Thread: Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

Well today is the liveletter, and I know there are a lot of questions about Astro. Most about getting a rework to the card system.

Let's hope we get something other than we are watching it, or we think its fine.

Originally Posted by Kabooa

The 123 of Machinist wasn't the focus of its gameplay. It was the Wildfire loop, which is effectively no different than Gunbreaker's no Mercy loop. The only difference is that no Mercy is a little more forgiving due to longer duration and the fact that you can space out your OGCDs a bit more because of it.

The No Mercy loop is pathetically easy to do with very little chance for error, while the old MCH wildfire loop required getting very particular procs setup and balancing your heat such that the moment you go into it you were overheating for maximum damage output, which made it unforgiving it you made any mistakes in heat management and if your ping was not ideal. Not to mention that once you were outside that loop RNG dictated your damage output so your overall DPS could wind up taking a nose dive because of how inconsistent the 123 was rendering the burst moot.

MCH was designed away from being wildfire loop centric and inconsistent because overall it made the class easier to balance, less frustrating, and less punishing. Which got its player population to recover.

They confirmed no changes will be made to this clunky boring flavorless card system. I've confirmed removing my auto renewal subscription. Destiny, mhw, bl3 etc can have my game time.

Originally Posted by Brarry

They confirmed no changes will be made to this clunky boring flavorless card system. I've confirmed removing my auto renewal subscription. Destiny, mhw, bl3 etc can have my game time.

I've been sinking my time into the new Fire Emblem instead. I didn't enjoy the writing in Shadowbringers, and there's no point spending money on a game that I'm only playing reluctantly and that can destroy my main source of gameplay-related enjoyment on a whim.

At a cursory glance, the JPN forums aren't very happy about the results of this PLL either, so maybe they will go back on it after all. Not worth holding out a sub for, though.

Originally Posted by Brarry

They confirmed no changes will be made to this clunky boring flavorless card system. I've confirmed removing my auto renewal subscription. Destiny, mhw, bl3 etc can have my game time.

I saw. I'm disappointed. I want to love what these devs do, but oversimplifying a class and taking everything away to give nothing back isnt fine.

Honestly it makes me not want to heal anymore. I'm stuck with WHm for who knows how long cause I dont care for Sch, and I am not playing Ast.

With these changes they made healer retention terrible. They are banking on the homogenization , copying of the healing spells, removing lore, and simplifying gameplay to attract casual healers who play and sub on the short term.

"There will be no changes to card. But they appreciate you to bring them more feedback on the matter"

Hello, where did my time mage skills go? I loved extending buffs, why did you take that away from me?

Sch has got Energy Drain back, but we didn't get time dilation back or the extend buffs from celestial opposition.

Horoscope is a very small window to activate, but only after the gcd heal, then it's way too long. Why isn't the initial Horoscope longer with a shorter window to the buffed Horoscope?

Why can my healing abilities be buffed by the WHM's Asylum but my own Neutral Sect or Synastry do not affect any of my abilities, only gcd spells?

The buff to cards is only for when we mess up the seals or give the wrong card to someone which makes it even less worth it to give the correct card and I might as well just use whatever and pop Divination on cooldown. Why are we rewarding bad gameplay instead of increasing the value of dps for correct card distribution? This is very confusing.

I'm looking forward to the answers from SE

I don't post on the forums ever but I've been told they're the place to put proper feedback and I wanted to give it a shot.

My time with Divination has been very love/hate. I thought the system was good, but clunky with how sleeve draw worked. Now the new sleeve draw is fantastic and efficient, but we also saw Divination changes: the squishing of % between the seal buffs, and the lowering of it's cooldown. This change has one large issue with my limited time playing with it: it reduces the benefit of playing cards optimally, in favor of playing them quickly.

The change was to make sure divination wasn't punishing bad cards as much, and to increase the times we use it so we feel more powerful in our role. However: reducing the punishment of playing wrong, also reduces the reward for playing right. With divination being a 2 minute cooldown rather than 3, you are getting 2-3 more divinations out per fight, and with the seal buff being smaller, the favor leans towards speed rather than accuracy when playing cards. Better to play cards faster and Divination more often, than sort through cards and delay Divination.

This ends up creating the opposite effect than what (I believe) was intended with this new card system. I don't care about my cards anymore, I just want them out of my hand so I can Divination on time.

Divination should go back to being a 3 minute cooldown. However, the buff from Divination should be increased to compensate. An increase to the % buff, and a meaningful reward for correct seals to insure that playing cards properly is more rewarding than playing cards fast.

Powerful abilities are allowed to have long cooldowns, as long as they are satisfying when you use them. That is the logic behind Tank Invulns in the game. They are used 1-2 times in content, but the use of them redefines how mechanics are handed. Sleeve draw and divination are both key tools in ast's kit. Sleeve can be used to fuel divination, or be used in tandem with it to create double buff windows, but in both of these situations, Divination that is the Driving factor of the class; it is our Xenoglossy, the thing that we spend the entire rest of our rotation building up to, and it should feel just as rewarding.

I understand that the team is very careful with their buff classes because they don't want a repeat of old ast/nin and becoming "required classes" for comps. I am not a numbers man, and I don't have the math to give you what the durations and percentages SHOULD be. I'm just coming at this from a class feel perspective, and what would make me feel more rewarded as an ast player who does enjoy the divination system (and for all of you who don't, I'm very sorry that you lost your time mage).

I would rather pop divination 2-3 times in a fight and feel like I built up to and earned a powerful buff window, than pop it 4-5 times in a fight and feel my card play didn't matter.

So this expansion: WHM+SCH confirmed.

AST will continue to be called trash by some random people somewhere.