Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

[Crushnight]

Unpopular opinion, but all jobs don't have to be popular. People are free to swap jobs if they prefer something else. Perhaps the new healer will be more to their liking. People that love the job will play it regardless of what it becomes. People who only loved the play-style won't.

Nothing wrong with people wanting the feel back from the old system, but people really need to understand the big flaw with it that just can no longer be tolerated. The game is moving more towards standardization across all jobs/roles. RNG systems have to be limited in use.

This could have had more weight if they hadn't used "the people who like it now" excuse because it straight up opens them to criticism from the camp who liked it before the changes, if that camp is bigger vocally (usually is as your more likely to voice complaints than satisfaction) then when comes to 6.0 changes do they listen to the large dissatisfaction of ast voices or go with their supposed numbers. Do also bear in mind the only metric we have as players shows Ast have a massive drop off in ShB compared to SB and Ast again is the strongest rDps healer.

Also 6.0 can straight up completely change things again, HW added, SB gived and took(especially whm), ShB took more than it gave(and what it gave can be argued as reskin of old abilities or unnecessary for most content), 6.0 could just add or it can reshuffle or it could completely rework the healers from base. Anything could straight up happen, I brought in bow mage for that very thing it was a radical difference between ARR brd -> HW brd -> SB brd who is to say what will happen to ShB ast come 6.0 except the devs themselves.

[Rai_Takara]

As in - Sleeve Draw just gives you the 3 different seals?
That's boring as hell my dude. It means you only need to do the seal job mechanic for 1/3 divinations.

Yes, because that's essentially what it exists to do but instead you have needless extra steps. Akin to prior MA where you had to turn the card into Lord/Lady to then play it.

Then instead of standardising the cards, they could have standardised draw. Guaranteeing one of each card over 6 draws.

That's supposedly what people don't want? Standardization in general? They want the RNG utility back? Their current cards are fine as is. You always are guaranteed damage and this system has more weight and thought than the old one in terms of maximizing output.

If you think that's an opinion, then you're sadly mistaken. Take a look at multiple forum threads that express dissatisfaction towards this card system. There are 3x more WHM and SCH players than current AST player base.
You're wrong, many people love the job but have quit over the changes to it such as myself. People want their class to be fun, not catered to a specific category of the game.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-expansion-pls

I mean I said it was unpopular. The general playerbase always wants flashy and unique things whereas the more competitive side understand that there needs to be compromise for balance. This should matter to the general playerbase because once the competitive side says a job is bad, it just gets discriminated against in PFs and trickles down. There's a reason SE, who cares about their general playerbase, is finally heavily balancing jobs to make sure people all jobs are good.

And it's fine if there are more people playing non-AST healers. That's okay. Like I said, not all jobs need to be played equally. There's nothing wrong with that.

This could have had more weight if they hadn't used "the people who like it now" excuse because it straight up opens them to criticism from the camp who liked it before the changes, if that camp is bigger vocally (usually is as your more likely to voice complaints than satisfaction) then when comes to 6.0 changes do they listen to the large dissatisfaction of ast voices or go with their supposed numbers. Do also bear in mind the only metric we have as players shows Ast have a massive drop off in ShB compared to SB and Ast again is the strongest rDps healer.

Also 6.0 can straight up completely change things again, HW added, SB gived and took(especially whm), ShB took more than it gave(and what it gave can be argued as reskin of old abilities or unnecessary for most content), 6.0 could just add or it can reshuffle or it could completely rework the healers from base. Anything could straight up happen, I brought in bow mage for that very thing it was a radical difference between ARR brd -> HW brd -> SB brd who is to say what will happen to ShB ast come 6.0 except the devs themselves.

Anything could happen, as always, but the current trend with SE, and they started this in SB itself, is to minimize performance variation between jobs so that any combination of jobs is performs as identical as it can be. I'm sure the 4th healer will be met with surprise when it seems to play similar to the previous 3 healers since SE doesn't want some radical new healer to mess up the balance they've created thus far.

[YusiKha]

Yes, because that's essentially what it exists to do but instead you have needless extra steps. Akin to prior MA where you had to turn the card into Lord/Lady to then play it.

You may as well remove the base cards and draw only Lords and Ladies. We want the classes more engaging to play, you realise?

