AST changes for 6.0: Let's forget 5.0 happened, and just fix what was wrong with 4.0

[Aurelius2625]

All of you saying that you want to return to old cards:

so you want useless cards that are just royal road fodder? Bole, ewer, spire, arrow? While only the balance was worth having?

So you want your mana regen tool unique to AST to be RNG based?

So you want to be completely depending on RNG whether you get a mitigation tool for a tank when you need it and cant be sure that you'll ever have it again at that time, or a mana regen?

No. 4.x was bad. It was aids and cancer mixed together. It was not good.

This is the best iteration of the card system yet. Every card is useful, always. You either arcana it if you have three seals, or redraw until you run out of charges and play the card either as arcana or for the seal before draw is up again.

Damage is the greatest utility. Casuals just have to accept this... but then again, casuals have to accept that casting Malefic and Gravity as much as possible are the best ways to actually mitigate damage: By killing the thing quicker so it hurts you less. I know. It's a hard concept to wrap your minds around, dpsing and granting more dps to your team.

Consider WHM: it offers virtually nothing to the team other than being a basic healer. SCH gives chain strat which is decent. AST not only gives individual buffs for burst windows, that work ALL of the time (damage) vs just SOME of the time (RNG thru dhit or crit, and some jobs don't even want those buffs like WAR or for guaranteed crits like Bootshine and Fullthrust with lifesurge)... you also get an aoe 6 percent up buff for damage. On top of having the best healing kit in the game that is the most flexible, while remaining powerful as a healing without your tools because of the low mana costs vs the other healers.

Like...what are you people complaining about? AST is in an amazing spot right now. You can move when you want, slidecast with ease, lightspeed makes movement even more trivial, mana for days, weaving is whenever you want, you can shield or regen on demand with Neutral Sect and with the Sect effect that you have... like...WHAT do you want more?

Y'all need a reality check lol. SCH and WHM are looking kinda wimpy next to AST. SCH at least has powerful tools, but without Aetherflow or fairy, you are screwed, and your seraph is tied to fairy being out, use dissipate? Lose your autoheal and all fairy abilities, even seraph for......more healing? So you lose healign for more healing?

WHM's healing is nearly ALL on the Gcd, which is aids. You can ONLY weave with a dot refresh or lily, and a lily is an active dps loss, compared to AST that can weave their powerful tools, and SCH can Ruin II into Energy Drain for minimal loss.

Y'all need to chill.

[Crushnight]

I want 4.X Ast back not for the cards but for the unique playstyle that Ast had that no job offers anymore.

Buff manipulation.

If current card system kept Time Dilation, 4.X Celestial Opposition and Royal Road I probably wouldn't hate it(heck maybe joined in the it ain't that bad group) as much as I do, but they were removed and with them an entire playstyle no other job let alone a healer offers. No job now manipulates buffs you only give them, so I want the return of a job that has that playstyle, Ast originally had it so I want it back.

You can even meld the above abilities with the current system, have Royal Road cards not grant seals while giving Divination a slight buff to make it the most worthwhile over AoE etc, with RR back you can give Sleeve Draw 3 charges again because you would RR one naturally alievating the controller issues. Time Dilation rewards smart usage and can give great dmg buff to a single player in one go but can be used for healing if necessary (with current kit, nope), old CO would've alievated the mp issues Ast was suffering from, it wasn't Ewer removal that hurt it it was CO's change.

So yea I want Time Dilation, 4.X Celestial Opposition and Royal Road back, if that means a reversion so be it, reverse course but those abilities can work with the current system just requires more effort for balancing on the devs part because the other healers would need a boost to compensate for Ast getting these back.

[ty_taurus]

So you want your mana regen tool unique to AST to be RNG based?

So you want to be completely depending on RNG whether you get a mitigation tool for a tank when you need it and cant be sure that you'll ever have it again at that time, or a mana regen?

