Thread: Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

Originally Posted by Cheremia

*snip to tag you essentially*

Here's a quote from someone else in another thread...

Seals are used with this cool new skill called Divination. It increases damage of all party members by 6% for 15 seconds if you have all three types of seals.
And it has a 3 minute cooldown. In three minutes, you can play up to NINE cards if you use Sleeve Draw. And every three minutes, you only need THREE seals. This means the seals are literally useless 66% of the time. Remember Lilies? I remember.

Everyone is putting so much stock in this new 'sign' system being such a great thing because it *gasps* lets you give the whole party your 1 single buff now, rather than having to spam-cast it on everyone.. that their ignoring how many cards you can draw in-between uses of the new Divination skill. And given how many cards you can pull in those 3 minutes, vs the 33% chance of getting a 'different' seal each draw... the 'requirement' for having 3 'different' seals is almost moot. And as such, that requirement may as well not exist as your almost guaranteed to 'always' have 3 different seals.


As for what all of us who LIKED the old system would rather have in place of this single coin-flip and a 3-sided dice (which when all said and done makes no difference 'what' you get as its all the exact same thing.. only with 'slightly' better % of the same buff if done 'well'), I personally like this persons idea.

Originally Posted by Ceasaria

If we don't get back the ancient system, here my changes :
Royal Road and Spread removed, no changes.

Cards
Balance : 5% damage, grants 1 solar seal
Bole : 10% damage reduction, grants 1 solar seal
Arrow : 5% attack speed, grants 1 lunar seal
Ewer : 30 potency mana regen, grants 1 lunar seal
Spear : 5% critical rate, grants 1 celestial seal
Spire : 10% to all healing actions used, grants 1 celestial seal
Lord of Crown and Lady of Crown keep the same effect granted in Stormblood.

Divination
Activable at least with one seal.
You can cumulate 3 seals max of each type.
1 solar seal : 3% damage
2 solar seals : 6% damage
3 solar seals : 9% damage
----
1 lunar seal : 3% attack speed
2 lunar seals : 6% attack speed
3 lunar seals : 9% attack speed
----
1 celestial seal : 3% critical hit
2 celestial seals : 6% critical hit
3 celestial seals : 9% critical hit
----

When you activate Divination :
- If you have 1 solar + 2 lunar, the team will get 3% damage + 6% attack speed.
- If you have 2 solar + 2 celestial, the team will get 6% damage + 6% critical hit.
- If you have 3 solar + 1 celestial + 1 lunar, the team will get 9% damage + 3% critical hit + 3% attack speed.
- Etc.

So, the best case would be within 10 draws in 180 sec, to have 9 seals = 3 solar seals + 3 lunar seals + 3 celestial seals which would give 9% damage + 9% attack speed + 9% critical hit to all the team.

It would be far more interesting and rewarding playing this and dealing with the rng again than what they are trying to give us for ShB.

Originally Posted by Cheremia

and Bole would yet again be foddered since balance is balance and balance is unbalanced.

And yet.. every single card, 'except' for Balance, was removed.

So if Balance is unbalanced, why make it the 1 and 'only' card we have? just double-sided now instead of single-faced.

*apparently it wouldnt let me make a new post, so adding to this one*

Originally Posted by Gemina

I understand why many are upset by the changes. Even though what your party ultimately wants from you doesn't necessarily take away the fun of how you got there. I'm not arguing that the job's card mechanic hasn't been simplified, or that it is devoid of issues. However one of those issues is not the loss of five effects because nobody cared about them anyway. I also wouldn't worry about Divination as I am confident that those return numbers will be adjusted in the near future. Probably not by 5.0's launch, but I would expect it to happen around 5.1 or 5.2 after they see how things play out initially.

If no one cared about, or wanted any of the other cards at all, then why even have Astrologist in the game?

Just buy 99 of these: Braised_Pipira and your all set!

Instant Astrologist. +8% damage that lasts for 30 minutes, and with the added benefits of not disappearing when you die. Instant cast time, You didnt have to wait for them to get a tripple set of Signs... and frees up a extra place for another DPS in the group!

Because that is exactly what i feel Astrologist are now. A walking Food buff.

Originally Posted by Cheremia

Because Balance is not a CHANCE to do bigger damage like crit up. It is not making you hit a little faster like arrow.
It is a flat out damage increase with everything you do. Even a little bit does more than a chance to crit more or being a little bit faster.

If you think balance is anything but unbalanced, you have never thought about how strong balance is. It got nerfed already and it still does the best effect out of all of the cards by default because incresing damage is just good. It's unbalanced in comparison to every other card ast can do.

Every card will be balance because if every card makes you stronger, no other card can be complained about, no card is bad in comparison, no card can just have a weaker effect since they're all damage up. AND everybody wants balance if they know what it does.

That is what i mean, balance really is not balanced at all

And again.. if Balance was ... well.. un-balanced. Then wouldnt the 'logical' thing to do be to CHANGE what balance does? They already were going to have to change what Spire did with the removal of TP. Why did they decide to simply make their 'overpowered card' the 1 and only card you ever get to use from 5.0 onward? Why not change its effect into one that more lines up with the bonuses the other cards did?

In making Balance the 1 and only card you will 'ever' get, All they have done is turned Astrologists into a Walking Braised Pipira that can heal.

Originally Posted by Insertcoins

To be fair.. you as an astro were nothing BUT a buff job anyway? Astros were never good until those buffs were fixed. See 3.0 and 4.0 for proof.

Your right, we were a buff job.. a buff job with 'options'. Now, we have no option, its one single buff, a buff you can easily get with a cheep food item that last 300X longer than our buff does, and doesn't even go away when you die. AND is equal to the max bonus we can give.

The entire card system may as well be removed, and replaced with 2 skills that share a cooldown. One's the Mele DPS buff, one the Ranged DPS buff. Cast either 3 times in a row, it 'procs' into the 'group' DPS buff.

That's essentially what we now have as a 'Class mechanic'.

Originally Posted by Gemina

The complexity of the current card system that is going away will only be missed by the AST's who enjoyed the fishing.

"Why do people waste time going fishing? Don't they know they can just, like, drive to the store and buy fish?"

Yes, the fishing was a big part of what made AST engaging. It certainly wasn't the healing, because every healer's toolkit is absurdly powerful relative to the pitiful amounts of incoming damage in FF14's fights. It certainly wasn't our mindless DPS "rotation" consisting of one button we push over and over and over and over and over and over and over. The ONLY unique and even remotely engaging thing about AST was the card system and the tools (TiDi, CelOpp) it had for playing with buffs. Otherwise, it's just a WHM reskin.

You said that "cards aren't jobs" and that we can't just have all BLMs because not everybody likes the BLM playstyle. Yet you see no problem with all three healers playing exactly the same way in 5.0? Having exactly the same "one DoT, one spammable nuke" DPS rotation that AST currently suffers from? Having no pet (SCH) or card RNG (AST) to manage during the fight, and instead just mindlessly pushing buttons to make moar deepz? SCH and AST are essentially glamours for WHM at this point, from the perspective of piloting the job (because I know you're going to bring up Chain Strategem and always-on Balance as "reasons we should ackschulallyly be happy because meta").

There is a vast middle ground between the status quo and the "everything's a Balance" abomination that is Nu-AST. Maybe, just maybe, Balance should have been nerfed instead of copy/pasted onto the other five cards? Maybe, just maybe, engaging gameplay is more important than raw effectiveness? Maybe, just maybe, if we can find room for ten different DPS playstyles, it's possible to find room for three different healer playstyles?

Nah. Don't ask questions, just draw cards and get excited for next cards.