Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

[Lastelli]

You still have RNG of dancing between melee and ranged dps cards. I've lost count how many times it has danced between arrow and balance back and forth wasting my redraw stacks as I'm trying to weave them in with malefic. People who loved AST adapted to it, people who were lazy and only fished for balance were sub par at AST, granted balance was the best card, it was not efficient to waste time going for it 100% of the time. You seemed to forgot that we had Minor arcana that turned our Spire or Ewer to a Instant heal card which was lovely to have on stand by since we did not have stacks of ED and the potency wasn't as good back then. Having the cards all straight dps buff does not reflect lore or bring any sort of uniqueness of gameplay to it. It needs to change, you can't respect lore of other things about FF if you cannot acknowledge lore of a class that its card system is the Main reason it stands apart from other healers.

That's a very biased way to look at it. In previous expansions, cards were an "all or almost nothing" mechanic. Either you got lucky with your draws, or you simply had to be satisfied with an extremely suboptimal result. Lord/Lady? They didn't even come close to the utility provided by an aoe balance.
Right now, even if you don't get the card you want, you're not losing much in terms of utility. This is always true, be it because you wanted a melee card instead of a ranged card, or because you couldn't prep 3 different seals for divination, bad luck doesn't screw you too much and you're losing very little in terms of actual support. In HW and SB, on the other hand, spire/ewer/bole direct effect (tp/mp regen and damage mitigation) had very little utility in most scenarios and were close to useless in a well coordinated party because tanks and healers would map all their cds to deal with all the dangerous mechanics.

I can understand if you tell me that you prefer variety. But the argument that "fishing is worse than before" or that "there were no useless cards before 5.0" is not convincing.

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw. Lore is already butchered in this game anyway.

[Boomsmash]

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw. Lore is already butchered in this game anyway.

Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics. People can complain about those too of course but that's just what the devs thought would be fun.

For the cards, there was the random chance and ways to influence it, to make the most of what you got or adapt to a changing situation. Making arguments that such and such is useless in Savage/Extreme/Ultimate statics makes your argument invalid. 99% of the players don't live in those. You can't argue that class mechanic was too hard and then be calling the fights too easy. Doesn't work that way.

DPS have DPS buffs. Tanks have defense buffs. Healers have healing buffs. Then there are the weird and wonderful classes that have a bit of a mix. Instead of reveling in that or playing another class in the role that fit your notion of the play style, you wanted AST reduced to some uninteresting, "optimized" slurry.

If you can't stand that it won't always be "optimal", don't play it. I'd rather have my Healer Improvisation back.

[Lastelli]

Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics.

Cards are nothing like Dancer's mechanics for two major reasons:

1) You have no control over your procs, you just react to what you have, while following some very basic priority rules to make sure you don't waste any proc;
2) Procs only unlock other weaponskills or offensive ogcd (note how damage mitigation is totally out of the equation, because as soon as damage is an option, it will become the only desirable option) and since both proc rates and proc activation chances are high, at the end of the fight it evens out, so the variance in terms of dps is relatively small. This was not true with old cards, where you could have extremely variable rdps contribution depending on luck, which made it close to impossible to balance. And like it or not, balance is important in online games.

With the current iteration of the cards system, they fixed the balance. You don't like it? Then suggest how they can design a system that can be balanced and work with the scripted fights in this game. Hopefully something that won't turn WHM into a meme again, just because you want to have your fake "healer improvisation" back.

[Boomsmash]

Lots of threads when the changes came out covered better ways, from being able to select which effect you would throw when the cooldown was up (which would surely make the optimizers happy), to having them vary based on what class you threw them on (encourages spreading the buffs around), and into having debuff effects if thrown on enemies (whee!).

All of those are better than the current system. I think my idea was using a rotator like the Magia board for AST's cards, dial and toss. If you only want damage, ignore the other cards. If you need MP, dial and throw. Cooldowns for making it AoE, a damage hit, or a heal burst.

