Astrologian changes 6.0

[Liam_Harper]

I dislike the Lord and Lady changes. It's not about dps, it's about consistency. I'd actually be happier if both were heal cards than what we have now. A heal tied to rng becomes far less useful. If you're unlucky it might not appear for 3-4 minutes. You can never plan around it.

It's either a highly inconsistent heal or a tiny bit of damage. It's just needless button bloat really. There is no choice, it's either pop immediately if it's Lord, or hold for 60 sec for the tiny chance you might need it if it's Lady.

[Sqwall]

But that was my point. It really doesn't. You will almost invariably always want Lord of Crowns as it is always useful. While Lady of Crowns is only useful when there is some significant healing to do. Especially since Lord of Crowns IS a dps gain. It adds to Astrologian's dps, its an oGCD you can weave into your casts for a 250 potency gain.

Indeed, I agree it is not much. And maybe it's not valuable enough to make a dent, but it is still more useful than healing. Healing doesn't make the fight finish faster. Healing can be completely wasted and add nothing to a team if it doesn't save anyone and for that AST has a lot of much more consistent tools.

It's a choice between always free useful damage (which can be augmented in Divination or Astrodyne windows, increasing its value.) and free very situational healing. This isn't really choice.

Hmm good point. I seem to go in a different direction on this I suppose.
Minor Aranca is 60 sec cooldown timer starts when used. Separate timer from draw and crown play.
Crown Play is instant use and is technically "Spread" from astro of old. You can hold on to this for 60 sec until you start to see drift.

This gives me the chance to use Lady within 60 sec of pulling it up. I don't have to use it RIGHT away....I can hold it when healing is needed with the 60 sec until minor arcana comes up again. Lord...well yeah might as well us it right away as it is undeniably more useful.

Either way. I see them both useful. And I understand your point. I just see it in a different way as MP savers for DPS and Healing respectively.

[Payadopa]

I'm a big fan of getting some RNG back with AST. Very nice changes overall.

[PangTong]

If you do the math, you can work out that you only have a 56% chance of getting 3 unique seals in 3 consecutive uses of Play, even when accounting for Redraw.

On your very first draw, you have no seals, so playing anything is fine. There's no chance of being screwed over. No problem.
On your second draw, you have a 2/6 chance (33.33%) of drawing a card with the same seal as your first Play.
You can use Redraw on this card, and since redraw prevents you from drawing the same card again, only 1 of the 5 remaining cards will give you the same seal. So you have a 1/5 chance (20%) chance of being screwed here.
So in total, to be screwed on your second Draw, you need to fail both the 2/6 Draw and the 1/5 Redraw. Together that's (2/6) * (1/5) = 0.0667 (6.67% chance) of being screwed on the second Play and being forced to use a card with the same seal as the first Draw.

On your third Draw, assuming you managed to get a different seal on the second, your chances of success are much lower because now there is only one specific seal you want.
So you have a 4/6 chance (66.67%) of Drawing a card with a seal you already have. Redraw eliminates a dud card, but out of the 5 remaining possible cards there are still 3 that have a seal you already have.
So this Redraw has a 3/5 chance (60%) of getting you a failure card.
Putting these together as (4/6) * (3/5) = 0.4, you have a 40% chance of getting screwed on the third Play.

In order to get 3 unique seals in 3 consecutive Plays, you must succeed both the second and third Draw RNG.
Your chance of failing on the second Draw is 6.67%, so your chance of succeeding is 93.33%.
Your chance of failing on the third Draw is 40%, so your chance of succeeding is 60%.
So your chance of succeeding both is 0.9333 * 0.6 = 0.56 i.e. 56%

So almost half the time you will fail to get 3 unique seals for Astrodyne. You could potentially delay Astrodyne and hope that your NEXT card will give you the third seal, but this is wasting a seal that could potentially go to your NEXT Astrodyne, so it's not really worth it just for the 5% damage buff. It's pretty lame to get screwed over at this high of a rate through no fault of your own. 56% success rate is quite low for an action you'll only be able to use a handful of times per boss or dungeon.

I've seen some people say that Astrologian is the gambling job and gambling is no fun if you can't lose. But I think that "random" is not the same as "gambling". Astrologian is about reading futures, and playing the hands that fate deals you. Getting a random outcome is not necessarily the same as randomly getting a win or a loss. It's about how you choose to use what fortune has given you. If you are given one of a variety of tools at random, that doesn't necessarily mean that one is superior and the others inferior. You just have to adapt to the tools you're given to get the most use out of them.

But there's no adaption to be had in just getting a buff vs not getting one. You're not being given different tools that you have to think about and apply in different ways. You're just getting less. So in that way it becomes gambling. There are wins and losses, instead of different responses to different outcomes. I don't think that's right for AST, nor does it make for satisfying gameplay.

For this design, I think either cards need more RNG protection/mitigation built in, or the buff for 3 unique seals should be changed to something less important. But really, I would rather see a design where different combinations of seals resulted in different, unique buffs, with no outcome being inherently better or worse. You could try to go for specific outcomes, but ultimately the result changes only your approach, instead of just being good or bad.