That's supposedly what people don't want? Standardization in general? They want the RNG utility back? Their current cards are fine as is. You always are guaranteed damage and this system has more weight and thought than the old one in terms of maximizing output.

The current cards are fine, in the sense that they are functional.
The weight and thought has been moved from 'quick decision-making' to 'memorise the burst phases of every class in the game, adjusting for downtime or mistakes' (or just yolo cards onto the highest dps melee/ranged).

You weren't guaranteed damage with the previous system, but you're also not guaranteed to get a 3 seal divination. Randomness is still part of the class, and when I join a normal raid with 4 ranged/caster, I roll my eyes and prepare for half of my cards to immediately become ShB Boles.

I mean I said it was unpopular. The general playerbase always wants flashy and unique things whereas the more competitive side understand that there needs to be compromise for balance.

I get what you're saying - but you shouldn't take a stanley knife to fun's gut for the sake of implementing a just-as-annoying-let-me-draw-a-bloody-ranged-card coin flip.

This should matter to the general playerbase because once the competitive side says a job is bad, it just gets discriminated against in PFs and trickles down. There's a reason SE, who cares about their general playerbase, is finally heavily balancing jobs to make sure people all jobs are good.
And it's fine if there are more people playing non-AST healers. That's okay. Like I said, not all jobs need to be played equally. There's nothing wrong with that.

Imean... Something's pretty wrong when the competitively best healer is in less than 20% of parses, especially when you're saying it should be the most popular for that reason.

[Rai_Takara]

You may as well remove the base cards and draw only Lords and Ladies. We want the classes more engaging to play, you realise?

I mean, the purpose of cards is to build seals, and lord/lady exists to get rid of cards without messing up the seals. You want more engaging? Wait till next expansion when they expand on the seals concept.

The current cards are fine, in the sense that they are functional.
The weight and thought has been moved from 'quick decision-making' to 'memorise the burst phases of every class in the game, adjusting for downtime or mistakes' (or just yolo cards onto the highest dps melee/ranged).

You weren't guaranteed damage with the previous system, but you're also not guaranteed to get a 3 seal divination. Randomness is still part of the class, and when I join a normal raid with 4 ranged/caster, I roll my eyes and prepare for half of my cards to immediately become ShB Boles.

The only place where 3 seals isn't guaranteed is the opener, after which there's ample time. Worst case you don't? 4% damage which is still better than zero if you didn't draw anything worthwhile in the previous expansion. The jobs make more tuned for PF/Savage/Ultimate levels of gameplay and not per say dungeons or normal raids. Cases where having zero melee or zero ranged is virtually impossible. Plus, the old decision making part of it wasn't much to a seasoned AST. The meme of balance or bust comes to mind and if you didn't see that shiny card, it was redraw or minor arcana for the vast majority of draws.

I get what you're saying - but you shouldn't take a stanley knife to fun's gut for the sake of implementing a just-as-annoying-let-me-draw-a-bloody-ranged-card coin flip.

This is just opinion but job balance should be the primary decision making factor when it comes to job design. That's not to say AST can't be changed. All I've been stating is the current system is a good foundation to build and improve on, but that doesn't mean they'll go back to what it was in terms of having buffs be completely RNG as that system was flawed and the cost of fixing that was a new healer this expansion.

Imean... Something's pretty wrong when the competitively best healer is in less than 20% of parses, especially when you're saying it should be the most popular for that reason.

You say that but go look at SB. AST was the best healer hands down for prog and competition and yet, most people played WHM, the worst healer in that expansion. Popularity =/= competitiveness. People play jobs for different reasons, some aesthetics, some playstyle, some for the meta, etc.

[MitsukiKimura]

The only place where 3 seals isn't guaranteed is the opener, after which there's ample time. Worst case you don't? 4% damage which is still better than zero if you didn't draw anything worthwhile in the previous expansion. The jobs make more tuned for PF/Savage/Ultimate levels of gameplay and not per say dungeons or normal raids. Cases where having zero melee or zero ranged is virtually impossible. Plus, the old decision making part of it wasn't much to a seasoned AST. The meme of balance or bust comes to mind and if you didn't see that shiny card, it was redraw or minor arcana for the vast majority of draws.
.