Pre-5.0 AST was never dependent on Ewer for proper MP Regen and had all they needed with Lucid Dreaming, Lightspeed, and the ability to extend those effects with old Celestial Opposition. What people did enjoy was the possibility of drawing surplus MP Regen after they or their cohealer were raised, or during MP-draining segments of a fight where the other party members were needing a lot of raising. Bole's damage mitigation was also an unnecessary-yet-welcome effect in certain instances.

This is the best iteration of the card system yet. Every card is useful, always. You either arcana it if you have three seals, or redraw until you run out of charges and play the card either as arcana or for the seal before draw is up again.

It is the most *balanced* card system, but where it fixed issues with the RNG of the old system, it completely destroyed the lore of the card system, which was a huge point of interest for many that picked up AST, as well as the decision-making aspect behind the cards. Before, you had to really think about the hand you were dealt and react to that. This has been drastically trivialized to "Do I have seal? Yes -> Minor Arcana. No -> Throw on Melee or Ranged."

Like...what are you people complaining about? AST is in an amazing spot right now. You can move when you want, slidecast with ease, lightspeed makes movement even more trivial, mana for days, weaving is whenever you want, you can shield or regen on demand with Neutral Sect and with the Sect effect that you have... like...WHAT do you want more?

If you have to ask this, then you clearly aren't listening to anything that anyone is saying. Not a word of complaint regarding AST has anything to do with optimization. That is not what this is about. It's about the job being fun, lore-filled, and decision-provoking.

Y'all need a reality check lol. SCH and WHM are looking kinda wimpy next to AST. SCH at least has powerful tools, but without Aetherflow or fairy, you are screwed, and your seraph is tied to fairy being out, use dissipate? Lose your autoheal and all fairy abilities, even seraph for......more healing? So you lose healign for more healing?

WHM's healing is nearly ALL on the Gcd, which is aids. You can ONLY weave with a dot refresh or lily, and a lily is an active dps loss, compared to AST that can weave their powerful tools, and SCH can Ruin II into Energy Drain for minimal loss.

Y'all need to chill.

I need to ask... Do you only play as a healer against training dummies? I ask because it genuinely sounds like this is your only experience with healing--against an enemy that does no damage and has no mechanics. Even if perfect runs, tools like WHM's Affllatus Healing in higher level content do get used and are functional. I'm not saying the healers are perfect--far from it. With the exception of WHM due to their iteration in Stormblood, SCH and AST are easily in the worst states they've ever been in with regards to personality and lore.

I disagree personally that just reverting to the old card effects is the solution. On the contrary, I think they need to be completely rebuilt from the ground up to be less clunky. We don't need a system that has 7 actions that all revolve around basically the same thing, and clearly it needs to be reworked so that it can stay balanced while also not being drained of all personality and character, because that's essentially what this card system is: those puppets in The Puppet's Bunker. They operate optimally but with no personality, no life, no character... nothing but empty execution.

[Recon1o6]

The reason a lot of people want old cards back, is because they have variety and the highs and lows were what gave the job flavour and fun. Contrary to what a lot of savage raiders here try to force, most of the game is not savage raiding and the rest of the buffs available had their uses outside of it- different cards for different situations. No card in a good astro's player hand was wasted. Granted some of them depended on party composition which was why spire was RR fodder- it depended on having a warrior or monk whereas every other card no matter what duty could be used on someone within the party, hence why there were calls for spire to be changed to something else before we discovered the horror that was 5.0

Playing a card had 3 options, using it, converting it to royal road, minor arcana. You never complained when the spire was used to give everybody balance, nor did you complain when the warrior had it in dungeons so he could aoe for days

Astro had a fanastic kit with its own flavour of buffing and buff manipulation. They gutted it completely. 4.0 was good if flawed thanks to dev mistakes, but like other jobs in 4.0 and almost every job in 5.0 the removal of important parts of the kit with came with no thought to replacing it.
Since apparently the dev job design philosphy is to remove things rather than add them, knock down the top kits instead of bringing up weaker ones.