[Portions]

For this design, I think either cards need more RNG protection/mitigation built in, or the buff for 3 unique seals should be changed to something less important. But really, I would rather see a design where different combinations of seals resulted in different, unique buffs, with no outcome being inherently better or worse. You could try to go for specific outcomes, but ultimately the result changes only your approach, instead of just being good or bad.

To your bit at the end, I'm not going to say it's a satisfying answer (I will say that I'm not sure I agree with it), but the logic of taking away the unique buffs was likely that if they are designed such that "with no outcome being inherently better or worse", they may as well be the same buff because they're less subject to potential min/maxing as they are now which could make certain comps preferable. The reason I've never liked this argument is because it also favors standardizing other jobs' buffs and that's also insanely boring but the problem is somewhat inherent to this game design as a whole. Similarly, while I agree with the comment above that they could actually make undraw useful to mitigate RNG, doing it to return a redraw would be a bit redundant unless undraw had a long timer attached. Another alternative they could do is make undraw shorten the timer on draw, similar to how hypercharge works with MCH's gauss OGCDs.

On the whole, AST's cards probably could have just stayed the same. I like the idea of astrodyne, I play on console and I've never had problems targeting, and I'm actually okay with the idea of Div not being 100%, but that's the difference between this game and how Corsair could operate- this game is designed for balance and the slower pace of FFXI made it okay to have the occasional bust if you had particularly poor luck.

[Vivix]

Idk why people like the divination changes. It was always available when I needed it and at least fishing for the correct seals occasionally gave me something to do.

[MintnHoney]

Idk why people like the divination changes. It was always available when I needed it and at least fishing for the correct seals occasionally gave me something to do.

Good news, you can still fish for seals.

[Saefinn]

Idk why people like the divination changes. It was always available when I needed it and at least fishing for the correct seals occasionally gave me something to do.

It's because the seals mechanic went into something else that might feel better to use them on.

At the moment it is you stack 3 seals from 3 cards that at basically The Balance, if you can't use one you use it on another version of the Balance that is if you weren't able to redraw and get the version of The Balance you wanted and the reward? The Balance for everybody.

With the changes you still are stacking seals from what is basically The Balance but your Minor Arcana is no longer The Balance and you're building up for different effects. Though it does include a damage buff but at least it is with other bonuses.

One complaint was that AST cards lost meaning and lacked substance when they turned them all into The Balance. This change brings a little of that back without I guess compromising the reasons they made this change in the first place.

[EthanMoonkin]

While I am intrigued about some of the changes, I also agree that the card system is still poorly designed and will not be enjoyable to play. At first I was excited because I thought Macrocosmos was an ogcd which would mean being able to weave in-between malefics like assize, but it's just a malefic substitute with a heal since their potencies are the same. The Lord is nice, but now your personal damage is completely based on rng and there's nothing you can do to change that no matter how much you master the class.

Just as someone already mentioned, damage will ALWAYS be better than healing. This is not an opinion but a matter of fact as that is how the game is designed. You are not benefiting the party by healing constantly, but you are by doing damage. This is something all players need to understand no matter what casual or not.

Being able to reroll the arcana for the other card would also be an option I'd he happy for but that would probably add to the skill bloat, so giving both equal amounts of damage will having a slightly different effect would also silver the problem.

[Sqwall]

While I am intrigued about some of the changes, I also agree that the card system is still poorly designed and will not be enjoyable to play. At first I was excited because I thought Macrocosmos was an ogcd which would mean being able to weave in-between malefics like assize, but it's just a malefic substitute with a heal since their potencies are the same. The Lord is nice, but now your personal damage is completely based on rng and there's nothing you can do to change that no matter how much you master the class.

Just as someone already mentioned, damage will ALWAYS be better than healing. This is not an opinion but a matter of fact as that is how the game is designed. You are not benefiting the party by healing constantly, but you are by doing damage. This is something all players need to understand no matter what casual or not.

Being able to reroll the arcana for the other card would also be an option I'd he happy for but that would probably add to the skill bloat, so giving both equal amounts of damage will having a slightly different effect would also silver the problem.

I disagree with this statement. Gravity isn't RNG, Combust isn't RNG, Malefic isn't RNG. Personal DPS doesn't have to all be perfect, and for some to think that everything related to DPS needs to knock their socks of just further dilutes the job. Otherwise AST should have just been a R.DPS. At AST heart is a healer, and it is possibly the best healer in the game. Possibly.

I don't believe those that think the RNG on AST is bad....it's not. Far from it really. MNK currently has worse RNG, BRD has worse RNG. For me personally it's not hard to get a Divination opener, it's not hard to throw out a card every 30 sec, it's not hard to redraw, it's not hard to see when my non-sleeve draw Div isn't coming together well...and when I need to toss out minor arcana when I run out of redraws for 1 seal to get ready for Div.

AST has ALL the tools it needs to heal and DPS effectively. If people want to think it's DPS is completely behind an RNG system, then your missing the point. Minor arcana is fine with the new iteration, because it's basically an after thought currently. AST is the buff healer, and it's cards also serve as it's DPS. Every time you toss a card onto a Dragoon or a Black Mage, you the healer just increased your DPS.

You play AST well, and roll with the punches you can increase DPS quite a bit. The new Lord and Lady does NOT break the job at all. If anything it gives me more to do during slower moments.

I'm happy with the new changes.