How is new AST feeling?

[RinaShinomiya]

Only leveled AST to 83 so far (been focusing on leveling DoL & DoH after finishing the story) but i can't say i'm a fan of the job in its current iteration.
The new AST feels incredibly hostile to Controller players since the kit is unnecessarily bloated, The new seal system feels pointless and the buffs Astrodyne provides are hilarious. Giving AST a second albeit weaker Lucid dream is so overpowered you might as well remove MP from the UI altogether. The speed and DPS Buffs are also great on paper until you realize that you're buffing the healer with the weakest personal DPS so there is really not much point to fishing for 3 seals. At least the speed buff also affects HoTs (because we really needed that) but it still doesn't feel as good as PoM on WHM. I really liked the card system in SB and the ShB one i could get behind after they ironed out its kinks with patched but here its the seal gauge is so underwhelming it might as well not exist. The best i can say about it is that its not WHM SB Lilies level of bad. Because of the Card system feeling underwhelming every button taken up by it feels even more jarring than before. While i appreciate that Minor Arcana got reverted to a previous version of the skill, having absolutely no control over whenever or not its Lady or Lord feels really bad. Every time i Draw lady i don't need it and Astro's kit is already covered by so many good OGCD heals that it feels like a pointless addition. Similarly having a separate play button for Arcana is pointless. Both cards are AoE's which don't even require a target. At least with the regular Draw/Play you can make an argument that you can make Macros for Play that specifically target certain slots on the Party List. So aiming melee & ranged DPS is less stressful (esp for controller players) but Minor Arcana can't do anything remotely useful with that extra play button. Get rid of it.
With Divination being completely unshackled from the card system this was the perfect opportunity to make the card effects more unique again. You could still have that Melee/Ranged DPS split but instead of all being flat damage increases you could apply haste or enhanced crits. Instead its still basically just 2 cards, spread across 6 cards due a job gauge that i already complained about. Removing Astrodyne, seal gauges and only allowing to draw Lord and Lady, with the effects they had in ShB would achieve the exact same thing except it wouldn't eat up 7 buttons on the hotbar. It baffles me that the card system gets progressively more pointless with every iteration of it.
Synastry being unchanged is also showing how much attention SE pays to class design. This button makes sense on a White Mage, not Astrologian. It should've been reworked several expansions ago.
I'll still level AST to 90 for completions sake but in terms of Pure healing ill stick to WHM. SGE is more fun to play right now so at least i can compliment SE on finally making me invested in a Barrier healer again.

[Brandedblade]

The speed and DPS Buffs are also great on paper until you realize that you're buffing the healer with the weakest personal DPS so there is really not much point to fishing for 3 seals.

I think that's the point to be honest. Astrodyne seems intended to emulate the old rng mechanics of AST in a way that doesn't directly interfere with their ability to consistently buff the party's damage. It means bad rng is only hurting the AST, who is also the one who loses the least from the process.

[RinaShinomiya]

I think that's the point to be honest. Astrodyne seems intended to emulate the old rng mechanics of AST in a way that doesn't directly interfere with their ability to consistently buff the party's damage. It means bad rng is only hurting the AST, who is also the one who loses the least from the process.

Which brings me back to my point that you could remove all seal mechanics from current Astros kit and nothing of value would be lost. Being bad on purpose doesn't make it good. It's like if 5.0 SCH never got ED back and people said overstacking on Aetherflow is working as intended. The job gauge exists to be interacted with and rn Astro's job gauge is better when not interacted with.

[Brandedblade]

Which brings me back to my point that you could remove all seal mechanics from current Astros kit and nothing of value would be lost. Being bad on purpose doesn't make it good. It's like if 5.0 SCH never got ED back and people said overstacking on Aetherflow is working as intended. The job gauge exists to be interacted with and rn Astro's job gauge is better when not interacted with.

THey absolutely could, but it doesn't change the fact that there are players who cried for that rng to come back so they where essentially thrown a squeaky toy to chew on that doesn't hurt the rest of their output.

[Blitzgon]

After getting all the healers to 90 and tossing them at the current EXs we have I have to say AST was the one that felt the worst to play. Out of all the iterations of AST there has been this feels like a regression back to SB but with more button bloat.

