General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[ReiMakoto]

See?

And I'm not going to bother repeating myself if this is the attitude I'm faced with.
Summary: AST old card effects cannot be balanced, period. That's objective.
The number of AST players, that's subjective. You can say "numbers are facts" but they only prove the subjective opinion of players. Objective reality isn't a democracy, don't use an argument of popularity to attempt to prove objectivity. Otherwise we'll be claiming Trump is objectively a good president...

You cannot make a blanket statement like old ast cannot be balanced like that. RNG classes can always be balanced by stacking the odds, occasionally you'll get a dud but more often than not you get a good option. IIRC old ast had a 70+% (cant remember the exact number think it was likely higher) chance of using some sort of aoe damage up buff every min. That meant it was pretty much consistent outside of absolute dud hands which were rare, so you then balance the output around the averages. Occasionally you'll get a god tier run where the stars align, and that run will be better, however you also get runs where someone happens to crit way more, or got good procs, ect. Old AST could be balanced, its just player perception of what they should be doing lead to many to play it sub optimally leading to polarising results. You cannot objectively say old AST could not be balanced, because you could make it so on average it has a balanced output, and then any god tier rng runs are just a byproduct of good rng same as for any other proc or rng based class. As long as there was suitable ways to manipulate your rng and the duds could be refunded in some way an average balance can be achieved.

[Seraphor]

You cannot make a blanket statement like old ast cannot be balanced like that.

FFS... I guess I am repeating myself then.


Bole - A 10% damage reduction ability that you only have access to 1/6th of the time. This means that the healer kits can't be balanced around having this type of single target damage reduction ability. It is either considered essential, which puts AST at a disadvantage 5/6th of the time, or it is considered useless.

Ewer - Crucial MP regeneration, that impacts the balance of MP maintenance. With it (again only 1/6th uptime and totally RNG) AST has too much MP, without it, not enough.

Arrow - Speed increase. Some jobs NEED this, some jobs have their rotation thrown off by it making it actually detrimental. Most jobs however simply do not feel the benefit of it at all. On paper you can math it out and say that it should be a ~12% DPS increase or whatever, but in practice, players clip their GCD's, and unless it results in getting a whole additional GCD in the 30s window that it has an effect on (which it doesn't) then it's useless.

Spear - Crit buff. Crit scales logarithmicly, making less effective at the start of an expac and more effective at the end, making it disproportionately effective for some classes than other, and completely screwed with Bards job mechanics pre-Shadowbringers to the point where it was proccing way more Bloodletters, etc. than the devs ever intended.

Spire - doesn't need mentioning.

Balance - ironically the only balanced card in the set.

The whole picture, has AST players either constantly fishing for expanded Balances (so the whole RNG thing is a waste of time) or having their core healer kit (Bole and Ewer) at the mercy of RNG (objectively detrimental to them as a Healer)


But no, I'm sure you enjoyed having such a janky RNG system to fight against. I'm sure it was a blast!
I'm sure Tanks would enjoy it if their cooldowns randomly disappeared form their hotbars as well, or perhaps Monk's had their stances randomly change instead of being on a rotation.
Or you know what, maybe Black Mages spells could either cast random fire or ice spells. Will it be Blizzard and regen MP, or will it be Fire and switch from UI to AF when you don't want to? Who knows!

[ReiMakoto]

FFS... I guess I am repeating myself then.


Bole - A 10% damage reduction ability that you only have access to 1/6th of the time. This means that the healer kits can't be balanced around having this type of single target damage reduction ability. It is either considered essential, which puts AST at a disadvantage 5/6th of the time, or it is considered useless.

Ewer - Crucial MP regeneration, that impacts the balance of MP maintenance. With it (again only 1/6th uptime and totally RNG) AST has too much MP, without it, not enough.

Arrow - Speed increase. Some jobs NEED this, some jobs have their rotation thrown off by it making it actually detrimental. Most jobs however simply do not feel the benefit of it at all. On paper you can math it out and say that it should be a ~12% DPS increase or whatever, but in practice, players clip their GCD's, and unless it results in getting a whole additional GCD in the 30s window that it has an effect on (which it doesn't) then it's useless.

Spear - Crit buff. Crit scales logarithmicly, making less effective at the start of an expac and more effective at the end, making it disproportionately effective for some classes than other, and completely screwed with Bards job mechanics pre-Shadowbringers to the point where it was proccing way more Bloodletters, etc. than the devs ever intended.

