Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

[Kissune]

If you think old AST was extreme frustrating to optimise, how is current AST any different? Your contribution depends entirely on whether or not your party crits under your buffs and Lord of Crowns is still RNG.

Because again, the difference between different cards is tiny, and every card does something immediately useful, ie; increase dps. Oh, and I don't like minor arcana either, fyi, for the same reason I don't like stormblood cards. They might have worked back in stormblood, with stormblood fight and job design, but if you try and transplant stormblood AST into modern ff14 it'll feel like shit to play.

Having RNG damage is fine. Every class has that just by the nature of how crit, damage variance, and/or kit elements that add it. The thing that old stormblood had that would be an issue now is the issue with minor arcana amplified to the entire class design. Cards that do damage always do something. More damage. But cards that provide mit, healing, mana regen, etc that cannot be predicted or consistently placed into a mit/heal plan become completely useless. You can undraw them, use them when you get them, wait until a situation that requires mit and throw it out as like a bonus... the effect is still the same. You have to plan and play as if you never draw these cards, which makes drawing them pointless. Or you can turn your entire healing rotation into a flowchart, which I did when I did TEA with minor arcana, which I hardly noticed half the time.

If you're given tools to manipulate RNG and draw the card you want what is the point of having draws in the first place?

AST has always been frustrating to optimise, the only difference now is that you don't have to work around a bad card draw. Astrodyne is worthless and in a log run, you'd always have 2 melee and 2 ranged so you'd never have sub-optimal card plays.

Geez, tell me you don't play current AST without telling me you don't play current AST. For starters, you play three cards in a burst window. Do you see the issue? What if you draw 3 melee cards? Or if you draw 2 ranged cards and 1 melee card and are forced to card something like a dancer instead of a higher dps melee? Second... It's not nearly as frustrating to optimize bc you don't lose or gain anything but damage. It's JUST your dps output that changes. And you're always playing cards that do damage, it's just a matter of how much. Whereas with old cards, you'd be drawing cards that are completely irrelevant 4/6 times. I'd rather draw a suboptimal dps card than a worthless mit/regen/heal card, bc at least when I play it I actually feel like I'm contributing. There is no 'working around a bad card draw' with StB. You can burn it for royal road, but that doesn't do anything but potentially make the Balance better. And if you don't draw the balance, well you're either just gonna keep burning cards, undrawing them, or wasting them bc you planned your heal/mit plan around NOT having them.

[Kissune]

So what if you draw less damage? It's not a big deal, just go again next pull.

This is no longer true in the 2 minute meta, which they've already said they're not getting rid of in Dawntrail.

How is it not a valid argument? You're not talking about aesthetics or the rest of the kit. Your complaint is that the RNG makes your damage bad, so playing a job with no RNG is a perfect solution instead of asking for the job with RNG to have none.

I don't dislike StB AST because it had an RNG damage profile lmao. I dislike it because pressing a button with a 4/6 chance to do nothing is not enjoyable to me and I feel like that's a little bit more than just a preference thing? Like... You could replace it with a button that says '30s CD, 33% to do 500 damage' and it would be functionally identical, and I don't think I need to explain why that would be an unfun ability. Even with something like Royal Road allowing you to turn dead cards into different buffs for future cards, that still just becomes part of the gameplan of 'play gacha for the one card you want'...

[Aravell]

Geez, tell me you don't play current AST without telling me you don't play current AST.

Uh huh, so we're just going with the opinion dismissal now, huh? I can say the same about you regarding SB AST.

Or maybe, we just have different opinions about things, but nah, one of us has to be bad apparently.

[Kissune]

Uh huh, so we're just going with the opinion dismissal now, huh? I can say the same about you regarding SB AST.

Or maybe, we just have different opinions about things, but nah, one of us has to be bad apparently.

Or maybe a quick look at your logs tells me you don't actually play the game where any of this stuff is actually relevant and so it's pretty easy to dismiss an opinion that's based on information from two, soon to be three expansions ago.

[Aravell]

Or maybe a quick look at your logs tells me you don't actually play the game where any of this stuff is actually relevant and so it's pretty easy to dismiss an opinion that's based on information from two, soon to be three expansions ago.

It's an alt. But the fact that you tried stalking my logs shows that you're not worth debating with because you'd do anything to discredit others rather than addressing points directly.

You're not the first person to stalk logs to try and discredit me, and you won't be the last. Having the alt is a good way to filter people like you out.

