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

[Seraphor]

I'm so tired of hearing people disregard old AST and keep whining on the rng aspect. Dont want the rng? pick Whm or sch and you're set, nobody forces you to play AST with a gun on your head.. it's late here and i don't have time or patient to' go on a tangent, i'll Just Say this: AST was my main and for me It was killed with Shb, i Just dont find It fun anymore.

I don't like WHM's forced full cast times, and I can't stand pet management. Always been a Time Magic fan, so AST was my main healer back in SB too, but I find ShB to be an improvement in almost every way.

I would like it to have retained some form of Time Dilation, even if it only applied to some select effects, and it was nice to have a stun on Opposition.

I personally would tweak the current card system a little bit.
Rather than choosing between a 3/6% buff with a Seal or an 4/8% buff without a seal, I would just make it a straight choice between Seal or a 5/10% buff. Make it an all or nothing choice between applying a single target buff, or charging up your AoE damage buff.
Buff Divination in line so that the sacrifice is paid off, a full 6/8/10% damage buff for the party maybe.
In 4-person parties this would make it a fair choice with no real wrong answer, in 8-person parties you want to prioritise Divination.
This would not only make your choices seem more meaningful, but it would reduce the amount of player targeting that's required.
I'd probably give Sleeve Draw 2 charges as well.

But otherwise, I'm fine with the new effects.
Bole and Ewer had no place in the card table, Spire was flat out useless, and from your standpoint as the one giving out the buffs, there's virtually no difference between Balance/Spear/Arrow, they're ultimately all just damage boosts with different ideal targets. You've just traded the "Balance=Anyone, Spear=MNK/BRD>Anyone, and Arrow=BLM/SAM-only" for "Balance/Spear/Arrow=MNK/SAM/NIN/DRG>DRK/PLD/WAR/GNB and Bole/Ewer/Spire=BRD/MCH/DNC/BLM/SMN/RDM". Similar choices, just different targets. At most I'd concede that you've gone from three choices to two, but if you didn't have a BLM/SAM then that Arrow was almost worthless anyway.

[ItMe]

I'm so tired of hearing people disregard old AST and keep whining on the rng aspect. Dont want the rng? pick Whm or sch and you're set, nobody forces you to play AST with a gun on your head.. it's late here and i don't have time or patient to' go on a tangent, i'll Just Say this: AST was my main and for me It was killed with Shb, i Just dont find It fun anymore.

Then play something you do enjoy.
Nobody forces you to play AST with a gun on your head.
I'm so tired of hearing people disregard ShB AST. With ShB I finally found it fun.

[QooEr]

While i enjoy new ast, i still really hate the new card system despite playing it for more than a year. even if the new cards are better for balance and consistency, the playability is awful. having to scroll the party list every time you want to use a card is so annoying that people both in computer and controller made macros to make it easier on them. and if you dont like the clunkiness of macros you have to deal with the clunkiness of the job. I want old ast back just so i dont have to target party members so often; i remember that before sleeve draw got changed my hands tendons would hurt from all the targetting, and while its better in that regard now, that was still only a bandaid fix.

I think the past card system couldve been improved by cycling the cards (makes it consistent) and by giving alternate uses to the "useless" cards instead of just minor arcana and hope its a lord. Or if they let us use a card without using up royal road, a lot of cards wouldve seen more use.

And there was also no reason to get rid of time dilation.

[HyoMinPark]

Then play something you do enjoy.
Nobody forces you to play AST with a gun on your head.
I'm so tired of hearing people disregard ShB AST. With ShB I finally found it fun.

While I get the whole reversal purpose of a statement like this (and it does work in a lot of instances), I find the argument a bit flawed here as it’s coming from someone who didn’t enjoy a job that effectively existed the same for 4 years, but now does after it was radically changed. How is it really fair to tell original AST mains—mains that played the original iteration of the job, either from HW or SB—to “just go play something else” because (general) you now find it fun after it was drastically altered? Seems a bit unfair to the original ASTs that enjoyed the job as it was originally designed, and even more so that stuck with it through the dark days of early HW where literally no one wanted AST in their parties.

I have the same sentiment towards ShB BRD lovers that completely disregard old BRD mains that stuck through the job all through every overhaul and condemn criticisms of the latest iteration, and basically tell them to bugger off and go play DNC or something else so that these newer BRDs can enjoy a job that is a bard in name only. I don’t know. Seems like a flawed argument to me.

[ItMe]

While I get the whole reversal purpose of a statement like this (and it does work in a lot of instances), I find the argument a bit flawed here as it’s coming from someone who didn’t enjoy a job that effectively existed the same for 4 years, but now does after it was radically changed. How is it really fair to tell original AST mains—mains that played the original iteration of the job, either from HW or SB—to “just go play something else” because (general) you now find it fun after it was drastically altered? Seems a bit unfair to the original ASTs that enjoyed the job as it was originally designed, and even more so that stuck with it through the dark days of early HW where literally no one wanted AST in their parties.

You're right, but they're no more obligated to the job than I am.
They enjoyed the original design, but so what? That doesn't make their perspective more legitimate.
It's no more fair to tell them to play something else than it is to vaguely blame the rest of us for ruining "their" job.

