AST fix ever?

[Nhala_Levee]

Well, title telling all.
AST card system will be ever fixed?

[Gemina]

Difficult to say. I don't have a crystal ball, I'm afraid.

My own conclusion that I have arrived at is that this mechanic does not work in this style of mmo, and now they are stuck because they can't just delete it, or AST. I know very little of pre ShB MCH, but that particular job's rework has been well received. AST might be more difficult due to the lore surrounding, and identity tied to those damn cards. I don't think the devs have the same luxury as they did with MCH when it comes to a complete overhaul.

Basically, the job needs Yoshi-P to pull out another rabbit. If it does ever get fixed, it will be entirely different that what we've currently known it to be. That is for certain.

[Vyrerus]

No, probably not. They wanted to simplify the cards to make them easier for people to use quickly without much thought so that the lowest common denominator of player would perform closer to the upper crust. The current system has ultimately succeeded in doing that, compared to the older system, regardless of our views on it as players. Even with all the hub-ub about it, I see them letting it stew for the rest of this expansion and the next, and they might even go as far as just eliminating the crest idea so you don't have to care about redraws all that much.

I know I would love for the old system or something like it to come back, but with the changes they've made to the game, they'd have to delete Spire or change its effect. Hehe, an easy change if they did go back to how things were would be to make Spire enact a buff that makes gauge depleting abilities/weaponskills cost half of what they normally would.

[Nhala_Levee]

The old Astro was perfect. Why even needed to bother something that perfect?... Story matched to it, royal road was easy and understandable in every way and it was the best thing in the whole game. Combining the cards into greater effects was the real control over fate as a "fortuneteller" style of story matched to it perfectly. Every card had its uses even if just a filler pulling a greater crit or aoe crit buff or simply just helping out the other heal with mp regen or help survive a whole aoe mechanic of bosses through aoe Bole (dmg reduction buff was back in that time) for whole group. Its ways of use was endless. Yes, needed to feel the character to use it cause you needed creativity for it. Even if you pulled a card that had no use in the moment, you could keep it for later use or royal road it for more effects. It was so perfect.

Now cards and the whole card system is simply meaningless. Cards have no effects, have no uses. Gives dmg... oh my... ah wait! All gives only dmg and nothing useful. No need to rework astrogian. Need simply restore it, nothing more. Only one change would afect the old astro. The overall remake that every class now use only MP, even the Disciple of War classes. But that is easily solvable by makeing The Spire card gives MP instead of TP like in stormblood. And like this, you still only have 2 card what do the same effect, not 6...
And astro become useful again. Thousands of player gived up healing cause of the broke of asto.

Btw, i never understanded why need to try to upgrade what is perfect already...

[Nhala_Levee]

No, probably not. They wanted to simplify the cards to make them easier for people to use quickly without much thought so that the lowest common denominator of player would perform closer to the upper crust. The current system has ultimately succeeded in doing that, compared to the older system, regardless of our views on it as players. Even with all the hub-ub about it, I see them letting it stew for the rest of this expansion and the next, and they might even go as far as just eliminating the crest idea so you don't have to care about redraws all that much.

I know I would love for the old system or something like it to come back, but with the changes they've made to the game, they'd have to delete Spire or change its effect. Hehe, an easy change if they did go back to how things were would be to make Spire enact a buff that makes gauge depleting abilities/weaponskills cost half of what they normally would.

I dont know, astro is becomed far more complicated than the old one was... Cards are useless and if you have only one type of dps in your group, you cant do anything. 3 reroll simply not enough to roll a card for only ranged dps or only melee dps with the right seal. Maybe in raids have some uses but even that is just dmg so nothing useful. Many astro (when i rarely met one) not even use the cards cause simply no meaning for them and very much more trouble to pick the right one. Meanwhile the tank or the whole team dies. Me just roll the 3 card skill on the tank and like that i can heal too, the buff the cards gives entirely meaningless so no matter if you put all 3 on the tank. And you get an instant aoe dmg boost what is still not realy worthy but well, more than nothing. But still just dmg boost, so not realy have matter if you use it or not.

So basicaly astro becomed a pure heal class, or as many calls nowadays WHM2, but not realy cause whm still have far more heal capacity.
Shorten it up, they made astro far more overcomplicated that it ever was meanwhile they nerf it to ground and i simply dont see any logic in this.
(btw i was main astro before shb, now i still use it but its a heavy struggle compared to the other 2 heals)

[Gemina]

The old Astro was perfect. Why even needed to bother something that perfect?... Story matched to it, royal road was easy and understandable in every way and it was the best thing in the whole game. Combining the cards into greater effects was the real control over fate as a "fortuneteller" style of story matched to it perfectly. Every card had its uses even if just a filler pulling a greater crit or aoe crit buff or simply just helping out the other heal with mp regen or help survive a whole aoe mechanic of bosses through aoe Bole (dmg reduction buff was back in that time) for whole group. Its ways of use was endless. Yes, needed to feel the character to use it cause you needed creativity for it. Even if you pulled a card that had no use in the moment, you could keep it for later use or royal road it for more effects. It was so perfect.

