Ast cards 6.0 rework

[Rai_Takara]

You must of forgotten the part where he also stated that he knows people don't like the card system as it currently stands. Just because something was said few months back does not mean it will be this way forever. Many things have been changed due to player feedback, this will be no exception. Also that quote was 5+ months old

You missed the part where he said they will continue with the current system for the foreseeable future...

The quote being old has little bearing because this is the same exact feedback that was given then as it currently has. Nothing has changed on that front. Unless they've come up with a better solution, but that solution isn't going to be to go back to what it was before.

It's interesting because people say only "speedkillers" followed "balance or bust" yet the devs have confirmed that they received plenty of feedback saying that it was a common theme with the job. I don't think it was just that small community that felt that way.

[MitsukiKimura]

You missed the part where he said they will continue with the current system for the foreseeable future...

The quote being old has little bearing because this is the same exact feedback that was given then as it currently has. Nothing has changed on that front. Unless they've come up with a better solution, but that solution isn't going to be to go back to what it was before.

It's interesting because people say only "speedkillers" followed "balance or bust" yet the devs have confirmed that they received plenty of feedback saying that it was a common theme with the job. I don't think it was just that small community that felt that way.

Re read that post you missed the part where it said "For now". As for someone who plays AST, there's something completely wrong with it if it's turning people away from playing the class. AST is competitively better than WHM at its peak play but currently as it stands AST is the least played healer. Food for thought.

[Rai_Takara]

Re read that post you missed the part where it said "For now". As for someone who plays AST, there's something completely wrong with it if it's turning people away from playing the class. AST is competitively better than WHM at its peak play but currently as it stands AST is the least played healer. Food for thought.

That's how it was for the entirety of Stormblood minus Alphascape. AST was the better healer always yet WHM was used more then too.

[HyoMinPark]

That's how it was for the entirety of Stormblood minus Alphascape. AST was the better healer always yet WHM was used more then too.

Not to this scale. WHM and SCH uploads have rivaled five to six times the amount of AST uploads for Shadowbringers thus far. AST was never five to six times behind the other two during Stormblood. And, honestly, the most complained-about aspect of the job on these forums is the card system. How many threads are made asking for reworks to it? I get it: there’s people that like it—but based on these forums, it’s not the majority of people here. And even though the official forums is likely a very small sample size of the playerbase as a whole, it’s also the platform the developers tend to take feedback from.

[ForteNightshade]

You missed the part where he said they will continue with the current system for the foreseeable future...

The quote being old has little bearing because this is the same exact feedback that was given then as it currently has. Nothing has changed on that front. Unless they've come up with a better solution, but that solution isn't going to be to go back to what it was before.

It's interesting because people say only "speedkillers" followed "balance or bust" yet the devs have confirmed that they received plenty of feedback saying that it was a common theme with the job. I don't think it was just that small community that felt that way.

The dev team has shown extreme inconsistency when it comes to feedback. Monk has been near universally despised, and they expressly said changes would come in Shadowbringers. That didn't happen, resulting in the panic response in 5.05 when the community finally abandoned the job. They once said they liked the physical and magical tank dichotomy but we saw that didn't last past Heavensward.

What's likely preventing them from reverting Astro changes is it was as reviled as Monk, Ninja and Summoner were. But given Astro has primarily warmed the bench this tier, I'd say it isn't doing well. 5.2 may determine just where the community lands given Astro is objectively the strongest healer. At least in rDPS. If it still isn't played... that says everything.

[Rai_Takara]

Not to this scale. WHM and SCH uploads have rivaled five to six times the amount of AST uploads for Shadowbringers thus far. AST was never five to six times behind the other two during Stormblood. And, honestly, the most complained-about aspect of the job on these forums is the card system. How many threads are made asking for reworks to it? I get it: there’s people that like it—but based on these forums, it’s not the majority of people here. And even though the official forums is likely a very small sample size of the playerbase as a whole, it’s also the platform the developers tend to take feedback from.

Perhaps SE is okay with those numbers though. Who knows. We'll find out this Thursday about it possibly.

The dev team has shown extreme inconsistency when it comes to feedback. Monk has been near universally despised, and they expressly said changes would come in Shadowbringers. That didn't happen, resulting in the panic response in 5.05 when the community finally abandoned the job. They once said they liked the physical and magical tank dichotomy but we saw that didn't last past Heavensward.

What's likely preventing them from reverting Astro changes is it was as reviled as Monk, Ninja and Summoner were. But given Astro has primarily warmed the bench this tier, I'd say it isn't doing well. 5.2 may determine just where the community lands given Astro is objectively the strongest healer. At least in rDPS. If it still isn't played... that says everything.

True, but can only go by what they say currently. Easy to look back and see what they've said and not done but if we take that stance now then we can't trust anything they say now which I think is too negative of an outlook to have on the devs.

[Side-Eye]

If active participation is any indicator, Squeenix would be wise to take a good hard look at the card system and try to figure out why it's turning off people who used to play the job as main. HINT: the old card system gave a variety of tools which, while tied to some RNG, gave the astrologian some feeling of adaptability to meet a wide variety of situations; the new card system is all about a tiny bump in DPS -- which, while DPS is always desired, leaves a big gap in job satisfaction. Truth is, if you just want supreme healing you can choose WHM and get great DPS too (and it's DPS that is directly attributable to the WHM without trying to figure out from parsing whether it helped the others enough).. the player is really reaching at this point for any reason to choose AST, and coming up short.