Spire - doesn't need mentioning.

Balance - ironically the only balanced card in the set.

The whole picture, has AST players either constantly fishing for expanded Balances (so the whole RNG thing is a waste of time) or having their core healer kit (Bole and Ewer) at the mercy of RNG (objectively detrimental to them as a Healer)

ASTs kit was set up in such a way that you didn't need bole for mitigation in raid content, they had enough baked in mitigation, same with ewer it wasn't necessary if you were good.

Spear, Balance and arrow were all dps gains. The only job arrow majorly threw off was mch and that could be adjusted around if you noticed you had the buff, and this adds to what i was talking about earlier about balancing around the averages.
You weren't only fishing for expanded balance in normal play, you were fishing for expanded (damage buff) be that spear, balance or arrow which you had a very high chance of getting, sure balance was better but not all that much better than crit, and if arrow had been adjusted that could have been another desirable counterpart. Bole and Ewer and Spire weren't their core healer kit, using them for their play effects were an added bonus if you got them, not core to their kit, they were designed for burning and rng manipulation. The only way a good rng class works is by having a less desirable option that can turn up, and if the player adjusts around it they still get a gain out of it, just not a large one. Balance was was massively overhyped in SB as fflogs ranked off of DPS not RDPS, going for the damage buff every min approach would be a pretty desirable effect this expac. I aggree arrow was a tad weak, but they could have turned it into a dhit buff.

You're placing way too much emphasis on some parts of the kit and being overly reductive about others. Basically every card was useful before just to differing degrees, spire/ewer were royal road fodder, balance spear and arrow were damage buffs and bole could be adjusted around if you got it, but really was the most useless out of the pack.

[Seraphor]

ASTs kit was set up in such a way that you didn't need bole for mitigation in raid content, they had enough baked in mitigation, same with ewer it wasn't necessary if you were good.

SO they were all useless. Right. So you're not sad to see them go then.

Spear, Balance and arrow were all dps gains. The only job arrow majorly threw off was mch and that could be adjusted around if you noticed you had the buff, and this adds to what i was talking about earlier about balancing around the averages.

And Ninja, and in high level content, pretty much everyone with buff windows.
Expanded Arrow was a big no-no, but everyone still used it under the delusion that it was a DPS increase.

Bole and Ewer and Spire weren't their core healer kit, using them for their play effects were an added bonus if you got them, not core to their kit, they were designed for burning and rng manipulation.

That's what I'm saying. From a balancing perspective, they either become essential and puts AST at a huge healing disadvantage, OR (as was the case most of the time) they were useless, which means they were a bonus when you did get them, putting AST at an unfair advantage in some very select situations.
But because this is weighed against their DPS output, this actually put them at a disadvantage in the meta.
AST was only ever selected in high end content for their raid buffs, specifically Expanded-Balance, and if the rng didn't smile on them, they single handedly tanked the entire raid.
The rest of the party do not give a single shit what your other cards did, they only needed you for the Balance. Except Bards, the Crit junkies.

[ReiMakoto]

SO they were all useless. Right. So you're not sad to see them go then.

And Ninja, and in high level content, pretty much everyone with buff windows.
Expanded Arrow was a big no-no, but everyone still used it under the delusion that it was a DPS increase.


That's what I'm saying. From a balancing perspective, they either become essential and puts AST at a huge healing disadvantage, OR (is was the case most of the time) they were useless, which means they were a bonus when you did get them, putting AST at an unfair advantage in some very select situations.
But because this is weighed against their DPS output, this actually put them at a disadvantage in the meta.
AST was only ever selected in high end content for their raid buffs, specifically Expanded-Balance, and if the rng didn't smile on them, they single handedly tanked the entire raid.
The rest of the party do not give a single shit what your other cards did, they only needed you for the Balance. Except Bards, the Crit junkies.

You were raiding with some odd people if they didn't like getting expanded crit as well, free damage is free damage. If you even raid that is.

