Astrologian changes 6.0

[Liam_Harper]

What I honestly don't get about such statements is that we think of a scenario where nobody screws up. I'm raiding myself and people do screw up or the enemy gets a lucky hit in so it's nice to have it.

In which case RNG decides you get useless Lords for the next 5 minutes and you don't have your Lady to cover the screw up. You can't adjust to that with Minor Arcana, rng said no. You just have to throw Lord at the boss, which does nothing to help the situation. How do you not get that?

Certain posters here are so focused on being anti-min maxer and focusing on dps that they can't see bad design right in front of their face. I've stated myself that I'd be happier if Minor Arcana did no dps at all. For example if Lady was the aoe heal and Lord was a single target heal that could also remove weakness, you could at least adapt by throwing it where it would be of the most use. Nice tool for prog.

But the current Minor Arcana is plain unreliable. But I guess if that lets you continue your agenda against raiders, you don't really care how bad the class feels to play.

[inhaledcorn]

In which case RNG decides you get useless Lords for the next 5 minutes and you don't have your Lady to cover the screw up. You can't adjust to that with Minor Arcana, rng said no. You just have to throw Lord at the boss, which does nothing to help the situation. How do you not get that?

Certain posters here are so focused on being anti-min maxer and focusing on dps that they can't see bad design right in front of their face. I've stated myself that I'd be happier if Minor Arcana did no dps at all. For example if Lady was the aoe heal and Lord was a single target heal that could also remove weakness, you could at least adapt by throwing it where it would be of the most use. Nice tool for prog.

But the current Minor Arcana is plain unreliable. But I guess if that lets you continue your agenda against raiders, you don't really care how bad the class feels to play.

I was saying Lord should be an AoE heal with Shield and Lady should be an AoE heal with Regen. Still unpredictable, but it might save a Collective or Opposition use.

And, seriously, I don't understand what these people are so angry with raiders. Raiders are generally the ones the developers balance things around since they are the ones who actually understand the game, mainly because they have to. Those who are so anti-min max can't articulate why something is good or bad, they can only break it down to, "Don't change it because I like it."

Guess what? I want Astrodyne and Minor Arcana changed because I don't like it. But, I know why I don't like it: it's a loss of consistency in a game where things are predictable. It's not about gambling, and those who think AST was a gambler doesn't understand a thing about how it has always been played.

[glamazon]

I like it precisely because of the rng. I like rng. I like the unpredictable nature of the ability because it keeps things interesting and forces me to adapt.

Min makers are why our cards were homogenized and will bring even more blandness to the healers. Please stop. If you don’t like rng go to another class that doesn’t use it

[rewd]

In which case RNG decides you get useless Lords for the next 5 minutes and you don't have your Lady to cover the screw up. You can't adjust to that with Minor Arcana, rng said no. You just have to throw Lord at the boss, which does nothing to help the situation. How do you not get that?

Certain posters here are so focused on being anti-min maxer and focusing on dps that they can't see bad design right in front of their face. I've stated myself that I'd be happier if Minor Arcana did no dps at all. For example if Lady was the aoe heal and Lord was a single target heal that could also remove weakness, you could at least adapt by throwing it where it would be of the most use. Nice tool for prog.

But the current Minor Arcana is plain unreliable. But I guess if that lets you continue your agenda against raiders, you don't really care how bad the class feels to play.

What certain posters here don't get is that antagonizing people only has the consequence of embarassing yourself and weakining your arguments (which could be weak to begin with). Starting your posts with a "akshually if you have this opinion you surely don't understand the basics of the blablabla" or acting like "agenda against raiders" is a real thing in this thread (seriously, stop grasping at straws), is silly and sad to see.

Also, please, tell me if I got this right. Some people don't like the current system because Lady is a RNG heal and those are unreliable and because Lord is always better, and your suggestion to fix this is to:

- Make Lord a RNG heal, so that instead of having one unreliable tool, we get two
- Make Lord the better card because healers are not missing AoE heals and being able to remove weakness is a very, very powerful buff both in prog and non-prog content (and you are able to hold a potential Lord for the rest of the fight because Lady sucks)
- Make this a completely dead and irrelevant mechanic outside of prog
- Make AST even more powerful and WHM, its direct competitor, even less appealing because just the chance to be able to get a Lord and dispel the weakness debuff, on top of AST being in general just better than WHM, would be enough to strongly prefer one healer over the other

and you are accusing others of being unable to see bad design right in front of their face?

[Sebazy]

Also, please, tell me if I got this right. Some people don't like the current system because Lady is a RNG heal and those are unreliable and because Lord is always better, and your suggestion to fix this is to:

RNG heals end up in a strange no mans land where they don't really serve any clear purpose.

