Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

[Kissune]

So if people are going to complain about not drawing the best card all the time, why even have 6 cards? Why not just have 1 card that increases damage?

Because it still requires some interactivity, and the penalty for a bad draw is not 'oh this card is functionally worthless, cool'. It's 'oh this card is slightly less effective'. I play *current* AST in ultimates and savage, and when I don't get a 3 seal dyne or exactly the card I want for max optimization, I also roll with it. But the difference there is that all I'm losing is some dps, I'm not losing out on mitigation or mana regen or whatever the fuck else they would give to the cards. DPS is always welcome, mitigation, healing, and mana regen aren't. And having the latter three tied to pure RNG just makes the class extremely frustrating to optimize bc you can't plan around any of it. The game is entirely deterministic, and they don't seem to want to change that (and even if they did, I doubt they're gonna go back and change all the old fights too, so it's still relevant). There's a reason no other class has RNG utility, and it's because it sucks.

Having done high-end optimisation in SB on AST, when we didn't get a good card, we just rolled with it. Being able to roll with what you got and make the best of a bad card spread was what differentiated a good AST from a bad one.

Good for you, but Stormblood was a very different game to now. AST had to work with what it had, yeah. Of course you had to roll with what you had, bc you had no choice. I'm not saying the current system is flawless, but it's a hell of a lot more engaging than just drawing dead cards 75% of the time. You say 'why not just have 1 card that increases damage', I mean... yeah. It wouldn't be fun, but there's no reason why they can't. Ohhh yeah bc the class is designed around an RNG damage profile. But at the very least, once again, the difference between current cards is that half do 3% less situationally. The difference between old cards is that 2 do damage and 4 don't. The other 4 cards are again, functionally useless in any kind of optimized play. Minor arcana is only a 400 potency heal, but I can't factor it into my heal plans at all bc it's unreliable. I have to make every heal plan as if I draw only lords, bc there's always a chance I do. It can, on occasion, replace a helios but I cast that so rarely it's practically worthless. Most times, even in current ultimate fights, I just discard it the moment I get it because I'm not gonna use it. That, extended to the entire card system means that a lot of cards will just be wasted, unless they bring back some sort of royal road type mechanic. But in that case like... everything is still about finding the Balance. Yippee.

Also, if someone really wanted a healer job with no deviation in their damage performance due to RNG whatsoever, well, WHM exists.

You could say that about current AST btw, and it's clearly not a valid argument. 'If people want a healer job that isn't busy, they can just play WHM'.