[MPNZ]

Gameplay consistency > Lore btw.

While this is basic statistics and factual in terms of numbers: It doesn't change that it's not enjoyable to play as a card game, takes way too much time away from healing, and is literally painful and requires a frustrating amount of effort to play well with controllers, which is why there is a recorded drop in AST players in statics. They would have to rollback the ogcd timers and potencies, and restore royal road or add an "potency(.7) to all party member or within AOE radius of targeted player" to just deal with the issues for controllers and reducing the time allocated from healing. And, the card game aspect was basically just calculating risk/reward on the spot based on player jobs and card that was drawn with abilities to help manipulate the results, which is what is seen in TCG's deckbuilding. Also, totally what Boomsmash said

Nope. All the nope. And you have it wrong. The effects before had lore consistent with gameplay. It was about surfing probability and adapting, a lot like Dancer's mechanics. People can complain about those too of course but that's just what the devs thought would be fun.

For the cards, there was the random chance and ways to influence it, to make the most of what you got or adapt to a changing situation. Making arguments that such and such is useless in Savage/Extreme/Ultimate statics makes your argument invalid. 99% of the players don't live in those. You can't argue that class mechanic was too hard and then be calling the fights too easy. Doesn't work that way.

DPS have DPS buffs. Tanks have defense buffs. Healers have healing buffs. Then there are the weird and wonderful classes that have a bit of a mix. Instead of reveling in that or playing another class in the role that fit your notion of the play style, you wanted AST reduced to some uninteresting, "optimized" slurry.

If you can't stand that it won't always be "optimal", don't play it. I'd rather have my Healer Improvisation back.

[Heilstos]

Hey guys,

I have to say that a lot has changed at AST.
But now to a few of the points / wishes that I had read the days in the forum and I will be happy to answer:

- I want the time aspect back -> The problem here is that extending buffs are cool, BUT the problem I told over 3 years is that HoTs to extend is great (hey Diu) but not shilds. I belive SE found no great way to make it great for Noc and they wanted to nerf the buff system in FF14 so it way to deal with.

- The "healing" is hard -> The heal is the best way SE can make for the AST. The AST is now in a place that he is not the WHM with cards.

Celestial Opposition is the same like Aspected Helios that stacks together:

So if you make in Diu this combo and you make a normal helios you have the same Healpower like a Vita III (200HP (Hots) + 330 HP = 530HP) for 15s also 5 times. Thats great!

In Noc its like you that 2 times the same shild -> Thats a 500 HP shild! Thats much.

The Mana costs from Helios (900mp) and asp. Helios (1000mp) are not compaire anymore. Its allways better to make a asp. Helios instand of an Helios. For Noc its the like allways if you need a shield and for Diu its like did I make asp. Helios (and no Neutral sec.) than make helios.

But the Collective Unconscious is rubish in Noc, Marius! -> Its not if you think what is the task as noc to medigate that the whm can make more dmg because you medigate so much you can. The buff can is 20s long but you can extend it 38s with 10% less dmg for a 60s CD thats much. But no worry there is not a fight were I would stand 18s hehe but 9s happend. ^^

What is with the cards, you should be unhappy, like us! True the Idea to boost dmg is a call from the raid community and the rng from the Seals is nerfed thats okay. 4 -> 5 -> 6% is okay the rng do not so hurt.
But I want something like my old bole back if you ask me. ^^

I think for a lot of you it feels hard to play the cards now. It costs me a night to make find a solution I can live with that:

- PC player:Guide from me Marius Heilstos, but the basic idea is from Bokchoy

- Contoler Player: Guide from Aly/Erdene click me!

But if you ask me what is the Problem now for the AST or what is a think SE should do in your view, Marius?

-> At the moment I play my AST with 2175 Piet and use the pixibear Tea -> So I have a mana reg from ~300 mana. My other healer do not need a so high manareg. because the have both mana tools instand of lucid.

