Astrologian Cards Can't Be a Coin Flip: A petition

[Veis_Alveare]

I've seen a lot of people freak out about this and I think it's all incredibly reactionary and overblown.

AST right now is fun and my favorite healer for anything that isn't a dungeon but it isn't as if it's cards are some kind of incredibly nuanced system in their current iteration. Everything is predetermined. In full party content you're fishing for AoE Balance and will Minor Arcana most other cards unless something happens to fit a niche (tank issues and you have a Bole, cohealer died with no mp tools ready and you have a Ewer, etc) which really isn't some incredibly varied system. 90% of the time it's Balance fishing or begrudgingly popping a Spear instead.

In terms of the power of the buffs themselves they're less impactful than AoE Balance is now for sure but the amount of time you'll have buffs on people who are doing big damage is still up to you and your ability to manage that and gamble.

Lord and Lady aren't just your improved Undraw now, they're actually the goal in the short term. When you don't need seals you should be trying to maximize the uptime of those on your strongest dps.

How many Draws can you burn that way before you need to start planning your Seals? Well, how long is left on your CD? Do you have Sleeve Draw up before it? How lucky do you feel?

This seems like a lot more interesting decision making than "AoE Balance fishing - The Class" and I'm glad for it.

They've retained the shortened Malefic cast times, we still have Earthly Star, we still Lightspeed and ED... the core of AST and the best parts of it are very much present. All this whining is just that in my book - crying about nothing.

[Selova]

I've seen a lot of people freak out about this and I think it's all incredibly reactionary and overblown.

AST right now is fun and my favorite healer for anything that isn't a dungeon but it isn't as if it's cards are some kind of incredibly nuanced system in their current iteration. Everything is predetermined. In full party content you're fishing for AoE Balance and will Minor Arcana most other cards unless something happens to fit a niche (tank issues and you have a Bole, cohealer died with no mp tools ready and you have a Ewer, etc) which really isn't some incredibly varied system. 90% of the time it's Balance fishing or begrudgingly popping a Spear instead.

In terms of the power of the buffs themselves they're less impactful than AoE Balance is now for sure but the amount of time you'll have buffs on people who are doing big damage is still up to you and your ability to manage that and gamble.

Lord and Lady aren't just your improved Undraw now, they're actually the goal in the short term. When you don't need seals you should be trying to maximize the uptime of those on your strongest dps.

How many Draws can you burn that way before you need to start planning your Seals? Well, how long is left on your CD? Do you have Sleeve Draw up before it? How lucky do you feel?

This seems like a lot more interesting decision making than "AoE Balance fishing - The Class" and I'm glad for it.

They've retained the shortened Malefic cast times, we still have Earthly Star, we still Lightspeed and ED... the core of AST and the best parts of it are very much present. All this whining is just that in my book - crying about nothing.

All of this^. Now instead of wasting time on terrible rng draw's fishing for that balance, your time will be spent on how good is your uptime on increasing your entire groups damage.

[Catwho]

I used to joke that I was bad at AST because I dropped the cars on the floor, but I'm well aware that the aspects of the job I found difficult were the very same ones that other people found interesting and fun.

I wish they had not taken the joy out of AST (and SCH, which was my preferred healer.) People who played those classes liked the complexity. We liked having split second decisions, we liked being forced to choose between Option A and Option B in any given situation.

[Insertcoins]

I used to joke that I was bad at AST because I dropped the cars on the floor, but I'm well aware that the aspects of the job I found difficult were the very same ones that other people found interesting and fun.

I wish they had not taken the joy out of AST (and SCH, which was my preferred healer.) People who played those classes liked the complexity. We liked having split second decisions, we liked being forced to choose between Option A and Option B in any given situation.

When you actually have a choice sure. But RNG was most of the cards you gotten. Can we stop actting like we had 100% control when 90% of it was RNG? And again, Dancer stole Bards AND Ast's buffs. Astro couldn't stay the same because of dancer. It had to change.

