Has anyone quit healing?

[Gravagar]

I concur with that. I end up doing quite a bit of fishing at times trying to get a perfect divination and give up and go for a weaker one sometimes.

Yet the solution for card fishing was remarkably simple IMO.

Keep the old card system exactly as it was.
Change Minor Arcana to examctly what it is now.
Got a card you can't use? Turn it into a weaker version of the balance. Balance used to be 10% if I recall, Lord/Lady of crowns is 8% on the right match.
We'd still have Royal Road instead of Divination, so we'd not need to fish seals for a stronger AoE buff.

Also, talking of non-Balance cards, when I'd queue AST pre-ShB, I used to give Enhanced Arrows to a MNK friend whose motto as MNK is "gotta go fast". And that made a tangible difference to his play. Cards like the Bole and The Ewer, which always felt situational were still useful Royal Road cards.

I stopped caring about trying to always get perfect Divinations too. I used to enjoy the feeling of getting a lot of good draws, to go with the salt of getting multiple bad draws. Nowadays, there aren't really good draws to break up the monotony of being apathetic towards firing off a 2moon 1sun Divination, due to your draw and redraws getting you Balance -> Bole -> Balance -> Bole.


The Spire would need to be adjusted due to a lack of TP to regain, but idk, maybe buff DH instead? But otherwise I like that idea, that any card can be arcana'd as insurance against bad luck. That would make sense as an ability that an Astrologian in the world of Eorzea would develop, as opposed to developing a sudden case of selective amnesia towards all time mage-related abilities...

[MPNZ]

Not that I'm the biggest fan of the card system as it's current iteration but what was super engaging about balance fishing? Like yeah, I enjoyed the old cards a bit more for sure, but it's not as if the new one is an overwhelming downgrade especially when you consider the other new tools we gained on AST like neutral and CI.

Balance fishing is like Strength tanking in a leveling dungeon/progression in HW: It's possible with enough skill and knowledge, but totes worthless if they're just really burnt-out, or new/incompetent players that like have no knowledge as to why raiders are doing it like that


Or, just the fact that like Duty Finder can be really bad if the tank is fighting Nid with lv 15 gear...

[Veis_Alveare]

Because only bad ASTs reduced the class to Balance fishing, and, even so, Balance fishing was limited to parse-obsessed Savage raiders. Shockingly, some people used AST outside of weekly prog.

I've not been a "bad ast" since it's inception but ultimately SB AST's optimal contribution to the group was to supply AoE Balance in 8man parties. Dungeons could see a bit more variation since you'd technically see better return for your investment by giving single buffs to dps doing a good job but Balance would still increase the effective dps of the group by more than any other card except maybe a Spear on a competent BRD.

Arrow was better used on BLMs than anything else, tossing it on a MNK in particular is just cruel. Do you/did you understand how MNK functions? I weep for the poor MNKs who ran out of TP and literally had to stand there doing nothing just for your amusement.

What truly marks a bad AST is a lack of understanding of other jobs and with this ShB AST still functions in a similar fashion which makes me concerned for your own performance more than anything given your card examples. You realize there is more to AST than fishing for the correct seals, right? If you toss a Lady on a DNC outside of their burst window you're nearly better served giving it to a WHM but if it's catching Technical, multiple Sabers and all further buffed by Devilment theres hardly a better spent card. The difference is seconds.

Everyone has a story about how they saved a bad situation with a well-placed Bole or Ewer, that's fine but how about the number of enrages avoided with an AoE Balance? How about now, when your opener goes absolutely perfect and you get to buff all your burstiest dps in line with divination? It also feels satisfying.

I will say I don't think AST has truly shined in casual/pug setting for its entire lifespan and that's no different now. It's like being top dps as a DNC - big oof, it makes you feel like 'why am I even buffing these people?' and that isn't a good feeling. Best advice is to just play ShB in a structured raid setting, it definitely isn't the catastrophe people make it out to be.