The current buff system is lackluster at best. If you require a parser to see the difference, then its not strong enough simple as that- because it means at least half the playerbase (ps4) and those who don't want ot break TOS on pc can't see nor feel what it does. Its got no job flavour either- no buff manipulation at all, no variety. The astro levelling questline is completely devoid of new traits or abilities in large portions which is no fun at all.


A much better way would be to bring back the old astro kit, change spire and balance to some other flavour, bring back the time magic and keep the divination. That way both sides are happy apart from the outliers.

[Gravagar]

The reason a lot of people want old cards back, is because they have variety and the highs and lows were what gave the job flavour and fun. Contrary to what a lot of savage raiders here try to force, most of the game is not savage raiding and the rest of the buffs available had their uses outside of it- different cards for different situations.

Just want to chime in as someone who is a savage raider- I also DO want varied cards back. The most convincing argument I've heard in favor of these samey cards had a big ask attached to it. "They're better than the old cards if you memorize every single job's burst windows to time your card plays perfectly!" How do we know the absolute numerical best time to play them? Well, you need third party tools. Considering how anti-3PT Yoshi's stance is, it's really baffling how AST suddenly became a job that requires them to gain any sort of intrinsic satisfaction...


If they refuse to give Royal Road back due to AoE cards being sunsetted, then I'd at least want it to be replaced with Play Inverted. As per tarot cards, an arcana drawn upside-down has a different meaning... Let those who want to ignore all utility have their samey deck of balances, and let the non-speedclear players have their other fun buffs. It doesn't need to be the case where only one party gets what they want!!

[Gemina]

I agree. I prefered the old card system. But if 5.0 AST is the way it is, this is because devs got feedback to do so.
So just going back wouldn't be the answer.

We need to take the best of both world and indeed, move forward.

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible for both damaging and support card to works together without having to sacrifice the other part to use them.
Or maybe removing the RNG part and getting a set sequence of card such as Balance - Ewer - Bole - Spire - Spear - Arrow, and minor arcana granting the opposite effect.
But I guess it could kill the fun of the old system and it might not work well for the current fishing seal system.

A big problem I see with bringing in any elements from the old system are those who will see it as nothing but a half-arsed version of it. The only way I see going forward is to build off of the current system. Every time I try to figure out how to make the varied effects work, I just end up chasing my tail. While I can admit that I am not very creative, I would imagine the devs likely had this issue as well.

The solution is absolute, and either all the cards buff damage, or none of them. The latter would boot AST right out of prog for sure. I suppose another possibility is to do both and add an effect along with the dmg increase, but I don't think the devs would ever go there. That is where I feel I lack the experience to know how something like that would play out. I think they would avoid this though because of their 'increase accessibility' mindset, as that would also be a pretty complex system.

Another idea I did have that kinda-sorta-not-really uses elements from the old system was something similar to NIN mudra where draw place three random cards on the hotbar, and the AST uses them at will, but they are on the GCD. They cannot draw another three until Draw comes off of CD, or they use Redraw/Shuffle (I don't know maybe once or twice per draw?). With this system, there would also be wildcards (the new-old Minor Arcana) that could be drawn that does random dmg (potentially stupid damage) to the enemy, or a heal, but does not grant a seal. The AST cannot play one or two cards and then Redraw. It would not work that way. It's either the three they have, or a new set of three. This alone would make the AST think about which cards to play based on the number of seals they have, which seals they have, or foregoing a seal completely in favor of damage that can tickle to nuke, or a really timely heal.

With this system, you would have an RNG element, all the cards are useful, and the AST truly has an element of choice due to the addition of the wildcards. The seals still grant divination, and divination does exactly what I pointed out earlier.

I would play this AST. Definitely. Would others? I have absolutely no idea.

[Recon1o6]

Just want to chime in as someone who is a savage raider- I also DO want varied cards back. The most convincing argument I've heard in favor of these samey cards had a big ask attached to it. "They're better than the old cards if you memorize every single job's burst windows to time your card plays perfectly!" How do we know the absolute numerical best time to play them? Well, you need third party tools. Considering how anti-3PT Yoshi's stance is, it's really baffling how AST suddenly became a job that requires them to gain any sort of intrinsic satisfaction...

