Goodbye Astro

[Almostward]

And for the people who think this is just a small group of us upset, I would love if you check the JP side, so many first time posters going there to either express their disappointment or outright say they will quit AST altogether, with a ton of likes on each post too.

Really? It's that bad there also?

Guess I need to check that out

[Wawachume]

SCHs had to beg to get energy drain back so they did not enter a feast or famine situation in terms of MP.

That wasn't really the problem for scholar---at least not for me, and I think not for most people. The reason I wanted energy drain back wasn't for the MP or the damage, but just to have a button to dump excess aetherflow stacks, because wasting resources felt bad on a job themed partly around resource management.

To the extent that energy drain has helped with my mana situation, it's not really because it restores MP, but because I'm no longer hesitating to recast aetherflow if I haven't used all the stacks.

They seriously could make that one button ST buff ability use the same animation we have now using a randomized card appearance and nothing would change. You just would not have to deal with the clunky frustrating system that one single card being all the cards produced.

I think I honestly would have preferred that. I don't know that the new card system is more or less complex than the old one; I kind of think it's apples and oranges. All I know is that I enjoyed the complexity of the old one and don't enjoy the complexity of the new one. So if the old system had to go, I'd have preferred a really simple card system combined with increased complexity elsewhere in the job.

[Kleptobrainiac]

Canceled sub. Resources are not being put into the healing classes because the devs don't play healers. They see no need to change the clunky flavorless boring card system for ast. Collective unconscious. Horoscope autodetination? No reason for 6 images of the cards that don't make sense to keep since lore is out the door. Looks like homogenization is there route due to laziness to allocate resources to development. They are happy with the 2 healer dynamic of sch and whm.

Which classes do the devs play?

[Side-Eye]

Ewer wasnt bad because its effect was bad, but because it was tied to RNG and therefore an unreliable source of mana regen.

Ewer wasn't necessarily "tied to RNG" because IF doing new content or otherwise finding yourself (or teammate) running into mana trouble often, you could set Ewer aside to use it when you needed it. In fact any utility could be set aside like that. There were times when I was healing a squishy tank who thought s/he HAD to pull big .. so I'd set aside Bole, use it on a big pull, and when I drew Bole again I'd set it aside. I viewed these as an extra, not a necessity, *because* there was still RNG and it was possible not to see a specific card before you'd want to use it. *shrug* I thought it was fun.

Indeed, the beauty of the astrologian, at least the 4.0 version, was that its great variety of tools was a bit limited by RNG and you couldn't just click any utility on demand -- but the class ((WHEN PLAYED WELL)) had elegant methods of mitigating the randomness. You could plan some of those methods in advance depending on environmental variables, such as what kind of boss fight was coming up, or whether you had a weaker geared tank, whether there was a DPS check to get past, etc.

It's sad to read from people who apparently never played AST to its full potential. When I hear things like "fishing for balance" or "only two cards were useful" -- I see a red flag, someone whose comments should probably be disregarded, or at best, taken as a third-party perspective.

[Hanayumi]

Probably in the minority here, but I kinda like how the base cards are now, personally runs feel a lot smoother to me than they did before the changes. A couple things I am not enjoying however is noct, barely even touch that lately, so hope they figure something out with it and also kinda wish lord and lady did... something else, just find them kinda boring as "slightly" better versions of base cards... heck id take their old effects to be honest...

[Greywolfamakir]

AST is fine, I really like new cards system. I just activate my sub to play AST, so...Thank you SE for new AST

[BahamutxD]

I stopped playing it aswell. Leveled to 80 but it feels bad. It's a hot mess mostly because of the card system and the high amount of oGCDs. Sure those oGCDs are awesome to have but it feels you are forced to heal just with them or you are wasting DPS time.

[Brandedblade]

Snip

I'm sorry bad tanks gave you a biased experience. Even in 5.0 when gravity was a full cast time I still found moments to cast it when the tanks taking a beating, especially when Lightspeed was up. Use your cooldowns. If the tank is still taking a beating after you've used all your cooldowns that is either on them for not properly mitigating or the group not having sufficient aoe dps.

Energy Drain wasnt brought back for the mp sustain. It was brought back so SCH's had a way to dump excess aetherflow. You have Lucid on a 1 min and Lightspeed on a 90 sec cooldown. You have the tools to restore mp, maybe throw a bone and give ast another mp restore? Ok fine, but an rng card that you would rather burn to enhance a dps card most of the time is too unreliable, sure you could save it, but most people would've rather save that balance so they can use it at the best time.

[Dynia]

Which classes do the devs play?

Black mage

[Lodi]

Yes, I have my own "bad" opinions that do not align with the "community-approved" ones.

The old system was an unreliable pile of RNG mess. You had Balance, two worse Balances and three utility cards. The (very few) moments where you needed one of the utility cards, you had 1/6 chance to get them.

The new system is something you can actually control. It's better for balancing and it has plenty of room for optimization. That's all.

Before: Balance, two situational balances, three utilities, one damage and one heal. The ability to burn a card to buff the next.

Now: Eight way worse balances. And three redraws so if you don't like your way worse balance you can trade it for another way worse balance.


Eight whole cards with eight different effects turned into a coin toss with two similar outcomes.


AST mains played AST because of the cards and their semi RNG which involved fast decision making and made them feel powerful. And unique.
To turn this all into a coin toss that's either heads or heads is like removing jumps from Dragoons, or buffs from Bards... whoops, sorry!