It was not perfect. It was broken AF. It was a convoluted mess of RNG, and methods to shave away the layers of it. If that does not convince you, then you need to look no further than the Spire. A card that already had been changed once, only to be turned into a fodder card because there was literally no other use for it. Like the TP it used to refresh, it went away entirely. Similar mentions could be made for all the other cards except for the Balance. That was the only card your party members ever desired. Your enjoyment from the mechanic exists through the illusion of choice. Players accepted your Boles, Ewers, Arrows, and Spears because they knew that sometimes, after all the damn fishing, you still somehow did not end up with the Balance.

The system as it is now is closer to perfection than the previous by far. It just isn't fun. But for the purpose the mechanic serves and always has due to the meta, it works just fine. I know as a DPS, I love having the consistent buffs an AST provides, but as an AST I simply cannot stand being a dmg buff turret.

I don't want you think that I am dismissing your enjoyment with the old mechanic. I understand fully that many AST really enjoyed this system, but you can still play board games with missing pieces. To think it was perfect and did not warrant changes is erroneous thinking. Hopefully if/when they rework it, they can find a way to incorporate some of the things that really made it enjoyable; but if the only way you feel this can happen is by reverting back to the old system, then you are going to be disappointed going forward.

[Monsalvato]

My own conclusion that I have arrived at is that this mechanic does not work in this style of mmo

As much as I absolutely loved the old system with all of my heart, I think this is the real issue. Wish it weren't the case but it's a problem bigger than just AST itself.

I have to say though while the new system is nowhere close as cool and full of depth and decision making as the old one was, it's less "bad" than I expeted it to be.
You still have to choose between different cards for different roles (ranged/melee), you can "play" with gathering 3 different symbols for the full party power up, and then you have a Powered up version of each card that doesn't give you the just mentioned symbols.
I mean of course I liked the old system better, but I was honestly expecting much worse when they announced a homogeneization.
Maybe it's because of my extremely low expectations that in the end I'm not too pissed off about this new, inferior system.

[Seraphor]

AST cards were not perfect.

Their goal this expac was to better balance the three healer kits. The problem here is that AST had a pretty decent mitigation tool within it's RNG card buff system.
They couldn't balance for the possibility of having the Bole available.

Additionally, large scale Crit and Speed buffs are hard to balance, not least because of how Crit scales making it progressively more powerful the further into the current expansion we are. This is why BRD lost it's crit procs, and partly why Wildfire was changed so as not to double up on crits.

Overall the buffs were scaled back to reduce the amount of burst rdps AST kicks out, and make it a bit more consistent.

NINs Trick Attack got a similar treatment.

[QooEr]

AST cards were not perfect.

Their goal this expac was to better balance the three healer kits. The problem here is that AST had a pretty decent mitigation tool within it's RNG card buff system.
They couldn't balance for the possibility of having the Bole available.

Additionally, large scale Crit and Speed buffs are hard to balance, not least because of how Crit scales making it progressively more powerful the further into the current expansion we are. This is why BRD lost it's crit procs, and partly why Wildfire was changed so as not to double up on crits.

Overall the buffs were scaled back to reduce the amount of burst rdps AST kicks out, and make it a bit more consistent.

NINs Trick Attack got a similar treatment.

the bole was fine. on aoe it was the same as sacred soil which scholar can put out every 30 seconds or fey covenant too, and on single target its basically pld's intervention.

besides bole really only shone in prog and almost everyone progged with white mage, to the point whm was called the prog healer.

the old systems weakness was its unreliability and the huge disparity between buffs, mostly that balance was overtuned. there was also the issue that if you wanted to use the utility cards, you had to sacrifice your royal road you might've been saving for balance/spear.

but instead of finding ways to increase consistency, to make other cards more usable and the balance not straight up broken, they just made everything the most boring iteration possible next to PvP cards.

[Seraphor]

the bole was fine. on aoe it was the same as sacred soil which scholar can put out every 30 seconds or fey covenant too, and on single target its basically pld's intervention.

Precisely the point.
SCHs Sacred Soil is a regular cooldown. Bole was RNG. You can't balance around having it, you can't balance around not having it.
Imagine if Sacred Soil just occasionally didn't work.