Goodbye Astro

[Ubbernaut]

We are truly sorry about the initial issues with the feel of the job. That said, card effects were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." It does indeed lower the feeling of "drawing a good card," but if we make certain cards significantly more powerful than others, then we'll just return to fishing for the good ones, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with this style for now.

Okay I want to look the person in the eye who says 'We made Astro only draw useful cards' when my party has all ranged or melee DPS. I want to look them in the eye and hear them explain how 50% of all the cards we can get aka +3% buff are NOT 'Useless card'. The change makes it that we get not ONE but HALF of our total cards to be useless, instead of the old systems single card (which still had its uses for Royal Road!)

The Original developer of the Astro card system likely was moved away from the project, because right now CLEARLY SE has no idea what made Astro interesting, fun and flavorful to play. Since whoever wrote up this excuse has no idea what they're talking about.

The worst part is 'We plan on continuing with this style for now.' in other words, any hopes for major overhauls are likely gone till next expansion or THIS is the new 'Astro' forever. Extremely disheartening news indeed.

[ColdestHeaven]

Okay I want to look the person in the eye who says 'We made Astro only draw useful cards' when my party has all ranged or melee DPS. I want to look them in the eye and hear them explain how 50% of all the cards we can get aka +3% buff are NOT 'Useless card'. The change makes it that we get not ONE but HALF of our total cards to be useless, instead of the old systems single card (which still had its uses for Royal Road!)

The Original developer of the Astro card system likely was moved away from the project, because right now CLEARLY SE has no idea what made Astro interesting, fun and flavorful to play. Since whoever wrote up this excuse has no idea what they're talking about.

The worst part is 'We plan on continuing with this style for now.' in other words, any hopes for major overhauls are likely gone till next expansion or THIS is the new 'Astro' forever. Extremely disheartening news indeed.

I...uhm...if you don't want that card, can I have it? Last time I checked 3% was better than 0%, I mean, that's like an almost-Dancer constant buff given for free. They are not really useless - they are less useful. They still have an impact.

Since everyone likes to talk Bole, let's talk Bole. Why tie defense to a RNG resource when a healer class should ALWAYS be able to count on it to save the party? An ability that transformed a damage buff into a defense buff, if things got hairy, now that would have been better - situational, yes, but better than just staring at a tree that doesn't progress anything. Now, MP restoration and TP restoration? Assume you already have Royal Road'd a previous one, in case you didn't. Do they have any use? Unless people died, quite unlikely. TP rarely did at any rate. Finally, ow we have three damage buffers. One increased base damage (arguably the better), one increased critical, one increased weaponskill/spell speed. Yeah, some might have synergized better than others with certain jobs (Spear>Bard/Monk, Arrow>Black Mage), but at the end of the day Balance still was the one serving the purpose better: increasing the damage dealt.


So: we had a resources split in six instances. Three were situational and three which served the damage increase purpose in different ways and had different impact according to classes.

What we now have a resource split in two instances. One increases damage and one increases damage - less, but it still does. Which means that each time you use Draw you are getting a benefit. You are clutching at straws when saying that a Bole could have saved the situation and that they reduced the usefulness of cards. They made them more reliable in a focused purpose rather than a roulette spin. While it sounds like a fun idea to have a random resource which comprehends many and more possibilities to support the party, this one can't work as the support part of Astrologian in this game. Either they removed the DPS buff (many more would have trashed the class) or they solely made it into DPS to make it less frustrating to use to support the others in the most efficient way - that would be, killing enemies faster most of the time.

[TankHunter678]

-snipe-

If you do 10k DPS on your MCH then that 3% is an extra 300 DPS. That is lower impact then throwing the non-optimal card from the old system on you. It also only lasts 15 seconds so you wont even feel it because it effectively has no impact at all. They are useless. It is better to minor arcana it and throw it on a healer or tank of the appropriate range then throw it on the wrong DPS. Cause if your tank is only doing 8k DPS then that 8% Lord of Crowns card boosts their DPS by 640 compared to 400 if it was tossed on your MCH at 10k DPS. Even without Minor Arcana it is better to toss a melee card onto the tank when you have no melee to put it on. If you have a co-healer and only Melee DPS then any ranged card is better tossed on the co-healer.

The reason why a low power boost like the Dancer standard step buff and the old AoE Balance buff were worthwhile was because despite only minorly boosting damage they did so over a long duration. AST could boost the duration so the entire party had 40 seconds of +5% damage and boost the top DPS to have 55 seconds of +5% damage. Dancer buffs themselves and their partner throughout the entire fight as they need to use Standard step on cooldown as an attack as much as a buff. The sheer duration is what makes the buff worthwhile the lower the strength goes.

