EW AST Redraw needs improvement

[RinaShinomiya]

Cards are still boring and a chore except now we get punished less for not interacting with the system.
What a tremendous improvement i can hardly contain my sarcasm.

[Liam_Harper]

Astrodyne leaves much to be desidered, but I definitely wouldn't describe the previous card system (including Minor Arcana) 'fun'. Boring and a chore, maybe.

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward. Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG. It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

[rewd]

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward. Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG. It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

Old card system felt bad to me because it was tacked on and just overall boring. 8 different cards with the same effect (just with different %) felt terribly boring. Drawing and playing them just to unlock... another boring DPS buff was even worse. Getting 3 seals also wasn't exactly engaging or interesting.

In a vacuum, I love the new system. Using cards to buff, heal and deal damage is great. Playing them to get effects that can make us deal more damage and heal more is awesome. In practice, Astrodyne feels and is irrelevant and RNG is too intrusive. This means however that the system can and should be improved and I think there is a good foundation here to build something truly fun. I'd rather see improvements of what we have, rather than go back to the snoozefest we had in ShB.

[AnotherPerson]

The current AST makes me feel like I'm embodying the powers of the stars, which is great for identity and immersion. Earthly Star having a huge range fits inline with Endwalker's theme imo, and feels great to use now I know that everyone isn't able to just slightly walk out of my Star's range. If they do, then I know they're doing that on purpose and thus don't need to adjust to them.

I think AST and Astrodyne is moving to the right direction. It works well as a Lv 50 skill. Astrodyne just needs to be a bit more impactful at higher levels and needs more cohesion with Minor Arcana. Perhaps make Minor Arcana just blend both Lady of Crowns/Lord of Crowns to do both things under Astrodyne. Under Lady of Crowns, Lord of Crowns becomes an additional effect that does damage scaled based on Astrodyne's seals. Under Lord of Crowns, Lady of Crowns's healing becomes an additional effect that is scaled based on Astrodyne's seals. That, or open up the last Heaven's Gate under the effects of Astrodyne. The seals will determine how effective the Heaven's Gate is, or something along those lines.

As for Redraw, I think if Minor Arcana granted a different seal like the Shadow Bringer's 5.3 Sleeve Draw iteration, except you get a seal when you use Minor Arcana rather on Crown play. Then, the problem of bad RNG would be solved & largely mitigated so just having 1 redraw per Draw would be okay.

[MintnHoney]

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward.

[+1 or +2%] isn't something I would call a "decent reward."

Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG.

Yes, but this wasn't exactly "exciting" or even that good. It was only as you said:

It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

The thing about whether or not the 100 potency is worth it, is that, frankly, since you're bringing up DPS, and/or if you're thinking about parses (which is usually the bottom line, and even if you don't mean it to be, it will always get there), it is always worth it (particularly because this is 100 potency that is a consequence of just playing the job). That's the problem quite a few people have with Astrodyne: that they can't guarantee that 5% damage/healing buff, and so it makes them unhappy.

But otherwise, I believe the intention for Astrodyne is to allow AST to have a little more agency to handle high-stress situations, particularly with healing, since it provides an all-in-one (potentially) system.
Will that be necessary in edge-case gameplay? No, but neither is the healer role in general, and, although it's still the beginning of the expansion, I can't even begin to tell you the amount of times Astrodyne has proven to be useful in raids, dungeons, etc..

Regarding Minor Arcana, I'd say the issue with it is that the effects are too small for a 1 minute cooldown, especially because it's a 50/50 crapshoot. I don't believe increasing their efficacy to be the right call, but I would say increasing the frequency of the draws would make it feel better. I also think that keeping them separate from the regular cards is the right call, as it leaves room for further improvements (i.e.: implementing another card from the Suit of Crowns, or another Suit entirely).

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

I disagree. They had designed themselves into a very boring dead-end, removing the the player's agency to manipulate their kit, ability to prioritize specific needs, and created a rather braindead experience in exchange for forced consistency across the playerbase.

In comparison, the current iteration at least has systems in place which allows AST some personal versatility (you can hold on to Astrodyne and Minor Arcana for when you feel they'd be more useful) and seems to have provided room for potential growth, but the current issue with it is that it needs to be tweaked and adjusted.

