New Astrologian's design complaints (sorry)

[Kissune]

The third seal is a trap and a meme almost as big as Freecure but for ASTs. It is almost always better to play an optimal card than to fish for a third seal, two seals are enough. Astrodyne was easy to fix, just give back sleeve draw for the third card.

The actual problematic RNG, that is, Minor Arcana, somehow has still remained. It's useless to plan your healing based on a card that you only draw 50% of the time, so basically you hope for Lord every time. They should notdesign classes around DF content, which has no dps check or optimization required. The only opinions that should matter are from people that actually play this class in high end content.

I love you

Thank you for saying it. Unironically if someone doesn't play this class in difficult content they really shouldn't get a say on how it functions bc df content means fuck all in terms of balance because most people don't even carry out the most basic functions of their job.

[Mugs]

I love that Astro is challenging. Please dont make it boring and take away the best things about the class. I absolutely love Astrodyne. Now Astro is just going to be a less effective White Mage and not its own thing...

[ArtemisSeraphin]

Just because they have different effects doesn't mean they're Stormblood cards. Stormblood cards were interesting bc of how they interacted with eachother, and how you couldn't predict which one you got.

Exactly this. At peak play, a good AST could make any card combo work in SB. Sleeve Draw, Royal Road, etc., combined with Time Dilation and/or the (SB) effects of Celestial Opposition, could all work in harmony so that there were never any "bad draws" and you could make amazing draws last longer. It's why I dislike the Seal system and am, at the very least, glad that it is gone--you can end up with bad draws with the Seal System and there's no way to make a bad draw decent. The ways in which you could combine cards made it so that you could make a decent lemonade.

And that's what I really loved about it: having to THINK. There is no other healing job now that has the skill ceiling that AST had. I'm fine with low skill floors, but some jobs need to have high skill ceilings to challenge players who want that challenge and to push themselves. But instead of listening to actual AST players and taking advice from us about what we like about the job play style, they've listened to people who like AST for the aesthetic. Now we have White Mage (Flower Version) and White Mage (Sparkles Version).

[Kissune]

Exactly this. At peak play, a good AST could make any card combo work in SB. Sleeve Draw, Royal Road, etc., combined with Time Dilation and/or the (SB) effects of Celestial Opposition, could all work in harmony so that there were never any "bad draws" and you could make amazing draws last longer. It's why I dislike the Seal system and am, at the very least, glad that it is gone--you can end up with bad draws with the Seal System and there's no way to make a bad draw decent. The ways in which you could combine cards made it so that you could make a decent lemonade.

And that's what I really loved about it: having to THINK. There is no other healing job now that has the skill ceiling that AST had. I'm fine with low skill floors, but some jobs need to have high skill ceilings to challenge players who want that challenge and to push themselves. But instead of listening to actual AST players and taking advice from us about what we like about the job play style, they've listened to people who like AST for the aesthetic. Now we have White Mage (Flower Version) and White Mage (Sparkles Version).

I didn't even like the stormblood system, and I still feel like it just wouldn't work in current ffxiv. But fuck, I'd take it over whatever this is. At least I'd recognize it. I'd feel at home, I'd feel in my element, I'd fulfill the niche I've always loved filling since I started playing. I literally will not have that option in Dawntrail and I'm sorry but I think me having fun with an archetype that has been here since Heavensward is more important than some people who haven't touched the class in their lives after getting turned off by its gameplay identity getting their preferred flavour of white mage aesthetics.

[knaveofcups]

I do not post much and I also don’t raid as a healer, but I would have loved to try raiding as astro if I‘d had the time…I doubt I’ll be doing so in the future. this redesign is probably going to tank its APM, which was the main thing I enjoyed it about it. i get that having to burn lightspeed on burst sucks, but couldn’t they have fixed that aspect of it by just putting lightspeed on a shorter and less awkward CD? and at no point does any half decent AST player rage because they had to give a melee card to a tank in some roulette or only ended up with two seal astrodyne. they marginalized the impact of RNG so much already it’s insane that anyone still complains about it

also just as a baseline level, what kind of class fantasy is left here? I’m a tarot reader who puts on a big show about fate and the universe, yet knows exactly what I’m going to pull into my spread every time? So, in other words, a scammer at a ren faire.

at least let us burn our unused mit/heal cards (and they will go unused because we will not need enough healing or mit 99.9% of the time to justify their existence) to get a fresh dps card

[Aravell]

Losing the APM is a dealbreaker for me. I also hate the total removal of RNG, they should give us tools to control the RNG ourselves, not just hand it to us by default.

Draw being 60s also slows down the job by a lot. People asked for MORE opportunities and reasons to use cards, not even less. The diversified effects are nice, but the order being fixed is not. Also they went so far as to remove RNG on everything else but seems to have left it on Minor Arcana? What?

Overall, AST seems like it was slowed down because people complained about the weaving requirements. The high APM and fast decision making was what drew me to AST in HW, they dumbed down the decision making in ShB/EW but at least the fast pace was still there, DT just looks like it has neither.

[Raincool]

First time posting for me on the forms and I agree.

Astro is actually the class that got me interested in the game. I enjoy playing support/buff roles in games and the rng nature of it looked really unique and the class is what keeps me playing. I still run daily roulettes on it purely because I enjoy its mechanics and quick decision making so much and it really hurts to see they are removing the fast burst window and rng aspects of the class.

