AST issues and Healer role

[Tyla_Esmeraude]

I am an AST and while I think we should be able to see another AST's cards, asking to be able to turn off royal road is a bit too much. It takes away from the rng aspect of the job. I always managed with what i got, that's what made it more interesting, making decisions on the go working with what you had. I was never aware of this macro thing until people started complaining about it in 4.0. On top of that, we now got tools to get rid of unwanted cards, isn't that enough? It should be.

[Seoulstar]

I don't mind not being able to remove royal road. Just please give me the ability to see my co healer cards if they are an AST as well. It's terrible when I do an aoe balance, but it's replaced by an aoe arrow right after.

[Tonjiar]

I don't mind not being able to remove royal road. Just please give me the ability to see my co healer cards if they are an AST as well. It's terrible when I do an aoe balance, but it's replaced by an aoe arrow right after.

The removal of the royal road doesn't happen often. Maybe there is a situation once or twice a week that it comes up where I have a bole on hold, tank buster in a few seconds, and sadly no way to get rid of my royal road aoe since draw is on CD.

AoE Balance overwritten by an AoE Spear is pretty disheartening as well.

[xNewbx]

Why don't we just make it to where we get to pick the card we get to draw? The whole point of the AST is RNG. To take that away is to remove the AST identity.

And as for being able to see the other AST cards. I don't see the usefulness in that either. Anytime I ran raids with multiple ASTs, even though they could see each other's cards, what's stopping them from accidental using them at the same time? Nothing was. They had to communicate and tell the other "I'll do first balance."
Now to this you might say, "Well they knew the other had the balance so they mentioned it." But if you have a balance drawn or some other AoE and another AST in your party, there's no point of not mentioning the exact same thing, even if they don't have an AoE ready to go.

You can still communicate just the same in Stormblood. Nothing has changed.

[HyoMinPark]

I would very much like the ability to see other ASTs' cards again. People are mentioning communication, and while I always tried to communicate with other ASTs about what cards I will deploy first, the overwhelming majority of the time, my chat messages would be ignored, and there goes my AOE Balance overrode with an AOE Spire. So I got to the point where I would see my co-AST holding an Expanded card, and just wait for them to deploy theirs, rather than try to communicate I would like to Balance first, and just be ignored.

Communication is an amazing thing to have, but it takes two for it to be successful. And with DF, you aren't guaranteed a co-AST that is going to pay attention to card buffs, much less try to communicate with you. I made a macro with a sound effect: "Expanded Balance HELD and READY! <SE.3>" and it is still ignored, and my cards overrode.

[Sebazy]

SB AST just feels like a backwards step in terms of QOL to me. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, some of these changes really demonstrate SE's lack of knowledge of endgame play with the various healer jobs. Yoshida would do well to persuade SE to let him hire a few choice people from the JP raiding scene imo.

Back on track, whilst AST is undeniably powerful, it's clunky to play now IMO with the new card UI being an awful case of form over function.

Not being able to macro off cards is fair enough, it was arguably a little unbalanced that I could do much of my card work whilst casting something else.

However I'm completely in agreement with the feeling that not being able to see a co healer's cards is just a big step backwards. It's not just other ASTs that are interested in an upcoming balance.

Another issue I don't see mentioned so much is the need to keep undraw hotkeyed alongside minor arcana for level synced content. This could have been handled better imo as we're just in needless button bloat territory again.

I'm also inclined to agree that not being able to click off Royal Road is another QOL regression, it significantly limits the appeal of Sleeve Draw to the extent that I only ever use it once I have my aoe RR pocketed. At that point it's little more than an extra shot at a balance every few minutes, I'm not really sure this is what SE had in mind when they put the ability in.

Earthly Star displaying as a dot/hot tick? This really makes the ability's power quite hard to judge and is just a lazy poorly thought out implementation if you ask me.

Seperating Synastry and Largesse/DS was a further example of needless bloat and arguably it's a buff that AST didn't really need nor deserve. How about adding a trait specific to each job for the ability, AST's would merge the Synastry effect back in, SCH could turn it into a flat 20% spell potency buff (So it buffs dots and broil) whilst WHM could boost the effect back up to 30% (I suspect a cooldown reduction would be a bit much given the extended duration).

Lastly, it's a personal preference but I can't say I'm hugely keen on the feel and lack of flow of AST's DPS now. One instant cast dot is a bit clunky IMO =/

Needless to say, I'm especially happy my group isn't pressuring me to play AST for this progression, WHM might not have balance but my god it's 10x more enjoyable to play IMHO. The downside is I'm having to work hard on my DPS to warrant the pick

[Liii]

I agree that in the current state of Astro, making the cards visible will get rid of the only barrier between ast/ast comps. If this is to happen something else has to give. Ast is the only class that can double without any drawbacks. You can say they do shitty dps, but the possibility of 100% card uptime, balance, arrow, bole, more than makes up for it:/

[Cyrocco]

Bruh, how many times are you gonna reference my levels for level 30-45 skills. If you’re just going to go tantrum mode, I’m not interested in listening to you. Sorry, I don’t need level 70 experience to know how Royal Road works, only a simpleton would think that. I’m done with this, given that it’s simply turned into a prolonged Strawman argument. I’ll settle for being right I suppose.

[Novak_04]

Just because Astro is in a good place doesn't mean we don't have things that we'd like to see get changed. We're not asking for buffs, we're asking for QoL changes. I'm terribly sorry that White Mage and Scholar aren't doing as well -- truly, I am. If I had it my way, we'd all be fixed. This "You have no right asking for anything..." mentality is getting old. There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of threads from White Mages and Scholars begging -- pleading for changes (rightfully so), and anytime an Astro raises their hand we get our heads bitten off. WE didn't nerf you! WE didn't buff ourselves! Direct your rage toward the proper authorities and let us have a voice.

[Novak_04]

Using Royal Road in a dungeon and using it in a raid can be a bit different. In a dungeon, you can basically use it however you'd like because regardless of what you Royal Road, the fight will be over in a few minutes. Basically the cards don't hold as high of value in a dungeon-type setting, nor are they game-changers. In a raid, however, the Royal Road effect can be significant. You may understand what the ability does, but that doesn't mean you know how to use it. Dungeons =/= Raid.