Gutting Astro... again.....

[Marxam]

ICompletely missing the point that people aren't unhappy because their parse is lower, but that there was nothing that could be done if you were screwed by RNG. Missing 1% atk buff for the whole party sucked, but I cared more about not getting the 3 seals, not the 1%. Nobody wanted RNG from the literal fortune-telling job to be removed, people wanted more ways to control the RNG like Royal Road or Spread. I don't say this lightly, but whoever is in charge of designing healer jobs (if there even is one), needs to never touch healers again. The only good change for healers in the past 5 years is SCH's pet AI, everything else just keeps getting worse and worse.

That's why people always quote SB AST as the best iteration of the card mechanic. RR and MA literally solved RNG while making undraw irrelevant because if you ever got a card you didn't want you can either RR it for a bonus effect, but if you already had an RR effect ready, you can MA it for lady or lord. If they kept the RR system while changing the cards to reflect the trinity "seals" i.e.;

Balance (phys)/Arrow (range) = Direct crit, RR potency up
Bole (phys)/Spear (range) = Mitigation, RR duration up
Spire (phys)/ Ewer (range) = Crit, RR aoe

this change would have been far better than just making all 6 cards functionally the same. I've always had this thought ever since they butchered the job going into ShB and EW but its funny after watching the job action trailer that someone on the team literally had the same idea of making the cards into a "trinity" but still fell short. If they didn't spend all this time reworking AST we would have had a skill that allowed us to set cards on the field by now. Though maybe the concept of drawing a card, setting it on the field face up, and creating a ground aoe buff/heal with that cards effect is a foreign concept. AST and DRK are literally proof that reworking the job every expansion will only be to its detriment while WAR and BLM are the complete opposite.

[KanataNanaya]

That's why people always quote SB AST as the best iteration of the card mechanic. RR and MA literally solved RNG while making undraw irrelevant because if you ever got a card you didn't want you can either RR it for a bonus effect, but if you already had an RR effect ready, you can MA it for lady or lord. If they kept the RR system while changing the cards to reflect the trinity "seals" i.e.;

Balance (phys)/Arrow (range) = Direct crit, RR potency up
Bole (phys)/Spear (range) = Mitigation, RR duration up
Spire (phys)/ Ewer (range) = Crit, RR aoe

this change would have been far better than just making all 6 cards functionally the same. I've always had this thought ever since they butchered the job going into ShB and EW but its funny after watching the job action trailer that someone on the team literally had the same idea of making the cards into a "trinity" but still fell short. If they didn't spend all this time reworking AST we would have had a skill that allowed us to set cards on the field by now. Though maybe the concept of drawing a card, setting it on the field face up, and creating a ground aoe buff/heal with that cards effect is a foreign concept. AST and DRK are literally proof that reworking the job every expansion will only be to its detriment while WAR and BLM are the complete opposite.

Hell, just delete lady off minor arcana, call it something else and just raw damage everytime would probably make 100% cards useful. Worst case scenario back then was just the card you didn't want turn into a Lady. which is not too terrible but yeah.

[Xieldras]

I recently came back after quitting due to ShB changes to my main class: Bard. This thread feels too similar and my heart goes out to all the AST mains angry by these changes. Even back in Stormblood (I regret that I didn't pick it up then), I enjoyed the cards and the various support they offered. The mini-game itself felt so different from the other healer mains too.
I picked it up for powering through ShB's main storyline and I do enjoy it more than I do SCH or WHM, so I'm very much a casual when it comes to this class.

For the DT changes, the one that baffles me most is the removal of RNG linked to the cards. I mean, you're playing a tarot deck so that makes no sense from both gameplay and identity perspectives. Why would the randomness be the issue with a class that...draws cards?

I unofficially main FSH, and I know its RNG. It can be my best friend and my most despised enemy (looking at you Ruby Dragon). RNG by itself is not a problem as long as the player has tools to direct a positive outcome or mitigate it. And from what I'm reading so far it seems like AST players did indeed have those tools readily available back in Heavendward and Stormblood. Heck I would even argue that RNG makes the class more resistant to staleness compared to others.

Adaptability. Isn't that what AST is supposed to be about? To adapt to the fight with the cards you get instead of focusing on 100% reliable pre-packaged "sets" of cards?

My question to the dev team is simple: "What do those changes do to make the class fun for new and veteran players alike, while keeping its gameplay identity/loop?".
The DT variation of AST doesn't look fun, so I don't think I'll even bother with it unless my FC needs a healer for normal content.

[ForsakenRoe]

I unofficially main FSH, and I know its RNG. It can be my best friend and my most despised enemy (looking at you Ruby Dragon). RNG by itself is not a problem as long as the player has tools to direct a positive outcome or mitigate it. And from what I'm reading so far it seems like AST players did indeed have those tools readily available back in Heavendward and Stormblood. Heck I would even argue that RNG makes the class more resistant to staleness compared to others.

Fisher is a great comparison. For example, the Ruby Dragon mentioned. Requiring a mooch from a different Big Fish (Ku'er) which can only mooch into itself or the Ruby Dragon, if your HQ chain breaks then you have to start over. But, now in EW, 'Makeshift Bait' allows you to use NQ fish to Mooch. We still have the RNG of catching a Ku'er to mooch, or the RNG of the Ku'er escaping and breaking the mooch chain. But we can mitigate it with the tools we get in our kit.

Another is The Unconditional. Went from an absolute bugger to catch, with a 1 hour window (3 realworld minutes) to basically guaranteed on the first window you try to catch it at. Why? Because that hole has only two fish available when you use the right bait: Nhamaa's Boon, and The Unconditional. Back in SB, you'd have to spam Chum and pray for a bite, but now, we can simply catch one Nhamaa's Boon, Surface Slap it to remove it from the 'drop table', and then The Unconditional is the only thing left on there, making it 100% bite rate. And Surface Slap does not wear off until you catch a fish, so even if The Unconditional slips the hook, you can just try again. But even with this amount of RNG mitigation, so much you could argue it's been 'removed', there's still a chance you'd have the fish slip the hook over and over, and the window ends without you catching it.

It's happened with every expansion of the game, for Fisher, in fact. ARR had mooch chains? HW adds Patience to increase HQ chances. HW has Intuitions that require catching several of a fish? SB adds Double Hook. SB has Big Fish that require catching OTHER Big Fish, either for Intuition or Mooching? SHB adds Surface Slap and Identical Cast, allowing more control over which fish are available on the 'drop table'. And then EW Has now gone back and smoothed out certain things about the whole levelling process via Angler's Art stacks, allowing for better GP restoration, or Makeshift Bait, to allow for even more chance to complete Mooch chains without them breaking mid-way.

If only every job were to get its pain points addressed in the way FSH does