They should just delete AST

[Almostward]

This astro is trash compared to the original one. SB had a nice astro card machanic. They would have needed to work with the Spire, but they had a nice system.

This new one is God awful. Theres not much thinking. Card diversity is gone, and we no longer are a buffer....we just feed little usless balances.

[Blood_Blossoms]

I like the 5.05 patch but still dont change the fact that its only a little buff when you look at it.
That and the card system plays a lot better and feels better and not clunky as use to be as you dont have to use lightspeed for it now atlest.
Still hate rolling the same seal card over and over on last redraw. The 4-5-6% damage increase to divination well just a shift in first 2 makes it pointless for all lower content as long your aiming for 2 seals you be okay if you dont hit the 6. I presently feel this mostly to help people to feel less dissatisfied if they end up useing Draw - Sleeve draw / 2 seals - Redraw - Redraw - Redraw - play - divination. High end game matters and the 1% is a big matter and thats still a lot pain suffering to just try for a 1%.

Sorry not that good at English.

[Ardox]

Divination/AST job mechanic is a meme now. Who cares about seals now? 2% diff between best/worse combination is so low it just doesn't matter for most content/players. I may remove the job gauge altogether and won't even notice.

Lowering Divination cooldown have a side effect aswell - you will Minor Arcana less cards now.

At this point I just would like to have Minor Arcana cards drop from Draw and remove the "Minor Arcana" skill altogether. And while they are at it, remove Play and add its functionality to Draw.

Since they reduced the timer of Divination from 3 minutes to 2, it'll be a bit harder to get the seals aligned correctly so they decide not screwing AST for hypothetical bad luck.

[Mhiro]

Old AST: diversity was great in the cards but at the end of the day you were still fishing for a Balance or a spear. In many situations you didn't need anything else making most of the deck effectively useless during a lot of basic and some high end content.

New AST: Cards are streamlined to allow everyone to benefit from damage while other skills and stat increases replace the need for the 5 other cards. For example:

• - Crit dependent jobs are a little less crit dependent/have received or come with their own powerful self buff crit/DH skills. Spear has been replaced.
• - LD has been reduced to a 60s CD which, after playing since launch, I can tell you has made a huge difference even with the worst of tanks. Ewer has been replaced.
• - whether you're healing in Noct or Diu Stance both Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect have replaced Bole via Aspected Benefic and CI's heal. The increased amount of healing from using either at this stage of the expansion pack helps due to the amount of bad tanks that don't rotate CDs correctly and generally higher damage going out in situations where your DPS/Tanks aren't interrupting high damaging/high buff enemy skills. Looking at you Twinning.
• - You have enough skill speed/spell speed/instant use/cast abilities to make Arrow useless. BLMs aren't going to die without it.
• - TP is gone. Spire is useless.

I feel like many ASTs are confusing missing the old card mechanic for missing Royal Road which increased the ease at which cards went out by determining if someone got extended buffs, superior buffs or a party-wide buff, instead of having to throw cards to people individually. The biggest kicker is that last one. We can't AoE our cards anymore. Regardless of any situation, most ASTs fished for AoE cards, especially in 8-man content, so they could drop it, extend it with CO then go back to DPSing. This is what ya'll miss. but at the end of the day, we were all fishing for the same thing so what's the point?

Now, the cards have been replaced by our own new skills or the skills of other jobs leaving us to manage a multi balance single target mechanic without the ability to spread those cards easily.

If there's anything I want back, it's just Royal Road. I would love to have that back with a few tweaks to match the new system.

Also in regards to what AST's biggest advert was, it's not the cards. It's the dual healing type system via stances granting them the ability to adapt to any healing set up/situation. The cards are flair because you can clear any content in this game without the use of those buffs. They're not as important as people will lead you to believe and act as an unnecessary boon only used for the purpose of DPS padding and speed clears.

[Cled-cat]

So, I just took the newly patched AST for a spin in Eden 1, and it felt, ok I guess? However, OK is not the term I think should be applied to any job, especially a healer given this was the coveted “healer balance” expansion.

It can now keep up with healing fairly well, and doesn’t feel *as* handicapped as it did before. However, these were only band-aid fixes to a much bigger problem; the job identity itself.

I still believe the biggest issue is the constant tweaking and changing of the sects, which reveals one of the major flaws of AST. They’re basically a knockoff WHM and SCH mode that never lets AST shine in their own strength, but rather just try to fill the gaps of the remaining healer slot. This versatility may look good on paper but the fact that Nocturnal sect is objectively worse than Diurnal in essentially every aspect (no pun intended) shows they don’t know how to balance them with the other healers and AST’s identity itself.

The cards are okay, in my opinion. I do miss the fun utility of using an Ewer for MP Regen, or the Bole as an awesome defensive cooldown in anticipation for a tank buster, but the cards are still less of an issue to me than the sects personally. The Divination cooldown being brought down to 2 minutes makes it feel slightly better.

So yeah, AST feels okay, if you’re in Diurnal sect at least. But that’s a pretty sad statement to make, and shows how fundamentally unbalanced it is. Both sects should just be removed and the jobs healing style should be rebuilt from the ground up to make it truly unique and capable no matter the party composition.

[LalaRu]

Divination/AST job mechanic is a meme now. Who cares about seals now? 2% diff between best/worse combination is so low it just doesn't matter for most content/players.

I think devs done a very good choice there instead.

Savage players will refine their minmax rotations because they want that 6% up, while casual players cannot bother and run 4% without worries of making breaking mistakes.

[Jkap_Goat]

It's a shame you'd rather play a slot game than a healer job.

These improvements are perfect. AST is back.

You are delusional, astrologian is pure garbage, I loved AST when it was introduced, all cards had something unique, what is it now? A goldfish Job. That gives all balances, that function all the same.

[kidalutz]

[QUOTE=Brarry;5110733]These are improvements? Time extenders gone. Card variety gone. CU useless. Nocturnal sect lame.
They should just remove the class so they can focus on making a 3rd healer. Or instead of cards and a star globe the ast should just hold a roulette wheel spinner and all the results are the same but different colors to give the illusion of variety.
I won't be deceived by these "improvements"
What a shame to bring a beautiful and fun class so low.
They won't put effort to actually improve the class? If the class isn't fun and rewarding I won't be playing it.[/QUOTE

BALANCE NOT META How hard is that to get? nevermind rational thought has never been a forte of the forum crowd. I'm out to threads where the healers are actually kinda happy that all of us are sitting in a all three of us are viable position and realise we can only go up from where we're at instead of pissing and moaning that ones not at the head of the pack.

[Seraphor]

You are delusional, astrologian is pure garbage, I loved AST when it was introduced, all cards had something unique, what is it now? A goldfish Job. That gives all balances, that function all the same.

But when playing old AST, all you ever wanted to draw was Balance.
The rest was crap.
Spear was ok but not Balance.
Arrow was ok for SAM and BLM but not Balance.
Bole was Minor Arcana fodder.
Ewer was either MP when you didn't need it, or Divination taking up a card slot.
Spire was Divination taking up a card slot.

[Allegor]

To be fair, the whole card debacle is mostly about the job identity and its utility, not so much its performance (even when it kinda failed at that too).