[Kissune]

It's an alt. But the fact that you tried stalking my logs shows that you're not worth debating with because you'd do anything to discredit others rather than addressing points directly.

Mhm, I'm sure. I did address the points, you're the one who picked out one statement to attack. Two full posts of replies, you chose one sentence to fixate on, followed by you immediately saying 'I'm not worth debating'. Who's the one really ignoring points?

[Aravell]

Mhm, I'm sure. I did address the points, you're the one who picked out one statement to attack. Two full posts of replies, you chose one sentence to fixate on, followed by you immediately saying 'I'm not worth debating'. Who's the one really ignoring points?

Is it worth continuing to debate with someone who basically tells you "I checked your background and I think you're not as good in this as me"?

Idk, seems like a waste of time to me. Have a nice day/night.

[Kissune]

Is it worth continuing to debate with someone who basicallt tells you "I checked your background and I think you're not as good in this as me"?

Idk, seems like a waste of time to me. Have a nice day/night.

Not what I said. I just said you don't understand how current AST works and plays in high-end content. Whether I think I'm better than you or not is irrelevant, what matters is I think I have more experience on current AST. You were the one that brought up logging first, so I figured I'd check and see if you actually had relevant logs to back up your claims. You didn't, and I didn't call it out until you accused me of dismissing you out of hand :P I'm perfectly happy to keep discussing with you, I'm just going to keep doing it through the lens of someone who just doesn't play current AST. I didn't play stormblood AST, and I'm perfectly aware that people who played it in stormblood probably enjoyed it. That's fine, I even said as much. I am not dismissing that Stormblood AST was enjoyable, I am saying that it just wouldn't work in current FFXIV without significant changes to not only how it functions, but how fights and other classes are designed in general.

But you wanna take it personally, so idk what more to say, I guess.

[Aravell]

Not what I said. I just said you don't understand how current AST works and plays in high-end content. Whether I think I'm better than you or not is irrelevant, what matters is I think I have more experience on current AST. You were the one that brought up logging first, so I figured I'd check and see if you actually had relevant logs to back up your claims. You didn't, and I didn't call it out until you accused me of dismissing you out of hand :P I'm perfectly happy to keep discussing with you, I'm just going to keep doing it through the lens of someone who just doesn't play current AST. I didn't play stormblood AST, and I'm perfectly aware that people who played it in stormblood probably enjoyed it. That's fine, I even said as much. I am not dismissing that Stormblood AST was enjoyable, I am saying that it just wouldn't work in current FFXIV without significant changes to not only how it functions, but how fights and other classes are designed in general.

I think I know what I'm talking about when it comes to EW AST, here's your proof since you don't believe me:



I just have a different opinion on the job than you do. You view current AST as less frustrating, I view it as equal or worse, because I'm having less fun with it.

[Kissune]

I think I know what I'm talking about when it comes to EW AST, here's your proof since you don't believe me:



I just have a different opinion on the job than you do. You view current AST as less frustrating, I view it as equal or worse, because I'm having less fun with it.

First of all, you could have taken a picture of anyone's logs, but that doesn't matter. I already found your main earlier, and fuck at least I know you actually play AST but if you wanna play that game I'm sure you can check out my Aspho logs bc I don't hide behind alts. Second of all, if it is true that you play in current content, I actually want to understand how you can think StB AST would in any way fit into the current design space of the game. This isn't stormblood anymore, and it never will be again. I genuinely do not understand how anyone can look at current minor arcana and think 'yeah that seems well designed, we should design the entire card system around that' bc that's what stormblood cards functionally were. You had a lot of bullshit you could do with them, sure, but at the end of the day you were, and still would be just fishing for the balance. I'd like to be able to do more with current cards too, and to have more impactful abilities than draw, redraw, and play since dyne is irrelevant and divi isn't tied to cards anymore, but I don't get how adding a bunch of cards that don't do anything would be the way to do it, and I just can't really see it from your perspective at all.

Like seriously how do you think StB AST would actually function now? People would lose their shit at you for any of the haste cards, the resource reduction cards are either worthless or straight up nonfunctional in the case of spire, and the bole as said before might as well be a dead card bc you can't play around having it for any given raidwide. They'd have to come up with a bunch of new ones, but if they don't do damage you'd literally never want to draw one over the balance. Even with royal road. And yeah making the best of the hand dealt to you is AST's thing but with how potent 2min windows are if you don't have the balance by then with its aoe 5% it's a HUGE dps loss and dps checks would have to be designed around that bc it adds up.