[Dzian]

The dev team has shown extreme inconsistency when it comes to feedback. Monk has been near universally despised, and they expressly said changes would come in Shadowbringers. That didn't happen, resulting in the panic response in 5.05 when the community finally abandoned the job. They once said they liked the physical and magical tank dichotomy but we saw that didn't last past Heavensward.

What's likely preventing them from reverting Astro changes is it was as reviled as Monk, Ninja and Summoner were. But given Astro has primarily warmed the bench this tier, I'd say it isn't doing well. 5.2 may determine just where the community lands given Astro is objectively the strongest healer. At least in rDPS. If it still isn't played... that says everything.

The issue the devs have that makes them repeatedly inconsistent is there own ideas are destroyed by there own design choices.

The physical / magic tank dichotomy bei prime example that was mentioned. Great idea. Give tank classes some real diversity and uniqueness. Destroyed entirely by their stupid decision to make an entire content tier almost exclusively magic damage. Thus benching the physical tank entirely.

The same goes with the obsession on dps dps dps. Which is why whm spent much of 4.0 benched. All that extra healing power it had was quite simply useless again as a result of encounter design choices. Then in 5.0 they state more emphasis on healing but the encounter design is just as disconnected from that as ever. Ogcd heal on scripted predictable hit and then back to 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 dps spam for the next 20 seconds before the next scripted hit and next ogcd heal. And back to 1 1 1 1 11dps spam etc. All these shiny new heal tools but never an opportunity to use them.

It's almost as if the people designing the jobs are working on a completely separate game to the ones designing the encounters and content those jobs function in. Doubly so with the amount of completely useless skills like silence stun sleep heavy slows that still exist to this day.

[Crushnight]

You missed the part where he said they will continue with the current system for the foreseeable future...

The quote being old has little bearing because this is the same exact feedback that was given then as it currently has. Nothing has changed on that front. Unless they've come up with a better solution, but that solution isn't going to be to go back to what it was before.

It's interesting because people say only "speedkillers" followed "balance or bust" yet the devs have confirmed that they received plenty of feedback saying that it was a common theme with the job. I don't think it was just that small community that felt that way.

Q: Are there any plans to make adjustments for astrologian?

A: We’re thinking of making overall adjustments. For card effects, while they have a flashy visual effect, you can’t feel much of an actual effect, so we’re currently making adjustments aimed for Patch 3.05 so that you can feel the effects of the cards and their usage. Some of our planned adjustments include being able to use Spread while not in combat and shortening the recast time for Shuffle. This will give astrologians more opportunities to make use of cards, which is the job's defining feature. As for Collective Unconscious and Celestial Opposition, rather than make adjustments while comparing them to other healer actions, adjustments will be founded on astrologian's special traits where they switch between stances and use cards. Since this a new job, as well as a bit more of a technical job, the effects of some actions may be difficult to understand, giving the impression that the job is weak, so we’ll make adjustments without waiting for raids to be introduced.


Just gotta laugh at this, they didn't want the cards to feel unimpactful as it was the defining feature back in HW pre savage release , what is a common complaint now the cards don't feel worth it or need a parse to see their effect XD

Anyone can pull up old information from the devs to reinforce their argument they are human beings they can have a very different mindset from 5+ months ago especially if they do take in feedback, if they are straight deaf (they are not else they wouldn't have said we know some of you don't like the changes) then take everything word for word.

[ForteNightshade]

The issue the devs have that makes them repeatedly inconsistent is there own ideas are destroyed by there own design choices.

The physical / magic tank dichotomy bei prime example that was mentioned. Great idea. Give tank classes some real diversity and uniqueness. Destroyed entirely by their stupid decision to make an entire content tier almost exclusively magic damage. Thus benching the physical tank entirely.

The same goes with the obsession on dps dps dps. Which is why whm spent much of 4.0 benched. All that extra healing power it had was quite simply useless again as a result of encounter design choices. Then in 5.0 they state more emphasis on healing but the encounter design is just as disconnected from that as ever. Ogcd heal on scripted predictable hit and then back to 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 dps spam for the next 20 seconds before the next scripted hit and next ogcd heal. And back to 1 1 1 1 11dps spam etc. All these shiny new heal tools but never an opportunity to use them.

It's almost as if the people designing the jobs are working on a completely separate game to the ones designing the encounters and content those jobs function in. Doubly so with the amount of completely useless skills like silence stun sleep heavy slows that still exist to this day.

I have long suspected the dev team is very disconnected from everyone else involved. It would certainly explain remarks made by Yoshida like them not accounting for the Piercing debuff and what you've mentioned. Obviously, this is pure conjuncture on my part but there has to be some degree of poor communication going on, especially for healing design.

If nothing else, I do believe they've reached a point where they'll have to make a decision because the number of complaints from non-raid healers is growing. So either they make healing itself more interesting or give in to the DPS focus. Keeping this barebones design for another expansion I fear will cause even more players to abandon the role. Heaven help them if they don't add a fourth healer—or how they design it is very underwhelming.