They weren't useless, if you read what I said their use was being royal roaded in the case of ewer, and bole could be used in niche circumstance, but was mostly used as a lesser option in the case of bad rng to give an enhanced card to a job. These are not being useless, they are the uses for the card, its just not as useful from its direct effect, and in the case of bole, the best thing imo about an rng class is having to adjust around bad rng as still make an "optimal" move, so if you adjusted correctly around a bole and threw out an enhanced card you were still being useful. AST was also selected because it was very good at solo healing iirc, most solo heals I saw used ast over the other 2. I raided all of SB with and without an AST at various times, people did give a shit about the other cards, getting expanded balance or crit under the trick+chain window was amazing, again arrow just needed adjustments maybe to being a dhit buff.

All of this is detracting from my initial point, that is you claiming it was objectively impossible to balance. It was not, it was just hard to balance. Every card had a use, just not necessarily all of their uses were to be played.

[Seraphor]

You were raiding with some odd people if they didn't like getting expanded crit as well, free damage is free damage. If you even raid that is.

Crit sure, is better than nothing, so sure it's not all or nothing, but it's still true that you priorities were Balance >>> Spear >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Arrow > Anything else.
That's a waste of an RNG system if there ever was one.

I raided towards the end of SB but never as AST because of how much hate it got.
All of my worst interactions in this game have, by far, been playing AST in SB.
Purely by way of using an undesirable card. Whether purely by accident, or because as a controller player it was usually easier to use the card to get rid of it than to click it off/undraw.
Would result in SO MUCH Salt from people who got "the wrong card". I was lectured for 5 minutes in the middle of a dungeon after using a Ewer on a DRK when I was simply getting rid of it. Yes, I knew Ewer was useless for DRK, I was just getting rid of the card and happened to have the DRK selected.
I was kicked, my only ever kick in my 3 years of playing this game, from Rabanastre when I 'got rid' of a Ewer by using it, when I mistakenly had an expanded RR up, and it wasn't even in a battle, it was while sliding down the sewers...

In comparison, Shadowbringers AST is an absolute JOY to play, simply because other players don't care what cards you use because as far as they're concerned you can't really go wrong, you always have either a ranged or a melee in the party. You just need to get those Divinations out and how you do that is your responsibility. Your job mechanic is YOUR mechanic, not everyone else's. And that's what makes this system objectively better.

[ReiMakoto]

Crit sure, is better than nothing, so sure it's not all or nothing, but it's still true that you priorities were Balance >>> Spear >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Arrow > Anything else.
That's a waste of an RNG system if there ever was one.

I raided towards the end of SB but never as AST because of how much hate it got.
All of my worst interactions in this game have, by far, been playing AST in SB.
Purely by way of using an undesirable card. Whether purely by accident, or because as a controller player it was usually easier to use the card to get rid of it than to click it off/undraw.
Would result in SO MUCH Salt from people who got "the wrong card". I was lectured for 5 minutes in the middle of a dungeon after using a Ewer on a DRK when I was simply getting rid of it. Yes, I knew Ewer was useless for DRK, I was just getting rid of the card and happened to have the DRK selected.
I was kicked, my only ever kick in my 3 years of playing this game, from Rabanastre when I 'got rid' of a Ewer by using it, when I mistakenly had an expanded RR up, and it wasn't even in a battle, it was while sliding down the sewers...

In comparison, Shadowbringers AST is an absolute JOY to play, simply because other players don't care what cards you use because as far as they're concerned you can't really go wrong, you always have either a ranged or a melee in the party. You just need to get those Divinations out and how you do that is your responsibility. Your job mechanic is YOUR mechanic, not everyone else's. And that's what makes this system objectively better.

Im not quite sure what you mean about the new system being "your mechanic", other players never effected what cards you got before. If youre saying what i think youre saying then what has changed is community perception regarding rdps, and overall its providing the same effect as the old system just in a more (subjectively boring) streamlined way. If anything with how new cards work you need to be more aware of other players than before to optimise your damage so that you give out your cards whilst people are in their burst windows rather than just having a fixed time to throw out your cards.

[Ceasaria]

The whole picture, has AST players either constantly fishing for expanded Balances (so the whole RNG thing is a waste of time) or having their core healer kit (Bole and Ewer) at the mercy of RNG (objectively detrimental to them as a Healer)

Balance - ironically the only balanced card in the set.

Your character is suffering from blindness, I guess.

But no, I'm sure you enjoyed having such a janky RNG system to fight against. I'm sure it was a blast!

Still a shame to see a lack of understanding of the previous AST version.
But now you have your new version and enjoying it, why are you rainding with GNB ?