[Side-Eye]

Everyone has a story about how they saved a bad situation with a well-placed Bole or Ewer, that's fine but how about the number of enrages avoided with an AoE Balance? How about now, when your opener goes absolutely perfect and you get to buff all your burstiest dps in line with divination? It also feels satisfying.

Your viewpoint of today's AST would carry more weight if your best example of "satisfying" wasn't using buff extension -- which we no longer have -- on a buff that's been watered-down and duplicated to overwrite other buffs, erasing the variety of options we used to have pre-ShB.

Before 5.0, our DPS kit was better including buffs and extenders, and our card system was more engaging and enjoyable to play. And required LESS FISHING than today.

[Billythepancake]

snip

Honestly, I don't mind the new card system personally because RNG makes me want to jump off a cliff, and the idea of having a system a lot less reliant on it sounded great. Until I realized RNG was still just as frustrating. Not to mention the thing that makes this system 100 times worse than the older one could ever be. The amount of target swapping you need to do, especially during sleeve draw. My god, I have never been so miserable. I took AST through a single E1s run and I never wanted to touch it again. The opener was easily the worst thing I've ever experienced in this game. I don't mind high APM, but keep target swapping out of it. God forbid if you needed to do literally anything else in your opener other than sling cards, like use a heal, or an earthly star.

[Gravagar]

Honestly, I don't mind the new card system personally because RNG makes me want to jump off a cliff, and the idea of having a system a lot less reliant on it sounded great. Until I realized RNG was still just as frustrating. Not to mention the thing that makes this system 100 times worse than the older one could ever be. The amount of target swapping you need to do, especially during sleeve draw. My god, I have never been so miserable. I took AST through a single E1s run and I never wanted to touch it again. The opener was easily the worst thing I've ever experienced in this game. I don't mind high APM, but keep target swapping out of it. God forbid if you needed to do literally anything else in your opener other than sling cards, like use a heal, or an earthly star.

It only gets worse in later savages. They keep tossing in huge damage spikes in the first 15s or so to prevent you from doing the stupid opener that they designed in the first place. The fact that I don't even have room to toss out any other oGCDs due to the opener, or I won't be able to do my damage-buffing properly, is just evidence of the fact that I'm playing a healer designed for a game that doesn't have FF14's fights.

[Crushnight]

It only gets worse in later savages. They keep tossing in huge damage spikes in the first 15s or so to prevent you from doing the stupid opener that they designed in the first place. The fact that I don't even have room to toss out any other oGCDs due to the opener, or I won't be able to do my damage-buffing properly, is just evidence of the fact that I'm playing a healer designed for a game that doesn't have FF14's fights.

The devs didn't design the openers people use, the community did, the devs design just allows said openers to be possible, SB mnk's TK opener was unintended(devs own admission) and it is why Perfect balance and tackles were nerfed/removed, and i'm betting current Ast's opener is another unintended because if a dev were to sit down on controller for 1hr doing it in any savage fight they'll go "there's an issue here".

Other jobs suffer from the devs oversight as well with regards, remember it took until late SB for Yoshi P to acknowledge that piercing debuff on Drg might be too strong and they never designed things with that in mind, their answer, ShB system, where before it was Whm/Drk/Mnk/Mch who needed proper attention to now being Whm/Sch/Ast/Drk/Mnk/Brd/Mch/Smn.

Yea real upgrade there >_> also gotta love the ones they noted themselves as needing work still require proper work on. Not saying they haven't tried Whm lily system upgrade is definitely an upgrade but whm is plagued with same problems(their kit getting stripped/low use abilities like fluid aura/lily system is only a reward for when unplanned damage etc) as before on top of healer design problems as a whole.

[Gravagar]

The devs didn't design the openers people use, the community did, the devs design just allows said openers to be possible, SB mnk's TK opener was unintended(devs own admission) and it is why Perfect balance and tackles were nerfed/removed, and i'm betting current Ast's opener is another unintended because if a dev were to sit down on controller for 1hr doing it in any savage fight they'll go "there's an issue here".