AST cards should not be based on Savage/Ultimate levels of gameplay nor any class should. It should reflect it's lore with it's different card abilities. I've quit the class completely and won't dare touch it until changes are made.
Also I've ran dungeons in the past and raids where there was no melee before other than the tank so that's completely wrong. It's gameplay is stale and boring. Probably the worst experience I've had in this entire 2+ years of playing.

[Rai_Takara]

AST cards should not be based on Savage/Ultimate levels of gameplay nor any class should. It should reflect it's lore with it's different card abilities. I've quit the class completely and won't dare touch it until changes are made.

I disagree.

All non-limited jobs are based on high level of content because that's where their differences matter. In lower level play, the jobs are not stressed and have a lot of leeway.

SE has also stated that they won't add abilities within the job lore anymore to future facilitate balance changes without worrying about impacting lore.

Also I've ran dungeons in the past and raids where there was no melee before other than the tank so that's completely wrong. It's gameplay is stale and boring. Probably the worst experience I've had in this entire 2+ years of playing.

Dungeons aren't "PF/Savage/Ultimate." That's where you will see all roles 99% of the time. Dungeons, 24 man raids, normal modes, these content are not what the jobs are made with in mind since whatever jobs can do at a higher level, they can do at a lower level too.

I want to stop you here in SB whm's biggest presence was for Deltascape, for Sigmascape and Alphascape had sch as the most played while whm was around 10k behind Ast a drop off for sure but far less than what ast currently has compared (do bear in mind Sigma and Alpha numbers were up until ShB release so longer timeframe than Eden has had atm, and it stayed this consistent throughout).

Whm was being played more because it's playstyle still appealed to people despite being the weakest healer, Ast is the strongest healer right now but is played the least.

Good for one group can and has negatively impacted how a job can be designed. (Look at mnk/drk/smn etc)

SCH was always a pick, that really hasn't changed. Should be looking at AST vs. WHM numbers.

Currently both WHM and AST are both equally strong while the best of the best groups getting more value out of AST, but not enough that it is the best choice bar none.

SE not taking into account how much impact the hardcore players have on the rest, is precisely why we had jobs that were neglected. People ran WHM in SB, but if you wanted to move up to a higher level of play, you were more or less forced into AST.

Are the card changes good? Personally no I hate them ik i'm not alone in thinking that but what drew me to Ast was lost in ShB's overhaul, and personally again it was an unnecessary overhaul the only hlr that needed work from SB was whm due to how lillies functioned and you know giving them actual utility the very thing the devs are so adamant about not giving them because they are stuck in the notion big heals are everything when they can never design around such heals because then 2/3 of hlrs couldn't do it.

WHM didn't get damage utility in ShB? I'm not sure why you think they did. The devs are still true to their word that WHM will forever be a pure damage and pure healing job that doesn't provide party damage buffs like SCH and AST.

[MitsukiKimura]

I disagree.

All non-limited jobs are based on high level of content because that's where their differences matter. In lower level play, the jobs are not stressed and have a lot of leeway.

SE has also stated that they won't add abilities within the job lore anymore to future facilitate balance changes without worrying about impacting lore.



Dungeons aren't "PF/Savage/Ultimate." That's where you will see all roles 99% of the time. Dungeons, 24 man raids, normal modes, these content are not what the jobs are made with in mind since whatever jobs can do at a higher level, they can do at a lower level too.

Not everything has to be catered to those specific types of gameplay. If you think everything has to revolve around PF/Savage/Ultimate then I can tell you this, you'll push a lot of people away because not everyone likes that type of content. Also they've already stated they know people don't like the card system, so a rework is most likely happening. And no I don't see AST hardly at all in Savage, PF and etc. Gee I wonder why. Why implement the usage of the card system at level 30 if it's completely worthless until 70+?

[ForteNightshade]

I mean, the purpose of cards is to build seals, and lord/lady exists to get rid of cards without messing up the seals. You want more engaging? Wait till next expansion when they expand on the seals concept.