Please note, I never said every raider ^^ I personally do savage raiding too, or did till rl forced me off. Still on the lookout for a TEA group :/

You are correct though, that is a big ask. Though I found it along the lines of "no matter how you play it, it will be beneficial" well...that's bad design as it encourages just flinging cards instead of playing smartly given you can't see the difference. decision making is an important part of healing, and this just shows how further braindead its become.

That being said, a lot of astros just flat out dont get any satisfaction from the job anymore givne what they stripped out of it. That's why so few play it and sch next to whm

If they refuse to give Royal Road back due to AoE cards being sunsetted, then I'd at least want it to be replaced with Play Inverted. As per tarot cards, an arcana drawn upside-down has a different meaning... Let those who want to ignore all utility have their samey deck of balances, and let the non-speedclear players have their other fun buffs. It doesn't need to be the case where only one party gets what they want!!

Another great idea. Hell we have a button for that: minor arcana. Convert the cards energies to pure magic and throw it on player. Could keep the lord vs lady, which would likely be an acceptable loss ot most of the disgruntled majority given how older minor arcana worked

Though a lot of players would prefer draw and play to be put back together again to reduce bloat. Nobody missed the 30 second draw window anyway, or if they did, they seriously need to look at how they were playing.

[ty_taurus]

Regarding the Draw/Play situation... The issue is that the old Draw doesn't go on CD until you use the card, putting a lot of pressure on you to use it immediately, and adding in Play as a button means Draw can go on CD immediately, and those seconds will add up over time. It's basically just auto-spread. That said, couldn't this issue be resolved if we just make Draw have 2 Charges so it starts its cool down for the second charge even after you've drawn your first card?

[JanVanding]

As fun as the old card system was

There's one major problem you're all missing, one of the main reasons it's gone and why another such class built around RNG (DNC) continues to struggle and that's lows mean decreased viability.

Like you've all said, highs and lows. Hitting those highs, pulling the right card at the right moment can feel amazing...but what about when you don't? What about when you don't and you redraw x3 and still don't? When you muck it with minor suit and use sleeve draw and still don't? Guess how often that's going to happen on a 1 in 6 chance of pulling the card you need where you can't pull 3 cards from sleeve draw anymore...it's going to be often.

When a job can suffer famine which decreases it's usefulness, it lowers it's viability, you're rolling a 6 sided dice and hoping to get the number you call every time? Odds are against you.

It wasn't just about simplification but terms of lowering the impact of extreme bad luck, I get some folks really want a Gambler job and the saw the old AST as a way to scratch that itch...

But a Gambler job in it's classic highs and lows state would end up like BLU, a limited job for fun due to the question of how viable the job could really be.

As to what I'd like to see in 6.0?

Divination decoupled from Seals and Minor suits becoming seal spenders that grant those old effects based on the job it's applied to and seal that's spent (Lord on Tank requires Sun or Celestial seal for instance to grant damage reduction, Lady on Moon or Celestial to caster Grants mana regeneration...whereas a Lord on Sun or Moon to melee dps grants increased DH)

A way to have our cake and eat it!

[Gravagar]

Regarding the Draw/Play situation... The issue is that the old Draw doesn't go on CD until you use the card, putting a lot of pressure on you to use it immediately, and adding in Play as a button means Draw can go on CD immediately, and those seconds will add up over time. It's basically just auto-spread. That said, couldn't this issue be resolved if we just make Draw have 2 Charges so it starts its cool down for the second charge even after you've drawn your first card?

I think it's reasonable to hold professional devs to a standard of quality where they should be able to figure out how to re-combine Draw and Play, the way they used to be, with the current cooldown functionality. It seems to be mostly back-end problems they run into and use as excuses, I think? It's their job to untangle that spaghetti and deliver!
...that being said, I can't resist dropping theories myself either. What if Draw got the context-sensitive treatment the same way Verstone turns into Verholy and just turns into Draw, would that also fix it?! aaa