Now the reason why the old DPS buff cards could be so strong and impactful was because there were utility cards mixed in as well. Which also meant the utility cards could be strong. Sure in optimized 8 man savage raids Bole was seen as useless because they only wanted AoE Balance, though that was not the only content and in all other content Bole was useful for a wide range of reasons. Ewer in optimized 8 man savage raid was not very useful aside from being an AoE burn, but in all the rest of the content it was useful because in 24 man raids or 8 man normal raids deaths were common and in 4 man dungeons gravity spam ate you MP like hell. Spire had the most niche use and was indeed the one mostly useless card, it needed a rework.

Overall yes the new cards are "reliable" in that they are generally useless for the given amount of busy work that you need to do. Their durations are too short for the strength of buff they give. As they lack utility cards to be counterbalanced against they cannot be permitted to be strong, as such they remain feeling impactless. They also made it just as frustrating if not more so, because while there was minor disappointment in not getting the card you wanted previously you are getting handed literally useless cards that feel worse to use if you have the wrong class configuration in the party. It is not amusing when the only person I can buff is the tank because the cards are pointless on every other person in the party.

[ColdestHeaven]

If you do 10k DPS on your MCH then that 3% is an extra 300 DPS. That is lower impact then throwing the non-optimal card from the old system on you. It also only lasts 15 seconds so you wont even feel it because it effectively has no impact at all. They are useless. It is better to minor arcana it and throw it on a healer or tank of the appropriate range then throw it on the wrong DPS. Cause if your tank is only doing 8k DPS then that 8% Lord of Crowns card boosts their DPS by 640 compared to 400 if it was tossed on your MCH at 10k DPS. Even without Minor Arcana it is better to toss a melee card onto the tank when you have no melee to put it on. If you have a co-healer and only Melee DPS then any ranged card is better tossed on the co-healer.

The reason why a low power boost like the Dancer standard step buff and the old AoE Balance buff were worthwhile was because despite only minorly boosting damage they did so over a long duration. AST could boost the duration so the entire party had 40 seconds of +5% damage and boost the top DPS to have 55 seconds of +5% damage. Dancer buffs themselves and their partner throughout the entire fight as they need to use Standard step on cooldown as an attack as much as a buff. The sheer duration is what makes the buff worthwhile the lower the strength goes.

Now the reason why the old DPS buff cards could be so strong and impactful was because there were utility cards mixed in as well. Which also meant the utility cards could be strong. Sure in optimized 8 man savage raids Bole was seen as useless because they only wanted AoE Balance, though that was not the only content and in all other content Bole was useful for a wide range of reasons. Ewer in optimized 8 man savage raid was not very useful aside from being an AoE burn, but in all the rest of the content it was useful because in 24 man raids or 8 man normal raids deaths were common and in 4 man dungeons gravity spam ate you MP like hell. Spire had the most niche use and was indeed the one mostly useless card, it needed a rework.

Overall yes the new cards are "reliable" in that they are generally useless for the given amount of busy work that you need to do. Their durations are too short for the strength of buff they give. As they lack utility cards to be counterbalanced against they cannot be permitted to be strong, as such they remain feeling impactless. They also made it just as frustrating if not more so, because while there was minor disappointment in not getting the card you wanted previously you are getting handed literally useless cards that feel worse to use if you have the wrong class configuration in the party. It is not amusing when the only person I can buff is the tank because the cards are pointless on every other person in the party.

I wasn't talking as a DPS, I was talking in general: cards go to whichever benefits the most, regardless of the role, that much I think we can easily agree on, because a damage increase is good regardless of the source - again, it's a matter of being more or less useful. Assuming normal cards being used on "correct" candidates: 10000 MCH gets 600. 8000 GNB gets 480. I'm not entirely sure this is how math works because cards don't increase linearly DPS in such a way (also buffs multiply etc.), but even in this case, damage is damage.

I can't agree or disagree on the buff being less visible or feeling less impactful than the older versions for the sole reason that I have no math to check - but if I remember correctly, the aim of the devs was to not make a party too reliant on damage buffs from Astro - so that could be the reason for undertuning this aspect in exchange for the "stability" of a damage buff instead of being at the mercy of RNG. Was that a good decision? Not sure, probably not, but then again I wasn't defending this part. However I do get the impression that the problem lies in wrong cards being far too weak, rather than "variety" being taken out of the equation.

[Miziliti]

I...uhm...if you don't want that card, can I have it? Last time I checked 3% was better than 0%, I mean, that's like an almost-Dancer constant buff given for free. They are not really useless - they are less useful. They still have an impact.

Sure, take the whole pack. While you are constantly using 10 fingers to contribute with constant card throwing and weaving, the WHM/SCH next door uses 2 fingers to dps and manage to do the same or even higher party contribution with just personal dps.

Ask your BLM how many Fire IV he can manage to squish in that tight 15s window. I bet one can finish counting with just 5 fingers.

DNC Standard Finish is a 5% 60s buff with 30s cd that can be maintained forever easily. Cards aren't even a competition.