This mentality is what buried Machinist, Monk and Dark Knight for years. Why should people have to wait two years for the devs to expand on a system that is widely disliked? That's essentially acknowledging the concept was half-baked at best but they released it anyway. Look no further than 5.0 Ninja and Monk, which were so disliked both received panic buffs within weeks; Ninja going on to get an entire overhaul.

Put simply, the devs' refusal to address bad ideas or expand far earlier is what led to Dark Knight being the least played tank in Stormblood by a mile. Ironically, all it really needed was less emphasis on Dark Arts spam and Dark Missionary—both which could have been addressed in Stormblood.

The meme of balance or bust comes to mind and if you didn't see that shiny card, it was redraw or minor arcana for the vast majority of draws.

This is only true in the speedrun community. The vast majority of players made far more use of those cards because they weren't min/maxing to the fraction of a second. While it did often still revolve around Balance and Spear, it also isn't surprising there is such a vocal outrage now given that majority far outnumbers speedrunners.

This is just opinion but job balance should be the primary decision making factor when it comes to job design.

Thing is... Astro was balanced in Stormblood. The issue was White Mage have zero raid utility, thus making it the inferior choice. Samurai and Black Mage suffered a similar problem hence the sheer dominance of Dragoon, Ninja, Bard and Summoner. That all being said, perhaps the biggest change that helped fix this didn't even come from SE but how logs are now ranked, making it so selfish jobs are more accepted into groups now.

Either way, if a job is perfectly balanced yet no one plays it. What's even the point? When I look at TEA and see both White Mage and Scholar with over ten times the clear rate of Astro. That isn't a good sign. Ironically, I know several people who claim Astro is actually really good in TEA. But once again... no one wants to play it.

[Rai_Takara]

Funny thing - I’m not going to be hopeful for improvements in a new expansion after Shadowbringers. And saying that I should wait another year and a half for a chance at improvements isn’t going to sit well.

Which is enough to tell me that you haven’t played too much of ShB AST. It’s not frequent, but it happens.

It didn’t happen very frequently, but you’re right. High highs bring low lows.

Jobs being tuned for Extreme and above is fine with me. But completely overhauling a class’ main gimmick (in the most thoughtless way, I may add) is not going to sit well with the playerbase who enjoyed it.

Then you’re onboard with the other memes of WAR only fell cleaving. Should RDM and DRG have personal guard rails on arenas with falloff?
ASTs would actually do their best to pair any damage card with Expanded Royal Road, not solo focus balance.
Your argument is only valid for speedkillers, but that is a completely other kind of audience than Ult/Sav/Ex. Have you seen those LB cheese videos? It’s mental.

No, fun is. Balance tethers fun, but should never overtake it.

The new system could be improved with time, but they\\'ve already shown willingness to throw everything out and start from scratch. And the older system could have been improved as well.

WHM had prog, thanks to its mana efficiency and Cure3. AST was only straight up better in alphascape, where it got 1.5s Malefic and most of the fights had damage bursts in 60s intervals, catering to Earthly Star. WHM was also the least popular healer in alpha too.

Didn’t you say that people flock to the best jobs competitively before? That’s true, but only the case when the jobs feel good to play. We’d be seeing a lot more MNKs if that weren’t the case.

AST was better in from the start of SB, but it didn't catch on till people kept seeing WF use it consistently and coming out of WHM prog/AST parse was a common mentality. Same as when the start of HW main healer/off healer was pretty common, even if wrong. Alpha is one tier out of the whole expansion. Look at ultimates as well. The same reason AST is good in alpha was the same reason they were good for pretty much everything. Star/collective/cards/etc.

Nerfing the balance card, changing Spire to Direct hit % increase. There are 6 cards with only 2 being non damage buff cards. Your chances of drawing a crit increase, arrow, balance or direct hit will be much greater now that we have 3 stacks of redraw. People want their class to be fun and engaging, not tuned to only high end tier of gameplay. This would allow them to even re work undraw since it is still worthless to even have on your hot bar to this date. Many people have given their suggestions, you should go read them.

That doesn't fix anything because as soon as you find the most optimal card, you play that and only that. The cards have to be identical or there will be a best. And where there is a best, it's that or bust. That's the main issue with the system. On top of that, nobody wanted arrow, so that always going to be a dead card unless it had some other effect, but that just complicates the mess further without avoiding the balance issue at all.

