Ast Cards

[Connor]

The numbers speak for themselves imo. The only time I see them not adding up to decent numbers is when you see ewer casts at like 3 per ancounter and spire at 1, or bole being used improperly.

I don’t think anyone’s disputing that the effects have uses though. They’re disputing the need for them in Astrologian’s toolkit when it already has abilities with the same effects as the defensive cards. Arrow is the only thing it actually added that Astrologian couldn’t do before. That’s putting aside the ‘rng’ aspects of the gameplay too

[Alice_Rivers]

That’s putting aside the ‘rng’ aspects of the gameplay too

The is a weaker but also slightly better Synastry, it's weaker in that it's only 10% but it's also slightly better in that it's all healing received rather than just your single target GCDs. That said, I still hold this is better than EW but worse than what I hear about SB.

[Connor]

The is a weaker but also slightly better Synastry, it's weaker in that it's only 10% but it's also slightly better in that it's all healing received rather than just your single target GCDs. That said, I still hold this is better than EW but worse than what I hear about SB.

Synastry has a similar effect but it only redirects 40% of the healing amount to the chosen target; it doesn’t directly affect healing magic potency or abilities in the way Arrow does. Did you maybe mean the 20% bonus to healing from Neutral Sect?

[Alice_Rivers]

Nah, Neutral Sect is all healing you do to everyone, plus shields on HoTs. The Arrow now is a lot closer to Syanstry's functionality, just more diagonal than the vertical power relationship the other cards have with their counterparts.

[Supersnow845]

Yeah if you look at logs for people who utilized all of the uses of their cards properly the healing adds up. On an 8 minute fight with 5 uses of bole, 5 uses of spire, 5 ewers, it well over 239k total healing/mitigation. Thats more than multiple casts of aspected benefic. Thats more than 7 uses of horoscope helios. Thats more mitigation than 4+ uses of exaltation.

It's not the cards don't do any meaningful mitigation, it's that people don't know how to look at logs or use their cards correctly. In order to claim that the cards don't do anything you would have to concede that most of astro's toolkit does not do anything. Which is silly.

239k, that’s the healing done by like 1.5 sacred soils. It’s minuscule in the grand scheme of things and it’s being inflated simply because it’s a job mechanic so people are more likely to press it (ie if you need to shield one person and you have both spire and intersection available most people will generally press spire just because it’s a card so it’s a “core mechanic” even if it really isn’t actually needed over intersection

So a whole non damage aspect of the mechanic for a class is basically reduced to the healing and mitigation potential of a single sacred soil

[Zaytex]

But dude, we needed every card to be DIFFERENT and UNIQUE because having every card be DPS only was BORING. It's not as if I had to learn every rotation in the game to understand specifically when they would benefit the most from the buff (i.e NIN Kassastsu timing, BLM re-entering fire phase, RDM's melee combo, etc) and make an active and conscious decision of when to play my card for maximum benefit.

It's not as if I had to consider the RNG given to me and decide on a redraw or not, keep a track of seals and not overwrite them, make sure to not drift Lady/Lord on its own, and get 7-11 potential weaves out during burst, all unpredictable and demanding quick reactions from me with enough mechanical skill whilst juggling healing requirements and fight mechanics, all at once.

Clearly the DT iteration of AST is much better - It's very important I have cards with different effects and purposes, because I love to see my bole card sitting pretty on my hotbar, the idea of it being different to the balance now pleases me, even if tanks never needed it to begin with. I love my DPS buffing cards being given to the same player every time, it makes my life easier when I have so much to think about with my DPS rotation. I love the APM and burst window of the job being cut to 1/3 of EW, because its just too unfair for difficult.

You guys have no idea what you're talking about tbh, this is the best version of AST yet!

