Hi SE, can we get rid of the current card system in next expansion, pls?

[Synaesthesia]

It does not make most healer focused players happy, who have less defensive utility and less activities to do in downtime than attack and play with a damage only mechanic.

It does not make most raiders happy, who have to manage 3 cooldowns, a hyperactive opener, constant target switching and busywork which will still land an Astrologian playing their cards perfectly a comfy last place on the damage meter. These changes seem to have been largely made to appease raiders, and the end result of losing around 75% of that population should speak for itself.

It does not make most controller users happy, who are literally filling extra hotbar space with macros in order to even make it manageable.

It has made a very small number of people happy and their reasoning that they can't change it to not offend them is appreciable, but misguided. I don't want to cause people who just like that consistency any offense, but there were people who also liked old Ninja more.

They should be looking at the huge population loss in raiding, outcry from healing focused players, those who want their lore back, people having a hard time even just controlling the system whatsoever and considering that they're pushing the majority of players away from what was previously a generally beloved healer over this change.

At the very least, from a personal perspective I hope that if they can't bring the old system back or introduce a better alternative within this expansion, they need to adjust the output of the system to feel rewarding. I can't even notice an effect when playing in game, aside from the sheer frustration of fishing for seals in a 10 second span while avoiding savage mechanics, or being in an alliance with 1 tank and no melee.. They can adjust pdps down if they need to balance it out, but such a central and busy class mechanic so watered down that the effects aren't visible without a parser is extremely unsatisfactory.

[Sloprano]

I do feel for all you AST players, especially when the 5.1 notes read like a PvP patch note: Just sterile tens and hundreds number changes more thought up by a machine than an actual person and the cards with such a low incremental performance increase it can only be seen under a microscope not allowed in the EULA with nary a word about the look and feel of the job.

Cynisism keeps suspecting more and more that these are only, and only, made in preparation for the upcoming Ultimate, and they want everything to be spot-free of dust and fun when the streams go up. I keep looking a my own Fey Union, Recitation, Excog, Indom, Chain strat and Seraph and think these aren't made to compliment the job to have fun out in the world, in dungeons or MSQ duties, these are so I have a cooldown after raid boss X does his attack 4 min and 32s into the fight.

The way they keep balance tanks and healers almost have them converging into one with all the samey skills with their unique parts being sidelined. If balance is so important they have to make everything mind-numbing one-button or 123 with a side of oGCD, why even have more jobs in a role than the fights accepts? Since they keep adding seperate systems for everything: Eureka, Deep Dungeons, Blue Mage and most of all PVP, I'd still like to let us have loadouts. One could be the squeaky-clean for getting maximum magenta number (or whichever is the rage these days) and other could be the inefficent, unoptimized, uncertain, unpolished and wild fun that used to be.

Why wait? I want at least the old cards back much sooner than that.
I know realistically, we probably will have to wait though.

SE keeps showing an impressive amount of effort to prevent talking about Healer gameplay that went through the wringer in 5.0 and how they play in non-Shadowbringer content. I want them to actually talk about or find a journalist/streamer to ask why sacrificing lore, uniqueness and nuance had to happen so we all can stand around watching a 2.5s cast until you can count the individual pixles fill up the bar or AST's getting arhritis so we can know if there is a actual person at SE playing and deciding changes to these jobs.

[Nanami_Naniwa]

But what about all the people who like it the way it is?

[MitsukiKimura]

But what about all the people who like it the way it is?

I can assure you that number is very small to the huge outcry I've seen over it. I see and hear people quitting the class over this new card system because of how stale and unsatisfying it is. To just boost damage only doesn't fit the lore of AST nor feel rewarding to use the card system. It has no soul nor passion behind it. I don't want my personal DPS buffed, that's not how you "Fix" a support utility healer. People who complained about it back then only fished for balance and never appreciated the utility it had. Now that it's gone and people are either playing WHM or SCH, it breaks my heart.

[Alynn]

But what about all the people who like it the way it is?

There's nothing this new system of cards does that the old one doesn't do. People complained about balance fishing, but you're doing the same thing with the seals for divination, and even more so when you're doing your opener and you're trying to get the 3 different seals by the 3rd - 5th gcd. Utility does not amount to slapping cards on dps just cause. Utility was being able to save pulls with boles and ewers, or deciding when to redraw or hold onto your card for the next trick, etc. There's very little thinking to be had with new ast. You see if its ranged or melee, you slap it on the dps. Get 3 seals, press divination on cd. It's glorified busy work.

[E4EO]

I never got to play AST in 3.0 or 4.0 so I can't say that I miss the old system, but what I can say is that I don't like this system. There's no difference in the cards other than what role gets the buff, and memorizing something like that is so tedious and annoying I thought to write down what cards go where, but now I'm likely not gonna bother at all with AST due to the lack of choice in cards, it's so dull. So yes, I agree that they should get rid of the current card system.

What really sucks is that we'll likely have to wait until 6.0 and something closer like 5.2, 5.3. Whatever gets AST fixed the best I suppose.

[Billythepancake]

But what about all the people who like it the way it is?

What, all 12 of them?

[Crushnight]

While the numbers are low, concernedly so(we used to be in mid 40k for savage clears now we are mid 10k that is a major drop off especially compared to the other two healers), they ain't that bad XD but it seems enough people are playing for SE to be so hesitant about touching the card system again, do i want this card system nope i hate it, but hyperbole just opens up to needless criticism and i'm sure we don't want that :P

[Brandedblade]

But what about all the people who like it the way it is?

They're either like me and defending it when we're bored and at work, or they're in the game enjoying it and not crying about it here.

[ReiMakoto]

They're either like me and defending it when we're bored and at work, or they're in the game enjoying it and not crying about it here.

I've never liked this "the people who like are in game playing it not on the forums" argument, things that are bad cause people to get out of the game and onto the forums to complain, also this statement isn't backed up by facts, like the fact that AST is objectively less played now than before, meaning you can easily extrapolate that to mean more people liked the old system