[Zaytex]

Having dropped AST in EW due to hating the state of it these changes make me hopeful to regain SOME feeling of SB ast cards back. Having every card be damage only was just boring. I do love the higher pacing of the job and it seems we lose that somewhat but we will see. I also like the proactive healing it does compared to whitemage. Hyped to try AST again after hating the EW iteration of it. Stormblood astro is still my fave by far.

??? Sorry but this type of opinion is why AST has been gutted to nothingness. You have an entire toolkit focused around healing and mitigating, why do you need the cards to give you MORE tools that you do not need? It was common opinion in SB that the cards being different was sure, conceptually interesting, but practically redundant because you would always fish for balance and or spear in any type of meaningful content. Like @Kissune points out, they're not even the same. It's restrictive and far less interesting than SB cards. So current AST mains are losing what they love, and AST mains from SB aren't even getting what they want back - no one wins LMAO.

You don't even get to fish for the one you want, they're all forced on you every minute and you will not actually use the mitigation or healing cards EVER in casual content. Even in high end content, you have so many other OGCD tools to compensate for these cards missing. It's not like you ever needed Lady anyway, so why would you need it now, or a second variation of it but single-target when they're about to give AST a third charge of ED?

This change isn't for current AST mains or old ones who want their old job back, its for garbage or lazy players who never wanted to learn AST properly, but wanted to play the healer with the (arguably best) starry aesthetic.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

??? Sorry but this type of opinion is why AST has been gutted to nothingness. You have an entire toolkit focused around healing and mitigating, why do you need the cards to give you MORE tools that you do not need? It was common opinion in SB that the cards being different was sure, conceptually interesting, but practically redundant because you would always fish for balance and or spear in any type of meaningful content. Like @Kissune points out, they're not even the same. It's restrictive and far less interesting than SB cards. So current AST mains are losing what they love, and AST mains from SB aren't even getting what they want back - no one wins LMAO.

You don't even get to fish for the one you want, they're all forced on you every minute and you will not actually use the mitigation or healing cards EVER in casual content. Even in high end content, you have so many other OGCD tools to compensate for these cards missing. It's not like you ever needed Lady anyway, so why would you need it now, or a second variation of it but single-target when they're about to give AST a third charge of ED?

This change isn't for current AST mains or old ones who want their old job back, its for garbage or lazy players who never wanted to learn AST properly, but wanted to play the healer with the (arguably best) starry aesthetic.

Yeah, no. The decision making got a lot more simple when our cards became phys dmg and ranged damage. It's boring and didn't take much thought at all. You DO use the other cards in casual content because shocker not every player is that great, having extra healing or defensive available for the random tank that doesn't use his mits is nice. It's nice little flavour in clutch moments during messy fights overall. I'd love more to interact with our cards like in SB and YOU and other EW ast enjoyers are no more important than I am. I loved the job for four years and EW was an annoying, boring iteration to me so much so that I swapped over to dps after giving sch a go for a tier. I was sad astro lost it's tempo when it lost sleeve draw. We're not getting it back and I much prefer this version over EW.

Saying it's changes for garbage players who enjoy WHM just shows you're salty and childish. AST still is different from WHM with wanting to preplan heals and anyone who doesn't want to think isn't going to enjoy that, they will still play WHM and glare till something needs healed. SB iteration being the most popular speaks volumes, regardless of if in high end you would sit prepull fishing for balance or not overall it was more enjoyable across ALL content than durrr all card do dmg that it became.

So I will call it a win, I get to actually play my old main again after two years of waiting. Gutted to nothingness for me was EW where for god knows what reason we couldn't be oprah throwing a million cards at high speeds, we got the nasty business that was astrodyne and our rng mitigation tool in redraw was nerfed leaving the job more frustrating than it ever was in shb. It was slower, more annoying and dumber than ever before so I dropped it.

[Bloody_Kenny]

I mean, you cannot win with AST anymore. I mained AST in Creator and through the whole StB, and it was my favorite healer job because of the cards and their unique effects. The peak job fantasy, where you actually make a fortune reading and use the card Fate dealt you the best way possible at the moment. This randomness, this flavor made Excel sheet gameplay somewhat fun. Cause you had this little mini-game where you need to quickly think about what is the best use of the card. "Got Bole, should I just slap it on the tank? Or turn it into a potency boost, cause what if I get Arrow next so I can throw it on out BLM? Decisions, decisions".

Then came ShB and completely killed the job by turning all cards into Balance. Why? Cause Balance fishers cried so much that they hate random and the only thing that matters is AoE Balance, and if they got anything else then their life has no meaning, parses are ruined, and logs are no longer golden. ShB removed all randomness from cards, all the fun. Now you have Balance for melee, Balance for ranged, Stronger Balance if you already have the Seal. Wow, groundbreaking (not). EW did nothing for AST, Astrodyne is just an afterthought "Well, we have to use seals for something". And New Lord and Lady again bring to the surface Balance fishers mentality, cause Lady is useless in the current encounter environment, where all damage is even more scripted, so you always want a Lord.

My point is, you can't have anything random in this game. You can't have any flavor. Cause optimizers and minimizers will come and complain that they can't force the job based on fortune reading and luck to do the exact things they want.

Anyway, I'm glad Cards received back their unique effects. Now I just hope they make it so sets of cards are at least somewhat random, so it's a random choice between 2 defensive, 2 offensive, and 2 healing cards.