DT AST is Unpleasant to Play Now

[Avaelendil]

Sadly for me, for the first time since I started playing in ARR patch 2.2ish, I don't think I'm maining healer. New Astro cards are clunky and boring, have worse mp management, and don't just give you the option to choose which deck you pull from. If I'm stuck in a party with all melee, I don't want to be forced to pull from umbral deck and waste a dps buff card that I only get 1 of now every minute.

None of the other healers have felt good to me either, so I think I'm done with it. Just sad and disappointed.

[Ioletia]

Got Astro to 100 and will never touch again. My main class, the class I named my character after, has been ruined. It's so unfun to play now. The optimal play is to literally hold on to your DPS card until your Astrol/Umbral card recharges, align that with your divination/oracle/lord and.... Burst. Using cards outside of the window is a waste. The "new" defensive cards are so paltry that they literally do not make a difference. Even in low level play, they literally do not make a difference. And in the new dungeons? They're literally a waste since all the damage seems to be party wide, which makes single target stuff not at all useful. The class has been homogenized to fit in a two minute meta- and that's it. This whole expansion has turned me off of the game hardcore by diluting Astro and nuking BLM into the ground.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

That’s how I feel too.

Discount 2-min Protraction doesn’t really help as a tank mit. Its value on SCH is for the bigger Crit-Spreadlo. The 10% mit every 2-min is again unnecessary as tanks are supposed to operate independently of a healer. The 2-min regen is not a DPS needs when they take damage. They need immediate healing. On a tank, it’s not what they need because again, the devs designed them to be survivable independent to healers. The 2-min shield is probably the only card that’s actually useful.

Like, I don’t know why we need more “tankbuster” cards when tanks literally are overtuned vs. tankbusters.

[Pardo48]

I made a forum account just to say I hate what they did to AST.

[WilliamCatner]

I dont know why they wanted to have less weaving in healer role, which already feels the least busiest of every other role, if you don't double weave you can just play about any other healer.

I like AST because it was busy and every buff window felt different to play cause you wouldnt know what cards you would get. Ofc it had its issues with trying to fish for 3 melee cards every 2 mins, but that seems also to be a DPS-class/fight design choice/issue.

Now Draw is just pressed every minute with holding DPS-buff cards + Lord (unless some add shenanigans happen) for Divination and just getting rid of the rest.

I mean yeah the job feels less random now, but thats like almost every other job in the game and if job business is an issue for some either get better or don't play it.

[Zaytex]

I haven't played it in any content since I'm done with healer, so I just had a quick look for 2 minutes and it's exactly as we all said 500 times:

Boring, uninteresting, non-complex and useless cards. Like someone above implied, single target healing is unnecessary unless people are messing up and they're just weaker tools than what AST has elsewhere in its toolkit. I don't really see why you'd ever press these cards when you have 3 stacks of ED, 2 CI, and exaltation. Stacking together is overkill especially with tank mitigations becoming stronger and even in lower levels where you don't have those skills, the damage is still pathetic anyway.

I'm sure they'll be useful for old ultimates and early prog for any given high end content since slapping more tools at the wall to scrape through mechanics is good, but after that, useless.

Oh, and the jobs identity was completely gutted. AST was all about RNG, and the job has none now. It really was just destroyed and homogenised lol

[AngelicDeath]

I agree and I keep dying from not having a gap closer unlike white mage that just was given one.. How can we even keep up I'm struggling I been playing it since heavensward released but what have they done to this class... killed it

[Destatiredux]

Wanna hear another problem? Imagine you’re in an alliance raid, and your tank isn’t the main tank. You literally have only one card every 60 seconds you can reliably use, and the other two basically just sit there unusable until somebody screws up. You can go several draws, having to drop multiple unused cards before somebody gets hit / is about to get hit by something. Granted, they certainly don’t design jobs around alliance raids, but it feels bad when the job’s whole unique trait can’t even be utilized in a significant chunk of the content. I’ll still level AST for the title, but afterward I won’t be touching it until their next misguided attempt at remaking the job.

[Tunda]

I played 1 dungeon with astro almost fell asleep then I quite the dungeon to sleep

[Doragan]

Was that the AST rework we were supposed to get in EW?

Four play buttons. FOUR. PLAY. BUTTONS. What is UP with you guys??

Seeing buffs making a comeback is good, but the buffs are just not great. I would rather trade play buttons to get Royal Road back. The sleeve draw idea isn't bad, I knew you guys weren't completely sleeping on it, but this NEEDS work desperately.

The next ten years? What a disasterclass. We finally have reached the final days.