[Crasherino]

I love playing my Ast in dungeons and fiddling about with the cards, I've got very used to the class and it honestly feels very satisfying when getting your cards and then deciding what to do with them, I seriously hope that they don't put in this new system because it's absolutely dreadful, it just looks like they're completely gutting the class just for the top % of players that want to speed run the ever living hell out of a raid and want nothing more than an AoE balance cast on them, I mean I get it that 10% damage increase for the entire raid is something any raid group will want when available, but why force this to be their ONLY play style because all 6 cards are now an incredibly boring 6% damage boost at best which basically makes it a worse balance in every way possible, no longer will I be able to give people 20 or even 30% casting increase which I thought was always a great buff to have on an individual, especially on casters.

I understand that they want all 3 healers to basically be as useful as each other, but gutting the hell out of one class doesn't solve that problem, I don't see any reason for me to touch my Ast when it will be as boring as that to play, when I could actually just play my whm and simply fully focus on healing instead, I mean christ we can't even increase the time the buffs are on our allies anymore because even that's been gutted...what even is this patch.

[Raiya]

The one thing I can say is that the changes to the cards are really really bland they might as well have just gotten rid of the things nearly as they're practically semi identical. What they have done wouldn't be as bad if there was an ADDIDTIONAL bonus besides just 6%/3% ie each pair will give either a boost to Critical/Direct Hit/Determination. That would at least make it a little better.

[jadan2000]

I understand the sentiment SE, but this is oversimplification.

[Kirsi]

Before the changes were announced: "GUYS HURRY UP AND PULL YOU'RE WASTING MY BALANCE"

After the changes: "SE oversimplified my job by taking away the card buffs that I never wanted to use"

I don't know what "decision making" you guys are talking about but the cards were too random to rely on for things like an EXTRA COOLDOWN or MP to begin with.

The option to buff crit will be missed though...

[DamianFatale]

They ruined my favorite job. They took all the variety of it, and then watered it down.

[xxvaynxx]

Shadowbringers plans to strip all variety from Astrologian cards to the point it won't feel like you're even drawing from a deck anymore, but flipping a coin.


Bole / Ewer / Spire: "Increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 6% if target is ranged DPS or 3% for all other class types"

Balance / Arrow / Spear: "Increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 6% if target is melee DPS or 3% for all other classes



Each set of 2 cards has a color that stacks on a new job gauge. Once you have 3 separate colors you can activate an ability on a 180 second cooldown that increases your group's damage in an aoe around you by 3-6%.

The only time you think about which card to use, is once every 180 seconds, where your reward is to get an AoE Balance. Yes. Your reward for thinking about which cards to play is the same effect as the cards themselves.



No longer will you have to decide to use a Ewer for mana regen or as a dps increase. No longer will you have to decide to use a Bole on the tank to give yourself more room to dps, or to burn it for a royal road effect for your dps classes. Should you use an Arrow to give your black mage cast speed? Or risk rerolling it into a spire for the chance to get a Balance? Doesn't matter.


There's no reason to use spread, because, there's no effects to save. Every card can just be auto-used. I was excited to see redraw getting more power, but what is the point of buffing redraw when there's no longer a reason to use it?

This is not Astrologian. Astrologian is the only class I play because I love juggling the different card effects. Shadowbringers would remove the flavor from the class to the point of it being stripped of its key feature.


I feel cheated. It's like turning the Scholar fairy into a totem that has literally no spells, but increases healing done by a flat amount when it's active.

This is just my input but nobody really cared about any other card other than balance. When you get something not a balance you just redraw or royal road it.
Nobody liked arrow other than samurai's and Blm but even then, balance was better.

everything else is situational and never really ever use it, more so at high level.
You don't need bole, spire which every astro in their mom meme'd on how much they get it, arrow , spear is okish but still rather have a balance, ewer was ok but didn't really need it as well.