Sleeve Draw feels horrible now

[Sylve]

Because 4.0 AST had an entirely different card system that frankly worked much better with Sleeve Draw since you weren't targeting specific players most of the time but spreading cards to everyone. Making the job function better for controller players isn't "dumbing it down." It's fixing a clunky design. You might have been okay with it but many people weren't. In fact, plenty of those complaining were PC players to boot. A good portion of complaints—I dare even say most—had little to do with Sleeve Draw being difficult but rather annoying since no other job in the game requires you to target individual party members that frequently. Now you can certainly argue where they landed wasn't ideal but lets drop the whole "they're dumbing it down!!!" nonsense. If people wanted to play White Mage. They would. Astro has a lot of tools which make it appealing to many players even without the cards. Sleeve Draw simply irritated them.

If it was just targeting party members, Sleeve Draw wouldn't have been as much of an issue.

To do it optimally, You needed to switch from boss to ally back to boss casting Malefics and Cards as you go. It was just plain annoying. I don't even use a controller, and it still annoyed the hell out of me.

[Averax]

Honestly, old sleeve draw was a pain, it was powerful, but a pain. All it needs is a cooldown reduction and it's fine. I like it now. Also if you ended up getting paired with another AST it was really easy to screw eachother over with your openers without express communication. It's easier to non-verbally work things out between eachother now.

Also the MP/Draw changes? Who is MP? I don't know her.

[Duskane]

old sleeve draw was a pain but only thing wrong with new sleeve draw is its CD
90-120 seconds it would be fine

[Gravagar]

The thing that bugs me the most about this version of Sleeve Draw is how punishing a death is. Not in terms of MP, 'cause I can be back to half MP within, like, 4 seconds... But the most effective way to play AST is to use your buffs in the same window as everyone else, and dying even once means that goes out the window completely for the rest of the fight and can't really be recovered.


If Divination were usable without 3 seals, this problem would be solved. Obviously, "empty" seals wouldn't count... but, basically, we all want this entire system to go back to the drawing board, so I'd really prefer just bandaid fixes to make the half-baked current system tolerable until the next expansion. Past experiences have convinced me expecting more will just make me disappointed.

[Gemina]

For God's sake SE, put those damn cards on the GCD!

I partially jest. I have no idea how to fix this thing, and neither do they.

[Realism_Snide]

I don't get why you guys are complaining about target switching as a problem. Just use macros for those abilities. I use mouse over macro or macros that target different party members for those kinds of abilities, and never had any target switching problems. Everything felt smooth.

[Gemina]

Macros are a double-edged sword. I think they are just fine when not tied to abilities, as is the case with the target switching. However, creating macros for solely this purpose can be cumbersome for controller users as it will take up a slot on their crossbar.

In the case of abilities, macros prevent being able to queue them up. You would think this wouldn't be much of an issue, but when you go ham on a dummy you should immediately feel the drawback and tell yourself no way, no how will I deal with that in combat. I don't even see how this can be a preference, it is seriously clunky not being able to queue up abilities.

In short, there really isn't an easy way around the previous sleeve draw when it came to targeting. All issues with Sleeve Draw and its kin are all rooted in the AST card mechanic. There honestly is no point in making adjustments to any abilities tied to the cards until they can truly address it. It can be fixed; but it has to change entirely.

Theorycraft away. We've been doing it for years mate.

[Seraphor]

I don't get why you guys are complaining about target switching as a problem. Just use macros for those abilities. I use mouse over macro or macros that target different party members for those kinds of abilities, and never had any target switching problems. Everything felt smooth.

Those AST card macros for each player are nifty, but you can't do that on controller.