I made a mistake by ignoring the dev discussions (AST changes)

[gnatters]

To preface, the most fun I've had in this game is with the AST job. The multiple layers of RNG and finding ways to play your cards just right was incredibly fun. It felt like playing a card game between heals, and since AST's healing was pretty solid, it was an all around wonderful time.

So I didn't actually know what the AST changes were going to be when I logged in. I avoided most of the dev discussions so I didn't burn myself out (like I did before SB's release), and since I'd only heard previously that WHM, DRK, and MCH were the ones getting touched up the most, I felt confident that my job would be fine.

I've tried AST with the new mechanics and it's just . . . bland. Rather than six different mechanics that I can juggle around or convert into other unique mechanics, I have one. I know that Divination is the new mechanic, but it's so simplified compared to what we had before that it doesn't hold my attention at all. I've been interested in the story of ShB so far, but losing the gameplay I enjoyed the most had bummed me out so much that I was having a genuinely hard time getting invested in the game again. I'm going to give it another go, but not as AST.

I hear WHM got better, and I'm happy about that. I've barely touched SCH, but after hearing how its mechanics were overly simplified, I'm very sorry to SCH players. If anything positive comes from the myriad of healers expressing their woes, I hope there is no attached negative of reverting WHM's buffs. I really, really don't want to see that happen, not with how many people I've seen happy with WHM's buffs.

[BahamutxD]

I miss the time-mage spells from AST. Just Gravity and Lightspeed are alive.

I miss Royal Road or just some diversity on cards.

This is not AST. This is a cheap tarot card reader with just damage cards.

#bringback4.0AST

[gnatters]

Even something as simple as bringing back the diversity on our cards would regain my interest, I think. But yes, bringing back the 4.0 AST and expanding on its mechanics for 70-80 content would be wonderful.

[Yakugami]

I miss the time-mage spells from AST. Just Gravity and Lightspeed are alive.

I miss Royal Road or just some diversity on cards.

This is not AST. This is a cheap tarot card reader with just damage cards.

#bringback4.0AST

i highly disagree with everything but "time mage" spells

we definitely should feel more "time magey" as that's what i wanted this class to be, and that's what this class IS, just with a different theme to make it a "healer" and not a "dps support" basically

but, no
royal road really wasn't a good concept, at first launch, sure, but it's better that we've evolved from it after 2 expansions

you waited longer to use your next card just to buff your next card, that's a full minute of a cooldown, that's not "fun or engaging" just because you "get to decide which one i want to use"

this new mechanic of tossing out cards MUCH faster is a lot better, while having to accept losing out on the "utility" of bole/ewer (spire was trash and would be useless now due to no TP, and arrow/spear were just balance, let's face it)

seals are a different story

the problem i have with it, is right now, we have SIX buttons (7 with Undraw, but you could count that if you really wanted to) dedicated to this card system


yet all it is now, if you really look at it, is basically a 4% damage buff for ONE target over the course of an engagement
that looks like it's just so not okay when looking at it on paper


the only two "different" ones are Sleeve Draw, allowing you to give it to "more targets" at once on a 180s cooldown, and Divination lets you also boost damage for your group on another 180s cooldown

but regardless, ignoring those 2, that's still 4 (5 with undraw) buttons just being dedicated to give one person a 50% uptime of 8% damage

before, you also had 6 buttons (7/8/9 for undraw/spread undraw/road undraw, but meh) dedicated to cards
but yet we had a heal, a damage, a damage resist, an mp refresh, a tp refresh, and a damage boost
now, THAT, on paper, sounds incredible (aside from how it "actually" worked, tp being useless, mp being manageable without it, and damage resist being unnecessary)

i mean now it's barely as interesting as bringing Selene for her previous little haste buff that would be auto-cast, like???
that's not "engaging", it's just a flat number boost to allies
there's really nothing interesting about that, and that doesn't change how you or your allies get to play the game

at that point, just give us a third cooldown along with Sleeve Draw and Divination that's single-target

it's like if they re-added Protect into the game for WHM, but you had to dance around and have 5 buttons you had to micro-manage to apply it

i'm not totally against the direction they took the cards, i just think they handled it poorly
(especially because "ARROW" is melee???????????????)

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

we definitely should feel more "time magey" as that's what i wanted this class to be, and that's what this class IS, just with a different theme to make it a "healer" and not a "dps support" basically

I am on a different boat - I'd prefer to have a real Time Mage job and not this identity theft.

[Yakugami]

I am on a different boat - I'd prefer to have a real Time Mage job and not this identity theft.

i'm also not against this, and i didn't say i was against that concept, i certainly would have liked this, myself

Time Mage is probably one of my if not definitely my favorite class in the Final Fantasy universe, right under Mime

but, eh, it's not like they'd remove the entire class or switch its role entirely, so we kinda have to accept what we got

honestly, i can understand their direction of it, "time magic" in an MMO would just be "too" support-y and "too" debuff-y, i feel like it'd just be required in every group at that point, unless they made it REALLY different... i dunno, it all really just depends on what they would have decided on to do with it, i suppose it could have just been basic party buffs, then full dps rotations, but, eeeeehhhh

[kartana]

I think the changes are fine but they need to shorten the Divination cd and change sleeve draw a bit. It's not fun to use imho.

[DiznypKC]

I don’t understand why they took away all of Astro’s unique buffs just to give them to Dancer. It reminds me of every time they took Job abilities from WHM to give to all the healers as Role actions. *shrug*

The healers need to bring more support that isn’t just spamming st nukes and a few heals.

[Tyssyn]

The only buff Dancers can give is a damage buff, and damage shield every so often. Dancers didn't get the missing Ast buffs.

[Yakugami]

The only buff Dancers can give is a damage buff, and damage shield every so often. Dancers didn't get the missing Ast buffs.

yea... i have no clue where people are getting this from
i mean, yes, they give a crit buff and direct hit buff, but that's also only to them and their dance partner on a 120s cooldown or something... so, like............?
they definitely were not given astro buffs