Slim minority of people such as speed killers that'll never change. As I've stated before, and after reading hundreds of thread comments, feedback from other AST's, the card system as it stands right now, is not fun/rewarding and a pain in the ass to use. If you're willing to attempt to try to get that "best" card out of a 1/6 chance then be my guest. The Goal should be to make each card worth drawing, not reduce every card to some basic 6% damage that nobody outside of a third party parser would care for.

The things "speedkillers" or hardcored raiders do will be set as a standard to the community. It trickles down to the people that engage in extreme+ content. Will it matter for dungeon crawlers? No, but that's not the target demographic anyhow.

Funnily enough this current system does make it so every card is worth drawing, as you put it.

This mentality is what buried Machinist, Monk and Dark Knight for years. Why should people have to wait two years for the devs to expand on a system that is widely disliked? That's essentially acknowledging the concept was half-baked at best but they released it anyway. Look no further than 5.0 Ninja and Monk, which were so disliked both received panic buffs within weeks; Ninja going on to get an entire overhaul.

Put simply, the devs' refusal to address bad ideas or expand far earlier is what led to Dark Knight being the least played tank in Stormblood by a mile. Ironically, all it really needed was less emphasis on Dark Arts spam and Dark Missionary—both which could have been addressed in Stormblood.

This is only true in the speedrun community. The vast majority of players made far more use of those cards because they weren't min/maxing to the fraction of a second. While it did often still revolve around Balance and Spear, it also isn't surprising there is such a vocal outrage now given that majority far outnumbers speedrunners.

Thing is... Astro was balanced in Stormblood. The issue was White Mage have zero raid utility, thus making it the inferior choice. Samurai and Black Mage suffered a similar problem hence the sheer dominance of Dragoon, Ninja, Bard and Summoner. That all being said, perhaps the biggest change that helped fix this didn't even come from SE but how logs are now ranked, making it so selfish jobs are more accepted into groups now.

Either way, if a job is perfectly balanced yet no one plays it. What's even the point? When I look at TEA and see both White Mage and Scholar with over ten times the clear rate of Astro. That isn't a good sign. Ironically, I know several people who claim Astro is actually really good in TEA. But once again... no one wants to play it.

They admitted NIN needed fixing as soon as it was released and it still took them time to rework them. AST system, even though people complain, is fine and that's the dev's position thus far. That's why you don't hear anything about changes coming in.

DRK also had people who liked the SB iteration more than the HW iteration, same as BRD.

Yet the vast majority don't do ultimates but development time is still spent on it. Because SE knows that small community matters. Hell they fixed LB cheesing that plagued speedrunners and speedrunners only. It was something that rarely affected non speedrunners but was a huge problem for speedrunners. Even in ShB people found out a way and SE quickly squashed it.

I don't disagree with AST being balanced and WHM being not good. My point there still stands. Even when it wasn't good and not as smooth as AST to play (with their 1.5 cast in sigma), people still played WHM more than AST. I also suspect the only reason there are slightly more AST parses in Alpha was because it was speed running/parse tier at the end of expansion.

I can tell you why people don't play AST in TEA, because WHM is easier and as competitive. Ultimate being a harder fight, people would rather play the easier healer, always. Funnily enough when my group cleared my WHM wanted to try AST but wasn't allowed to because we didn't want to change healing for reclears.

[MitsukiKimura]

That doesn't fix anything because as soon as you find the most optimal card, you play that and only that. The cards have to be identical or there will be a best. And where there is a best, it's that or bust. That's the main issue with the system. On top of that, nobody wanted arrow, so that always going to be a dead card unless it had some other effect, but that just complicates the mess further without avoiding the balance issue at all.



The things "speedkillers" or hardcored raiders do will be set as a standard to the community. It trickles down to the people that engage in extreme+ content. Will it matter for dungeon crawlers? No, but that's not the target demographic anyhow.

Funnily enough this current system does make it so every card is worth drawing, as you put it..

Now see that's where you're wrong. You think you know what the community is going to do but yet you do not. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I can assure you the vast majority of the AST community did not fish for balance all the time. Every card you draw right now is lame, uninteresting and boring as hell. Giving an arrow to a black mage was a god send but I don't think you knew about that.