[Zolvolt]

239k, that’s the healing done by like 1.5 sacred soils. It’s minuscule in the grand scheme of things and it’s being inflated simply because it’s a job mechanic so people are more likely to press it (ie if you need to shield one person and you have both spire and intersection available most people will generally press spire just because it’s a card so it’s a “core mechanic” even if it really isn’t actually needed over intersection

So a whole non damage aspect of the mechanic for a class is basically reduced to the healing and mitigation potential of a single sacred soil

your arguement for cards being bad is.... that people use them to mitgate damage? lol okay. Y'all will jump through some wild hoops to hate on the cards

[Supersnow845]

your arguement for cards being bad is.... that people use them to mitgate damage? lol okay. Y'all will jump through some wild hoops to hate on the cards

No my argument is you are like “if you actually use the cards they add up” then threw out 239k as if that was a big number When in reality for healing that’s next to nothing

The 5 non damage cards basically collectively over a fight amount to 1.5 sacred soils and all of their effects AST already has in spades with other CD’s

The current non damage cards are the definition of redundant healing bloat

[Azurarok]

SB > ShB > DT > EW to me.

The RNG's such an important part of the card play it still baffles me they decided to try removing it this time, but EW's is still the worst due to Redraw being the only thing it had to manage said RNG. It's as if the devs intentionally made it bad in an attempt to make removing it in DT look better.

The current card system feels more like mixing a set of potions and throwing them at party members than drawing cards from a deck. I think it can be good but I really don't think it should be replacing AST.

[Ari_Calithiel]

The is a weaker but also slightly better Synastry, it's weaker in that it's only 10% but it's also slightly better in that it's all healing received rather than just your single target GCDs. That said, I still hold this is better than EW but worse than what I hear about SB.

This is something I don't understand. There are so very many people that have never played Stormblood and yet many of these people crave the card system from back then. Squenix basically gave us SB cards back with each card having a different effect and everyone hates it. Everything I have heard about Stormblood cards was that it was one of the worst iterations. Let me lay out why.

Here are what the cards did:
Balance: 10% damage for 30 seconds - this is nutty and what every AST fished for.
Bole: 20% DR 20 seconds - I guess this is okay, but tanks have their own mit and my argument about gear causing the usefulness of this to fall off still stands.
Spear: 10% crit 30 seconds - It's not bad, it just isn't as good as flat damage.
Arrow: 10% haste (basically) 30 seconds - If you want to piss off a DPS, give this to them. It will make all of their abilities drift outside of the 2 minute burst window.
Spire: Restores TP 15 seconds - This is useless now as we don't have TP. Even if we changed this to MP regen or a HP regen, it is still not an amazing card.
Ewer: MP restore 15 seconds - Why? We have Lucid dreaming, SCH have Aether drain, SGE their stacks, WHM thin air, and AST their cards that give mana. It could be funny to give this to a DRK during burst, but it is pointless in any other setting. We have Super-ethers if we truly need mana.

Now the abilities that EFFECTED the cards, that I can understand wanting back. That sounds like a ton of fun. But the cards themselves? Actual crap. I believe the reason they changed cards to be flat damage increases is because of the fact that most AST's fished for the Balance. What dps would want a 10% crit card where you MIGHT crit and hit really hard over a 30% dps increase on every attack? I guarantee you, a dps would ask for the flat damage over a 10% crit card in our current tier.


As I said in my initial post, FFXIV encounters are focused on the motto of everyone doing dps. The damage received is all scripted, so you only need to heal when the timer in the fight reaches that point and the rest of the time, everyone should be dpsing. This is why every card being a dps card works so well because that is the focus on combat in this MMO. It is not like WoW where damage goes out at random and constantly (ESO is even more similar to FFXIV in that you dps when nothing is happening) and you need a healer to be constantly healing.

While I could get completely off topic with how healing works here, I won't since the focus of this post is the cards. And honestly, the best iteration of the CARDS (not the abilities that effect the cards) was ShB and EW. People who think it was boring did not utilize the cards as they were meant to be used. Being a good AST in ShB and EW required knowledge of every dps and how their burst worked as well as a quick mind to adjust to the RNG you were dealt. AST was like if you combined a WHM and a DNC and it was beautiful.

Now... It is just a pale version of SB that everyone has been screaming for. We have it now, is everyone happy?