Why so much complain on AST?

[MPNZ]

Facilitating the function of a job's primary role makes the job easier to play; this doesn't necessarily translate to the game being easier. There's a big distinction there.

In order for the game (encounters) to be easier, things like DPS checks have to become more lenient, hard enrages removed, longer cast times for boss abilities, more telegraphs, less out going damage, etc. In this regard, the game hasn't got any easier at all. In fact, just the opposite as the devs are stacking more and more mechanics in normal mode encounters because the playerbase is consistently getting better at handling them. Which you can add to the reasons on how a game gets easier over time. But I digress.

As to the topic, AST is just fine as simply a healer, but this is easily accomplished with the game's healing requirements. It suffers a bit with MP regeneration and still lacks a solid skill to restore MP quickly, but other than that the majority of the complaints all gravitate towards its card mechanic. Which is a mess. Has always been a mess. And will continue to be a mess because a mechanic that heavily utilizes RNG isn't going to work. Even after stripping most those layers away with ShB, the little RNG that is left is still creating a lot of grief with this job. Not necessarily because the RNG makes getting a desired (seal) difficult, but because the RNG aspect of this mechanic has forced all of its cards into a single buff.

This job has an incredibly high APM, and a incredulously low feeling of reward even if doing it all optimally. They are what I call the catapult loaders. They do the brunt of the work, but the person launching the catapult gets to have all the fun. I hope that makes sense.

TBH, optimizing things in general can just strip a ton of enjoyment out of games. Especially, if it's an aspect that's like totally forced and hen-pecky

[Gemina]

TBH, optimizing things in general can just strip a ton of enjoyment out of games. Especially, if it's an aspect that's like totally forced and hen-pecky

The way I see things, is that if doesn't feel rewarding or fun to try and play your job optimally then something's not right. That doesn't necessarily mean the job is designed poorly as sometimes how a job plays is in contrast to a player's playstyle, but I don't feel this is the case with AST. The card mechanic is atrocious and literally strips all enjoyment out of this job.