[HyoMinPark]

You're right, but they're no more obligated to the job than I am.
They enjoyed the original design, but so what? That doesn't make their perspective more legitimate.
It's no more fair to tell them to play something else than it is to vaguely blame the rest of us for ruining "their" job.

I personally didn’t see any vague blame when it came to Garten’s statement—he was mostly just stating something most newer ASTs/ShB AST fans say: “I like AST now because I hated the RNG in HW/SB”. Which, fine. They are completely entitled to have that opinion—but he is right in saying that there were two RNG-free healers readily available.

Personally, I would disagree and say that players that have been playing a job for longer likely have more weight to their opinions because they have been actively playing the job. They know the job. Perhaps they even optimize/min-max on it. I truly think that the developers should listen more to them rather than the players that don’t actively play the jobs when it comes to job adjustments and feedback. It would be like me, who is not a DRK main, coming in and demanding the developers change the job into what I want it to be, and completely ignore the people who actually love and play DRK—and then subsequently telling them that they aren’t entitled to tell me to just go play something else that more suits my tastes instead of asking their job to be changed into what I want. I don’t offer feedback on roles that I don’t play simply because it’s not really my place, and I don’t think developers should take my opinions into consideration being as that I don’t play the job I’m offering opinions on (and I don’t think I could form a thorough opinion on it anyways).

People are allowed to give feedback. But I think the developers should listen more to those who actively play the jobs rather than the ones who don’t, or who just play it on occasion. And this is for more than just AST; it’s for all jobs in general.

[ItMe]

Personally, I would disagree and say that players that have been playing a job for longer likely have more weight to their opinions because they have been actively playing the job. They know the job. Perhaps they even optimize/min-max on it. I truly think that the developers should listen more to them rather than the players that don’t actively play the jobs when it comes to job adjustments and feedback.

In general, yes. For balance, yes.
In this case it's not relevant.
Just because you enjoyed the first version of this class doesn't mean you're entitled to love every version of the class or SQEX is being bad. You don't get some higher say in what's fun just because you dug the prototype. Hence my comment about how (in this case of people whining about the RNG) your "seniority" with the class doesn't elevate your perspective. SQEX wanted to change the job. They changed it to something someone doesn't like. That's unfortunate. But I'm as tired of people whining about ShB AST as they are tired of people whining about the RNG. I don't know what it is about that comment in particular that caused me to flip, but their "pick a different job if you don't like it" really got under my skin. I didnt like it in Stormblood, so I did play something else. I rocked SCH. I'm sorry we both can't have fun now but if you don't like it now, don't make yourself miserable and consider taking your own advice.

[Rilifane]

While i enjoy new ast, i still really hate the new card system despite playing it for more than a year. even if the new cards are better for balance and consistency, the playability is awful. having to scroll the party list every time you want to use a card is so annoying that people both in computer and controller made macros to make it easier on them. and if you dont like the clunkiness of macros you have to deal with the clunkiness of the job. I want old ast back just so i dont have to target party members so often; i remember that before sleeve draw got changed my hands tendons would hurt from all the targetting, and while its better in that regard now, that was still only a bandaid fix.

I understand a lot of complaints about ASTs current cards but this is something I have to disagree with.
Healers involve target switching by nature. And depending on the content/ party, lots of it. AST is designed as a busy, high APM job with more target switching than the other two. But "clunky" isn't something it deserves to be called.
A free weave after every Malefic. High baseline mobility with more mobility on demand. Coolowns naturally lining up.
And then we have WhM with the awkward PoM cooldown, forced clips, little mobility.
Or SCH with fairy skills still ghosting unless spread to seperate instants, fairy generally being fairly slow, DT requiring a seperate weave to properly catch the shield, Seraph shield requiring two weaves.

I'm not saying your tendon problems didn't exist and it's unfortunate that you couldn't find a way to make it work for you without hurting your hand but a lot of complaints about old SD were not coming from people with actual health problems but people who didn't want to put the effort into learning to target switch (which really isn't rocket science on M+K) and instead of being content with not using it optimally but simply to the best of their abilities wanted to see it nerfed. Another layer, that was completely optional in most types of content, is now gone.

[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.

[QooEr]

I understand a lot of complaints about ASTs current cards but this is something I have to disagree with.
Healers involve target switching by nature. And depending on the content/ party, lots of it. AST is designed as a busy, high APM job with more target switching than the other two. But "clunky" isn't something it deserves to be called.

i know ast isnt "clunky" in everything else, which is why i enjoy it, but i was specifically talking about the cards here. i admit i target switch as a healer by nature, but usually when play healer while i do have to scroll up to heal a random dps, most of the time who i have to single target heal is a tank. targetting the tank is 1 or 2 presses on the dpad at most; whereas a dps could be up to 4.

Usually scrolling a lot isnt an issue because i can switch target while casting, meaning i have 1.5s (or more if im playing another healer) to target a party member. However if i have lightspeed up and i need to use many ogcds in a short amount of time, such as the (re)opener, if i dont want to clip when double weaving play, i have to somehow scroll up to 4 times in 0.1 seconds to be able to double weave without clipping. i could take longer to get buffs up but then theyd be misaligned with other's burst windows.

When i called the card system clunky i meant that, while other jobs might clip because they dont have weave windows, with ast i clip because i physically cannot move my finger fast enough sometimes. this was never an issue when royal road existed, and thats why i dislike the playability of the current card system.