Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

[Rai_Takara]

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

Explain how they could have. I'm genuinely interested in your proposal, since you seem to have an idea of how.

Aside from pure damage from the cards or no damage at all, I'm not sure you can avoid the issues of the old card system that had to be fixed.

[YusiKha]

Wait till next expansion when they expand on the seals concept.

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.

The only place where 3 seals isn\\'t guaranteed is the opener, after which there\\'s ample time.

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

Worst case you don\\'t? 4% damage which is still better than zero if you didn\\'t draw anything worthwhile in the previous expansion.

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

The jobs make more tuned for PF/Savage/Ultimate levels of gameplay and not per say dungeons or normal raids.

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.

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.

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.

job balance should be the primary decision making factor when it comes to job design.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

[MitsukiKimura]

Explain how they could have. I'm genuinely interested in your proposal, since you seem to have an idea of how.

Aside from pure damage from the cards or no damage at all, I'm not sure you can avoid the issues of the old card system that had to be fixed.

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.

[Malmstrom]

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.

People would still fish for whatever gives the most damage. Probably crit, since crit is king of everything.

[MitsukiKimura]

People would still fish for whatever gives the most damage. Probably crit, since crit is king of everything.

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.

[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.

[Mhiro]

Hydealyn almighty...I just want royal road back. Like I don't even care if the effects from this EXp pack stay the same (bc they're aight either way). I just want royal road back. And I want them to fire whoever thought changing Minor Arcana would be a good idea. I have a perfect controller AST set up that works wonderfully without me needing to manually target anyone but that Minor Arcana change screwed it up. Change it back.

[Crushnight]

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.

Jobs need to appeal to as wide an audience as possible <- this is the mentality that has killed a lot of healers enthusiasm, tanks and some dps too.

Why do healers have bare bones downtime tools to appeal to new players or other players to pick up healing - what happened was they pick it up and put down as they get bored faster and this was done at the expense of veteran healers enjoyability of the role.

Ast was more interesting back in SB and HW than now the system was simplified but in its simplification it increased the busy work you do dealing with its gimmick.

Not every job HAS to appeal to everybody (can be applied both before and after ShB)but SE tried doing just that with tanks and healers and it had varying degrees of backlash. Ast is just the most vocal about it because it was a seemingly pointless change to a large amount of people.

Ast has abysmal numbers due to 3 things
1.Radical change that alienated a lot of veteran asts
2.Controller issues - the biggest problem by far yet no acknowledgement at all and they have been present since savage.
3.Stigma - the hardest one to overcome as it requires to get people to not immediately bad mouth ast even in a passive way like "do you play on controller and care about optimising(also gotta laugh the very place you are advocating jobs should be balanced from has the biggest issues for ast XD) if yes to both don't bother you'll be both bored and frustrated with its gameplay + have 8+ macros at the ready oh ik they have input delay but your hands will thank me later"

All stuff SB Ast never had and whm only had stigma of being the 'weakest' healer which is much more easily circumvented than issue 1 and 2 stigma.