Starting with the negatives
-Minor Arcana feels bad to just use, like an additional button to keep track of on top of everything else.
-Astrodyne also feels bad when you are just unlucky to get 3 seals and the Refresh on it seems a bit overkill with MP on cards still.
-Macrocosmos has way too long of a cooldown for what you will get out of it most of the time.

And the positives
-Exaltation is a fun cooldown, wished it lasted 10-15s though
-Still incredibly powerful heals in Earthly Star, Celestial Opposition, and Collective
-Essential Dignity is still a strong single target heal that is reliably up when you will need it

Overall AST is still a serviceable healer, but the changes to cards and minor arcana makes it far more challenging to use.

Now for the nitpicking starting with cards. Honestly, I have no idea who thought we needed to have this hellish hybrid of ShB and SB cards. I think its great cards are still flat damage so we are not fishing for balance spreads like the old days, but I wish I could dump or get more redraws cards with seals I don't need without just literally tossing free damage down the toilet. The lack of RNG protection has lead to Astrodyne being just a "Oh hey, that's nice" kind of thing if you just so happen to luck yourself into three seals. The unreliability of the buff outside of the Refresh and Haste feels really bad, and speaking of the buff itself, Astrodyne feels like it came two expansions late to the party. The Refresh would have been amazing back in SB and early ShB where it was an issue, though now with MP on draw and buffs to Lucid Dreaming (and not to mention the copious amounts of PIE on current gear) I do not see how anyone would ever run dry on MP, kinda making the refresh moot. I'm sure once the gear sets allow for SS with no PIE then it'll allow AST to still pump after ten minutes, but until then it is just overkill. The next buff, Haste also feels underwhelming, especially if you use it when your lightspeed is up. "But don't use them together then!" Well, what if I happen to luck into the 5% damage buff? Should I really hold Astrodyne just so my lightspeed isn't wasted? No, no I would not hold on to it, especially when raid buffs are out like trick attack. I do think stacking the two doesn't really affect much, might be able to edge out another malific inside the raid buff window but I would still need to test it further. Anyways, point being that the Haste buff feels really negligible currently, and will most certainty make double weaving under lightspeed a nightmare once the Spell Speed builds start revving up.

Minor Arcana changes also feel like dog water. It used to nice to use it as a card dump and give someone a bigger buff while you fish out your seals for Divination, now its just another RNG button for either free damage or free healing with no real choice in the matter. I don't think this on its own is too much of an issue, though I think it does compound the overall issue of AST having too many damn ogcds to push. Before in ShB, it was play through your deck as fast as possible to toss out Div with the rest of the raid buffs, now its play cards, play minor arcana, and use Div on time and pray you got the 3 seal Astrodyne for a solid opener. It is a lot of multitasking for what feels like the same benefits as before.

Macrocosmos is also a underwhelming capstone ability. Though don't get me wrong, it has an amazing effect that looks like it has a lot of potential uses, if you could be bothered to use it after the initial boss AoE at the start of fights. Having the same Pot. as Fall Malific is nice since it does use up a gcd to use, but I just wished it had a shorter cooldown for how little it really affects healing. When ASTs kit is already outfitted with some of the highest burst healing in Earthly Star and amazing raid wide regen in Collective and Celestial Opposition which still on a short 60s cooldown, its really hard to justify using it when most of the healing is already covered by yourself or your co-healer. Especially now with other jobs bringing in some heavy mitigation, I never seem to find a good spot to use it unless I specifically tell my party to not mitigate or use their ogcd heals. In the end It has a way to long cooldown to really use often enough outside of certain tank buster invuls such as Holmgang and Living Dead.

Also last nitpick before I go to bed, Make draw and play the same god damn button, same goes for minor arcana. I see no reason the play button should be different then the draw button, or at the very least let us be able to choose if we want draw and play on the same damn button.

My hope is that the current minor arcana system will be dumped or at least changed to draw cards to buff players again, Astrodyne rework to either give the damage up front instead of the next to worthless refresh, and for a shorter cooldown on Macrocosmos to create more opportunities for interesting interactions with trials