Question for those who didn't pick up AST til 5.0 or after.

[Lastelli]

Folks who mained AST were never really "fishing" very often ...

Then they were playing it wrong.
I can accept the lore argument, but card variety was only illusory and that became clear after graduating from "casual AST randomly mashing buttons" to "good AST that tries to play efficiently (albeit in probabilistic terms)".
And no job should have that amount of rdps locked behind a rng mechanic. It was just bad design, plain and simple.

[Absurdity]

Then they were playing it wrong.
I can accept the lore argument, but card variety was only illusory and that became clear after graduating from "casual AST randomly mashing buttons" to "good AST that tries to play efficiently (albeit in probabilistic terms)".
And no job should have that amount of rdps locked behind a rng mechanic. It was just bad design, plain and simple.

While it was bad design to have that much variance between good rng and bad rng they shouldn't have scrapped the whole system entirely, elevating the other cards or giving you more options to manipulate the rng (like the current Sleeve Draw) would've probably done the job as well, just without destroying their own lore.

[Seraphor]

While it was bad design to have that much variance between good rng and bad rng they shouldn't have scrapped the whole system entirely, elevating the other cards or giving you more options to manipulate the rng (like the current Sleeve Draw) would've probably done the job as well, just without destroying their own lore.

The problem is there were too many options.
Bole and Ewer were a no-go. You can't have your healing kit on an rng system because the it becomes unnecessary. You need to be able to keep everyone alive just as well without them, and so for high end play where you just want your highest possible DPS, they're useless.
Spire was Spire.
That just left you with three viable options, one of which was only viable for two jobs.

Fact is, once you started fishing, it became a job of correcting all of the rng 'mistakes', and sometimes you just couldn't correct them.
So you've redrawn and still only got Ewers and Spires? Gotta RR it then.
Next you get a Bole, crap, can't use it because you already RR'd, can RR it because you want the AoE damage buff... you've used your redraws and sleeve draw, you're fucked, you've lost a 60s card rotation and have no damage buff to apply.
Fishing for big payoffs is one thing, but fixing the mistakes of an rng system isn't fun.

The old system had a Great option, and Good option, a Meh option and complete Bust.
The new system has just situationally Good and Meh options, but at least you don't go bust, and no matter what you draw, you still charge up to a Great AoE buff to base your burst phase around.

[Ceasaria]

Nobody was ever fishing for Arrow, it was simply a thing you could put on your BLM or freestyle SAM without completely screwing them over, if you had no redraw for something more useful.

I did because Arrow was nearly as powerful as Balance and it was better to throw both of them than waiting only for Balance (which reduce largely your chance to give AOE cards to party). AOE Spear was only useful on burst so opener mostly.
Solo Arrow was wonderful on BLM or even on some other jobs. My friend WAR and NIN loved this.
Solo Spear was wonderful on BRD. My friend really loved it.

Then they were playing it wrong.
I can accept the lore argument, but card variety was only illusory and that became clear after graduating from "casual AST randomly mashing buttons" to "good AST that tries to play efficiently (albeit in probabilistic terms)".
And no job should have that amount of rdps locked behind a rng mechanic. It was just bad design, plain and simple.

No, the card variety wasn't illusory excepted the Spire which was not really used since Stormblood because of the TP facility.
But it was okay, because it became the must card for Royal Road AOE.
Every card has a used and it varied in function of the content and the party you got and the actual situation (any death and mistake would increase greatly your chance to use Bole and Ewer for example).

[Absurdity]

Fact is, once you started fishing, it became a job of correcting all of the rng 'mistakes', and sometimes you just couldn't correct them.
So you've redrawn and still only got Ewers and Spires? Gotta RR it then.
Next you get a Bole, crap, can't use it because you already RR'd, can RR it because you want the AoE damage buff... you've used your redraws and sleeve draw, you're fucked, you've lost a 60s card rotation and have no damage buff to apply.
Fishing for big payoffs is one thing, but fixing the mistakes of an rng system isn't fun.

The old system had a Great option, and Good option, a Meh option and complete Bust.
The new system has just situationally Good and Meh options, but at least you don't go bust, and no matter what you draw, you still charge up to a Great AoE buff to base your burst phase around.

Good point actually. I guess I would've just prefered if they kept those niche buffs in while also giving you tools to get that guaranteed good rng when you need it. I generally don't like it when they remove abilities that can situationally be very useful just because "hurr durr, you're not using it all the time".


Or just remove dps buffs from those cards entirely, make them defensive buffs, resource regeneration, selfheal, movement speed, etc and put the dps increase into Divination only. In that case you can still play around with rng buffs while reducing the impact they have on party dps.

Solo Arrow was wonderful on BLM or even on some other jobs. My friend WAR and NIN loved this.

I do not know how that NIN, the job that basically wanted 0 sks to not fuck with it's roation, could love Arrow and even on Warrior it was basically useless since you never ever built your sks required for 5x FC inside IR around outside buffs.
Although we might be talking about HW here and not SB, in that case just ignore me.

[Ceasaria]

I do not know how that NIN, the job that basically wanted 0 sks to not fuck with it's roation, could love Arrow and even on Warrior it was basically useless since you never ever built your sks required for 5x FC inside IR around outside buffs.
Although we might be talking about HW here and not SB, in that case just ignore me.

In SB.
It was really rare I do this anyway, but to give more precision, my WAR friend had fun with an Arrow 150%, not saying it's better on him.
For my NIN, yes he noticed a good dps increased. I didn't do this many times, so maybe it was lucky pulls.

[Seraphor]

Solo Arrow was wonderful on BLM or even on some other jobs. My friend WAR and NIN loved this.

Arrow was actually detrimental to NIN's damage output.
There's a reason NIN BiS avoids too much SkillSpeed.