Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

[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.

[monk-dps]

I have a question for those people that say AST is fine besides MP management, and play with a controller. What do you think of the card system?
I'm actually not against the cards all being straight damage buffs (though it would have been more interesting if they still had different effects, just balanced out so that they are the same potency).
But without Royal Road all cards are single-target, and Sleeve Draw is extremely annoying.
What are you thinking about having to target all the DPS with a controller all the time?

From my side of the internet everyone I've played with, know or talked to about it loves it. And yes... all are on controller. Hell one of them says the forums are just crying about nothing and need to play it instead of complaining. This is their words not mine. I'll give you a name.. but naming and shaming. Honestly the only people I see that hate it are on the forums. But this is just on mine limited experience. I myself don't raid on healers but I didn't have a problem with it myself. MY issues are with what they aren't doing with monk....

[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.

[Crushnight]

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.

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)

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.

[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+?

[Rai_Takara]

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+?

That's a poor example as a lot of jobs currently are incomplete until you hit max level and AST is no exception.

I agree that it shouldn't completely cater to the hardcore crowd but if there's a decision that needs to be made with regards to balance, I know which group takes priority.

[MitsukiKimura]

That's a poor example as a lot of jobs currently are incomplete until you hit max level and AST is no exception.

I agree that it shouldn't completely cater to the hardcore crowd but if there's a decision that needs to be made with regards to balance, I know which group takes priority.

Balance could of easily been handled many different ways about the card system. Pure damage on each card is just lazy, uninteresting. I've played other classes and leveled them each having their skills and etc do their part but AST's card system feels like a empty shell of what it could of been