What is the answer of that mana problem? -> SE made a thing in PVP in the time the AST gets mana back if he pick up a card. And if Yoshida like the Idea that we draw a card often maybe its cool that the AST get mana (e.g. 500 mana = 5% of max. mana) back if he AST draw a card (no card with Sleeve Draw!!)

I think thats okay in the stressful way that card have to play. Befor a WHM or SCH comes on the way that would be unfair compair the less mana costs.

Thanks for reading the wall of text and I agree with Risvertasashi the AST heals in great way atm and do not need to be stronger in healing or need dmg buffs or card buffs. The cards feels clonki till you use Macros (look in the Guide and try it out!)

your Marius Heilstos from Odin =)

[YusiKha]

"Buff Extending" Section

If the extension skill was called 'rewind', it could give X seconds back (to a maximum of Y) to regens as well as giving X potency back to shields (to a maximum of Y) - bringing back shields that were broken.

Chances are it was removed because it was hard to consistently get the full usage of both card and regen extending.

"Healing is Hard" Section

I'll be honest - I'm not sure what you're talking about here.
Are you saying that it's good that AST is unlike WHM? If so, why are you immediately showing ways to 'duplicate' Cure3?

And when you bring Nocturnal in - is it still a WHM comparison? Because SCH is the other 'shielder', and Noct is far behind SCH because SCH has loads of health healing tools, shields are pretty pointless in this game.

"Collective Unconcious" Section

Compared to Temperance and Sacred Soil, CU is rubbish.
Temperance has +Healing and no range requirement, at the cost of a longer recast.
Sacred Soil has a 600p regen and a 30 second recast time at the cost of 5s of mitigating.
And the whole channeling part of the CU needs to just dissappear. I don't think there's ever any need to hold it for longer than the weaving window.

"Card Usability" Section

The point is - We shouldn't need guides for handling the ease of an integral part of our kit.
We shouldn't need to dedicate 2 hotbars to 2 skills.

"Mana Issues" Section

I have no issues with most of the paragraph, but I want to focus on this:

AST heals in great way atm

Diurnal AST heals fine.
Nocturnal AST needs more health healing to make it a viable counterpart to Scholar.

My Addition
Horoscope, Synastry and Neutral Sect need looking at. The rest of AST's kit promotes oGCD usage, but Synastry and Neutral Sect only benefit GCD heals, and Horoscope interacts only with (Asp.)Helios, despite CO being identical. That seems like conflicting design to me.
Do they want us to be an oGCD healer? Why do Synastry and Neutal Sect not affect oGCDs then?
Do they want us to be a GCD healer? Why is there no damage return on GCD healing actions like WHM has?
Do they want us to sometimes use GCD actions, when our oGCDs aren't enough? Why are the oGCD tools all so damn strong?

[Malmstrom]

I think my favorite parts of threads like these are "AST NEEDS BETTER MP MANAGEMENT, WE NEED THE EWER TO GIVE MP AGAIN".

MP management should not be dictated by RNG.

[ParadoxHealer]

I am done worrying how they will screw up AST (or other healers) further. I canceled my subscription, and have said good bye. AST was my favorite healing job in any game before they shredded it. The Dev's with the recent changes and a portion of the population have made it clear they want healers as pets, rather than letting the people who main healers get the same challenge other classes do. All the classes are becoming homogenized and have lost challenge, but healers took it the worst. I have been much happier as I stepped away. I loved the storyline from ShadowBringers, but the game play I enjoyed is gone.

[Kabzy]

I think my favorite parts of threads like these are "AST NEEDS BETTER MP MANAGEMENT, WE NEED THE EWER TO GIVE MP AGAIN".

MP management should not be dictated by RNG.

I actually think WHM/SCH should have their MP regeneration nerfed, rather than buffing AST. Does nobody else miss savage fights where you actually had to think twice about your MP? Or are we still on that "make everything as easy and dull as possible" bandwagon?