Savage raiders will typically distill runs down into a fairly rigid rotation. RNG heals go against this (Thus old Arrow was so divisive). If I'm going to lean on it, it'd better provide enough value to make the potential shift worthwhile. A single oGCD heal frankly doesn't.

In more casual content, what purpose does it really serve? It's window dressing fluff IMHO. I could accidentally unbind it mid pull and it wouldn't change a thing. Our kits are already comically overtuned as it is.

Here's a spicy hot take:

I'd make it grant a missing sign for Astrodyne and switch the card drawn to 1 of 3 50% weaker classic Stormblood era cards depending on which sign it grants.

Let's go with-

15 second 4% Damage Up - Balance for Solar
15 second 4% Crit Up - Spear for Celestial
15 second MP Regen Up - Ewer for Lunar

Obviously the durations and percentages would need to be tuned (probably downwards to ensure it doesn't out value regular cards) but you get the idea. It adds RNG of varying degrees of usefulness but in a way that's open to being gamed if you pay attention to what seals you've already got saved.

All in the name of adding a bit more gameplay depth whilst also helping to make Astrodyne align up with 2 minute raid buffs so it doesn't fall into the same trap PoM did.

[Liam_Harper]

and you are accusing others of being unable to see bad design right in front of their face?

I am, yes.

-Removing weakness is powerful, sure, but it's just an example because "single target heal" doesn't sound that exciting. But it could be whatever. I'm not a developer, we're just exploring opinions here.
-Sure, I'm probably being a bit too harsh towards Payadopa, I can admit that. Easy to get carried away when you feel strongly about something.
-Two heals wouldn't be as unreliable because you're always getting a heal.
-I'd rather it was dead outside of prog than frustrating on farm runs where you play perfectly and get rng screwed out of 1000 potency over the fight.
-WHM isn't even a competitor. It needs attention far more than AST to be honest.

[rewd]

I'm not a developer, we're just exploring opinions here.

Indeed, which is why I'd rather we all think twice and avoid personal attacks, which just make the discussion pretty obnoxious overall. Moving on:

- Two heals (or 3, or 4, or...) are still unreliable because they are RNG and mess up with your healing plan (which every good healers has). This is actually something I agree with. ST and AoE heals might be more manageable RNG, but still rather superfluous.

-I'd rather it was dead outside of prog than frustrating on farm runs where you play perfectly and get rng screwed out of 1000 potency over the fight.

You see, this is the whole point of the discussion, really. I, on the other hand, love the thought of it. Not only in farm parties, but dungeons, savage progs, alliance raids...
I prefer the "different strokes for different folks" approach, rather than "I prefer this way and you are objectively wrong if you think otherwise" approach.

I wouldn't mind making Lady more appealing because an AoE heal on a healer that isn't really lacking in that department is not that great, but God, I would be lying if I said Astrodyne and Minor Arcana didn't make me feel excited to play AST again.

[Sqwall]

I honestly don't understand all this focus on Minor Arcana. It's DPS is so low that I doubt it will even make a Marginal difference in prog or raiding. Maybe ultimate...but I doubt it.

Obviously it has become a large point of discussion, and it's not even that good. It's literally a button you use every 60 sec. It's 100% job flavor.

Lord vs. DPS skills

-Fall malefic is STILL stronger
-Gravity II is STILL stronger
-Combust is still pretty strong (didn't see the potency changes)

Lady vs. Heal skills
-literally a non-point as every skill AST has is very powerful healing

When people talk about Min-Max this makes me cringe, because SOOOO much of the player base doesn't do this. There are those that do, great. But I think those that Min-Max and try to squeeze so much out the job to preform at a high level only want skills that benefit them at a high level.

Extremes, Savage, Ultimate's are SO choreographed that you say it's unpredictable. That makes no sense if I know exactly what is going to happen if I just memorize the fight. Where it's problematic is during Prog...and getting 8 people on the same page not knowing what is going to happen, but after a week Youtube starts sharing the best ways to clear the raids. My hats off to those that can prog that content, and show us lesser beings how it's done. Truly we should praise them and their accomplishments.

This is unrealistic to think the raiders shape the game, and we should owe them something. No that's just silly. Anyone can see minor arcana is next to useless in a raid, because it is. And to have those that Min-Max say it needs changed because it's to RNG for prog/raiding is just dumb. AST has LITERALLY a million other buttons to press that do the job WAY better. So I don't understand all the focus on it. It's FREE minor damage, and FREE minor healing. This RNG is sooooo insignificant to the game, and to remove/replace or change it would just cause imbalance.