Other jobs suffer from the devs oversight as well with regards, remember it took until late SB for Yoshi P to acknowledge that piercing debuff on Drg might be too strong and they never designed things with that in mind, their answer, ShB system, where before it was Whm/Drk/Mnk/Mch who needed proper attention to now being Whm/Sch/Ast/Drk/Mnk/Brd/Mch/Smn.

Yea real upgrade there >_> also gotta love the ones they noted themselves as needing work still require proper work on. Not saying they haven't tried Whm lily system upgrade is definitely an upgrade but whm is plagued with same problems(their kit getting stripped/low use abilities like fluid aura/lily system is only a reward for when unplanned damage etc) as before on top of healer design problems as a whole.

I mean... yeah, you're right, there are pleeeenty of examples of dev intent not matching up with what players settle on. Still, I hold the devs accountable for what the playstyle is, as they and only they have the power to change what is available to us. All we can do is use the scraps of what remains of our kits as best we can.


And monks. My sympathies to those dudes. I've seen Drakanous's long long discussion video where he tears the current monk design apart. I hope, come the next Interviewing Season, we can get someone like him to ask a lot of hardball questions about healer design, like I'm hoping Drak plans to do for monks, too.

[YusiKha]

Ast's opener is another unintended because if a dev were to sit down on controller for 1hr doing it in any savage fight they'll go "there's an issue here".

I firmly believe that the dev-intended opener is to stop maleficcing and just bash out the cards, especially before the Minor Arcana change.

It only gets worse in later savages. They keep tossing in huge damage spikes in the first 15s or so to prevent you from doing the stupid opener that they designed in the first place. The fact that I don't even have room to toss out any other oGCDs due to the opener, or I won't be able to do my damage-buffing properly, is just evidence of the fact that I'm playing a healer designed for a game that doesn't have FF14's fights.

I've never had issue with that, actually. Double Shields + Earthly Star before the fight begins is more than enough for E5-7S (-10s for E5, -3s for E6, -10s for E7).
E8S's first raidwide is singlehanded nullified by an AST, it just requires: DiurnalNeutral Helios, Nocturnal Helios, Nocturnal Opposition, Nocturnal Collective Unconcious, then Earthly Star and Horoscope cover all the damage taken. All of which can be done, or set up, prepull.
Now that may seem like a lot of tools used just on a single raidwide, but only single-target damage comes out for the following minute, so everything is back for when you need them.

[Saefinn]

Honestly, I don't mind the new card system personally because RNG makes me want to jump off a cliff, and the idea of having a system a lot less reliant on it sounded great. Until I realized RNG was still just as frustrating. Not to mention the thing that makes this system 100 times worse than the older one could ever be. The amount of target swapping you need to do, especially during sleeve draw. My god, I have never been so miserable. I took AST through a single E1s run and I never wanted to touch it again. The opener was easily the worst thing I've ever experienced in this game. I don't mind high APM, but keep target swapping out of it. God forbid if you needed to do literally anything else in your opener other than sling cards, like use a heal, or an earthly star.

I think my suggestion addresses the RNG part of your complaint. Though not the target swapping, I find that a juggle too, I'm a controller user and am seeing more and more why this complaint exists when I'm trying to optimise my rDPS whilst doing mechanics at the same time.

At least I kinda see 3 camps:

"I love variety of cards and making the best use of them you can with the RNG system."
"I hate cards I feel I have no use for and end up card fishing, especially with situational cards like The Bole and The Ewer."
"I hate RNG because it is frustrating."

The card variety people would get their wish because the variety in cards would be back.
The card fishers can fall back on a safety card with Minor Arcana, the card is a slightly less efficient version of The Balance but means no card is wasted and it is still a decent enough buff.
The RNG haters could play at suboptimal level and focus on Minor Arcana if they really wanted to. At the same time, with there being not useless cards, that would take the edge off of RNG anyway, should they not want to play suboptimally.