Honestly, the common factor between the two systems, which seems to be causing issues, is the seals. In SHB they were made very inconsequential after they buffed Divination and tweaked Sleevedraw, and in Endwalker they remained inconsequential to Divination to allow further consistency for buffing the party's damage output, but they wanted to keep the concept, so they've decided to keep the inconsistency to AST, who has the lowest personal DPS, in an effort to reduce DPS variance but potentially provide support for the healing aspect as well as some strength when doing solo content.
The best thing about moving the seals to Astrodyne is that they now have room to tweak and adjust various parameters about the seals and Astrodyne itself, whether it be potencies, how the seals are obtained (e.g., rather than from cards, the AST could have a chance to obtain seals from performing specific actions; for example, mitigation/damage reduction/shielding could provide a chance to obtain the Moon Seal, Regen ticks which actually heal could have a chance to grant Earth, and dealing damage could have a chance to provide Sun), giving it a cooldown, altering the buffs provided, etc..

[Basherr]

Cards are still boring and a chore except now we get punished less for not interacting with the system.
What a tremendous improvement i can hardly contain my sarcasm.

I really want to like playing my Ast, but as you say, cards feel boring and a chore. With the current opener, playing 3 cards in 2 minute windows
to line up with Divination. You could almost just scrap them entirely and add 2% extra damage onto Divination.

It's a shame the idea of cards buffing allies is interesting, but not the way they have executed it.

[Liam_Harper]

[+1 or +2%] isn't something I would call a "decent reward."

I'm not sure how you can say 1-2% raid dps isn't a decent reward, but 100 potency and some mana regen that used to be tied to Play is. That's all Astrodyne is. They took the 8% mana per card, shaved 3% off, tied it to an additional button, then put a pretend effect for 2 and 3 Seal and people lap it up and claim it's great.
It's not about dps at all, it's the fact that you have an extra button to do something you used to do passively.

I'm not arguing the ShB system was fun. Of course it was boring. But it was functional and I don't enjoy pressing random buttons that don't do anything for the sake of pressing buttons.
I don't think they should revert back to ShB because it's good. I think they should revert to it because the current system doesn't work and at least the ShB cards will do the job without needing a ton of buttons until they come up with something decent.

I disagree. They had designed themselves into a very boring dead-end, removing the the player's agency to manipulate their kit, ability to prioritize specific needs, and created a rather braindead experience in exchange for forced consistency across the playerbase.

I really don't get this either when this is precisely the problem with Astrodyne and MA. You have no ability to manipulate your kit. Doesn't matter if you Redraw, you'll get a 2 seal most of the time. Doesn't matter if you get 3 seal or 1 seal, it's just mana regen on a stick. Doesn't matter if you want a Lady for heal or a Lord for add phase, you have no choice and no way to create a choice.

I see players who talk about how they loved old AST, adapting to situations, extending buffs and so on and wonder how they're happy with the rubbish we've been handed. It's like SE threw them a tiny scrap of RNG and they leapt on it. It could be so much more interesting, without bloat or bad RNG, yet the handful of remaining AST players (AST is currently the least popular healer by a large margin) seem to have given up and will just settle for anything now.

[ASkellington]

I see players who talk about how they loved old AST, adapting to situations, extending buffs and so on and wonder how they're happy with the rubbish we've been handed. It's like SE threw them a tiny scrap of RNG and they leapt on it. It could be so much more interesting, without bloat or bad RNG, yet the handful of remaining AST players (AST is currently the least popular healer by a large margin) seem to have given up and will just settle for anything now.

As a person who never played old AST just Shb and EW I'll say this to answer you: for me, its cause the dev team cannot or will not deliver on what I want. Astrodyne could work, but they need to make it worth while. Currently it isn't.

The old seals system was never worth while to begin with and I don't want it back. No. Divination should stay as is. 4%/5/%/6% pot never felt good and will never feel good. It was and still remains a worthless reward.

Either the seals system needs to go or it needs to be made worth while. Mana Haste and Damage is not worth the effort I put into it.

[QooEr]

I see players who talk about how they loved old AST, adapting to situations, extending buffs and so on and wonder how they're happy with the rubbish we've been handed. It's like SE threw them a tiny scrap of RNG and they leapt on it. It could be so much more interesting, without bloat or bad RNG, yet the handful of remaining AST players (AST is currently the least popular healer by a large margin) seem to have given up and will just settle for anything now.

honestly, i prefer stormblood ast by several orders of magnitude, but i stuck with ast because, well, the other healers are just incredibly boring. at least endwalker ast has ~40 apm to keep me entertained.

i do wish they brought back time magic though.... there was absolutely no reason to take it away

[GrimGale]

I'd love if Astrodyne's reward was like a strong Star-themed DPS and Healing spell that you can use instead of Fall Malefic for that 15s window, rather than a 5% buff.