[Mortex]

I honestly don't understand all this focus on Minor Arcana. It's DPS is so low that I doubt it will even make a Marginal difference in prog or raiding. Maybe ultimate...but I doubt it.

Obviously it has become a large point of discussion, and it's not even that good. It's literally a button you use every 60 sec. It's 100% job flavor.

Lord vs. DPS skills

-Fall malefic is STILL stronger
-Gravity II is STILL stronger
-Combust is still pretty strong (didn't see the potency changes)

Lady vs. Heal skills
-literally a non-point as every skill AST has is very powerful healing

When people talk about Min-Max this makes me cringe, because SOOOO much of the player base doesn't do this. There are those that do, great. But I think those that Min-Max and try to squeeze so much out the job to preform at a high level only want skills that benefit them at a high level.

This is unrealistic to think the raiders shape the game, and we should owe them something. No that's just silly. Anyone can see minor arcana is next to useless in a raid, because it is. And to have those that Min-Max say it needs changed because it's to RNG for prog/raiding is just dumb. AST has LITERALLY a million other buttons to press that do the job WAY better. So I don't understand all the focus on it. It's FREE minor damage, and FREE minor healing. This RNG is sooooo insignificant to the game, and to remove/replace or change it would just cause imbalance.

The skill is gonna be almost like he was in stormblood only back then you were forced to sac a card for it. They changed it in shadowbringer for a better dmg card but you still had to sac cards for it. Now they just do stormblood again but you dont need a card. At some point this does get tedious because it looks like they have no clue what they want to do with astro and this skill (like with all the other healer). Cant wait for it to be consistent again next expansion after endwalker. And the second problem is that this skill feels pretty useless on astro because he already has so many ogcds. The heal is just whatever and the damage is also whatever. You just press the button every minuten and if dmg its always up for buff window and if not you gonne use it for people that miss the magic 1 % hp in almost all situations. Atleast make both cards something intresting maybe you know something with time the lore that astro lost in endwalker. I rather want old cards back with no balance and other unique effects because the cards we have now are comparable to normal bread and bread with some dye on it. Also for a rng job why cant i spin the rng wheel 3 times in a row anymore ? Does my character get a hand cramp after doing it once ?. I mean i can understand that i have the same problem after smashing my malefic button 150 times in a run. And also 50/50 is in my eyes bad rng when we had 6 cards to draw before were all maybe were not good but unique.

[EthanMoonkin]

I honestly don't understand all this focus on Minor Arcana. It's DPS is so low that I doubt it will even make a Marginal difference in prog or raiding. Maybe ultimate...but I doubt it.

Obviously it has become a large point of discussion, and it's not even that good. It's literally a button you use every 60 sec. It's 100% job flavor.

Lord vs. DPS skills

-Fall malefic is STILL stronger
-Gravity II is STILL stronger
-Combust is still pretty strong (didn't see the potency changes)

Lady vs. Heal skills
-literally a non-point as every skill AST has is very powerful healing

When people talk about Min-Max this makes me cringe, because SOOOO much of the player base doesn't do this. There are those that do, great. But I think those that Min-Max and try to squeeze so much out the job to preform at a high level only want skills that benefit them at a high level.


This is unrealistic to think the raiders shape the game, and we should owe them something. No that's just silly. Anyone can see minor arcana is next to useless in a raid, because it is. And to have those that Min-Max say it needs changed because it's to RNG for prog/raiding is just dumb. AST has LITERALLY a million other buttons to press that do the job WAY better. So I don't understand all the focus on it. It's FREE minor damage, and FREE minor healing. This RNG is sooooo insignificant to the game, and to remove/replace or change it would just cause imbalance.

Potency is not job flavor.
Let’s take an 8 minute fight for example. With the Lord being 250 potency, that’s 2000 potency gained or lost based on RNG. That’s only on a single target. In dungeons, this scales exponentially due to the ability having no aoe falloff. AST could have huuuge aoe burst with proper RNG, which is very useful in casual content.

As for the potencies shown in the media tour(which are subject to change) the Lord has 250 potency.
Fall Malefic had the same potency at 250
Gravity had a potency of 130 to all enemies.
Combust has a potency of 550 when it ticks for all 30 seconds.

Because Lord is an ability, it can be weaved in between casts, so it is not only potency even with Malefic, it’s a straight potency gain.

The only time I can see Lady being useful is when you can use it to save a fall malefic to heal the party instead of casting a gcd heal. More often then not though, I expect people to be throwing out lady cards to use minor arcana again.

This does not apply to just min/maxers or raiders. This applies to everyone from dungeons or normal trials or even solo content.

As for adjusting the RNG, it’s actually quite simple to change it by simply adjusting the potencies.