraw" and force the result - albeit at a cost further down the timeline. In physical card games, you are sometimes allowed to draw from your deck until you come across a card you're searching for. The associated cost could either be a game-specific resource such as "mana", having to discard the cards you've moved past and risk emptying your deck, or revealing information to your opponent. In the same way, I believe it suitable for an AST to force a result and pay in some way down the line: having to play the card you're overwriting without a chance to reroll, take a resource penalty, or suffer reduced effects in what you're forcing.

Overall, the approach taken by SQEX seem to point towards a preference of homogenization in an attempt to "balance". Whether this is due to lack of resources or a lack of vision is unclear.

I agree. The larger variety of old the cards was desirable, but completely at odds with random drawing. That's why Bole, Ewer, and Spire were frowned upon. It's not because their effects were useless, it's because those effects were only useful at specific times. The Balance on the other hand was always useful. If we could just pick out which cards we wanted, the other 5 would see a massive jump in value.

Some element of choice could be added to the seal system as well alternatively. Currently the goal is to get 3 different seals for max effect, but this is a pretty shallow mechanic. We could instead get the same damage boost no matter the seals along with a secondary effect that is seal dependent. So for example the Solar seal might grant 2% damage reduction. Divination would provide a damage up and then 0/2/4/6 % damage down depending on the number of Solar seals drawn. The other two seals would have different effects that allow us to mix and match. We would have even more choice if the damage buff was decoupled from the secondary buff so that we didn't necessarily need to use both at the same time.

[Saefinn]

The seals seem forced. Having no other class interaction with it makes it feel pointless.

"Use 3 different colored cards once every 3 minutes. Then use Minor Arcana until you need those seals again."

The busiest part of Astro is on boss pull, where you have to fish cards with Sleeve Draw for Seals to use Divination. Even with Redraw, there is a chance to not get 3 unique seals within the first 4 (assuming the CD is refreshed before the pull begins) card plays.

Honestly, they should increase the card buffs to Minor Arcana levels and rework Minor Arcana to use seals when you don't need them for Divination. They could even have it similar to Stormblood. Solar seal would be Lord of Crowns, dealing damage at X potency. Lunar seal would be Lady of Crowns, healing at X potency. Celestial seal could be based on the Astro's last cast. Lord if Malefic/Combust, Lady if Benefic/Helios.

Whilst I am thus far enjoying the system, but I emphasise I'm coming from as an outsider to the job, so a certain element of this could be because the job is fresher to me and maybe a mix of positive thinking because I am not hating life with it. Give me three months and I might be back yelling "FIX AST PLS". However, I agree there is definitely room for improvement on the system, I think it is harsh how all the other benefits to AST were gutted and the seals could be done better. When I was last trying out AST my most used card was The Arrow and not The Balance, but everything is now The Balance. But I group with people who tend to prefer to go fast.

[LukaRoselia]

I don't hate it but I would love a revert because it feels so bland now and I think the cooldown on Divination is utterly ridiculous.