Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

Originally Posted by SweetPete

My suggestions
Seals: We should have different combinations.
1 of each seal should stay the same. Gives damage buff.
3 celestial seals: attack speed buff
3 lunar seals: critical hit buff
3 solar seals: damage mitigation buff
2 solars and 1 lunar: direct hit buff
2 lunars and 1 solar: aoe regen
The combinations are endless. Square can totally milk this specific gameplay so well if they wanted too. Since we can’t aoe cards anymore. They should be more powerful on single targets.

Healing potencies are fine to me but nocturnal sect is so bad right now. Why don’t they just remove the sects and make neutral sect the standard. Just lower the potencies or the shield and regen and remove the 20% healing buff. Also the shields won’t stack when you have another ast but the regents will. Just my suggestions.

The problem with this is that it's too intricate. I wouldn't mind all these as it would truly push the damage or other stats but I'd have to remember ALL the combinations to know what I want to do or am doing. And part of the identity of the healer is to preserve the sects. Otherwise you're just OPing it even though you lower the healing potency of the spells. That or you're just giving it the best of both worlds but truly condemning it to a world of not being able to heal/mitigate enough.

Originally Posted by SweetPete

Spire- 10% damage and 5% direct hit

I'd change one of those stats (DH) for Determination. Some classes do not benefit from it but DET does affect most classes.

Originally Posted by nordiclania

I like the way you think! -applause- I agree that Divination should proc as soon as you have three seals, seeing as we still have 30 seconds cooldown for Draw and 180 seconds for Sleeve Draw.

As an Astro main for the past 1-2 years, in ShB, I first felt like I didn't do nearly enough healing like I used to. I almost switched to WHM, but then decided to stick it out. I don't dislike Astro, but in the new raid content Eden, I am now having a hard time giving my team mates that 15 second extra damage buff, be it through a single card or through Divination. I just don't feel like I have the time, cause I have to spam my heals to keep up, as well as juggle Horoscope and keeping a close eye on its timer.

I still think the job is fun, and I enjoy it (maybe because it is quite tricky to master now, even though it always was in a way) but if suggestions like these came to fruition, I think it would be an absolute blast.

That suggestion isn't even remotely within the realm of balance, AST would be 100% required, probably 2 ASTs considering how much of a damage boost 5% main stats would be. Would still be play balance, redraw if not balance. None of the divination effects compare to just throwing Balances out

Originally Posted by Silkerin

well... you all know that they will give the excuse "dont have time now for major reworks, wait till its too late for it, please look forward to it" or something... so the most viable changes would be numerical values and some other little extra things until they find "time" again to do it wrong, because they cant bother asking for their players input, even tho there are some amazing ideas in this thread.

They seem to be wanting ast to be focused more on healing with gcds and the extra bit with ogcds, so i am just going all in into it, make their dps average, but give them decent buffing capabilities.

-for small lazy changes, just bump all base cards damage % to 8% and 4%. for the minor arcana 10% or 0% (yes, you either play this right, or get nothing, this would at least make people think to use it instead of rushing to put it on someone since it would be a dps bonus anyway)

- Essential dinigty: just give it some charges, ideally 4, but 3 could be decent.

- Divination: like it was mentioned in this thread, just make it useable everytime the seals are ready, if in the end ast is still lacking, buff this to 10%

- Collective unconscious: this is terrible now, just revert to the way it was before. or at least, buff that healing potency.

- Celestial opposition: even worse D: why the hell the cd of this is so long? whm assize is so good and it is only 45s. increase the range of this to be like assize and buff the potencies all around, and of course the cd should be between 45 and 30s like whms and schs (having stun back would be nice).

- Earthly star: every placed support action from the healers do something extra now, but not asts... well it should... can be whatever, regen, dmg reduction, whatever, but just give it another thing for while it is cooking in the ground.

- Sleeve draw: y u do? just make it give stacks that grants X uses of draw with no time on it to use, or at least not a short time.

- Celestial intersection: its cool, but still could do with a small buff. (maybe if the whole kit is buffed this might not need a buff?)

- Horoscope: why is this a heal? ok, it can be a heal, but it has to do something else besides just healing, otherwise is just a copy of whms plenary. make it buff the heal of the aspected helios yes, but also buff the shield and regen effect they have. Restoring a bit of mp as well helps if the gcd healing is the goal.
Arent horoscopes usually used by people as some sort of basic guidance? tbh this ability should be renamed and then, for future expansions, use the horoscope and zodiac theme to create new actions, maybe upgrade the cards to the zodiac system.

- Neutral sect: first of all, this should have been called eclipse sect, would have been so much cooler. Second, some effects dont stack with other healers (shield), so, either make so they can stack on the same target, or double down on the sect they are.

ED having 3 charges would be really pushing it, 4 would be way too much, Earthly Star isn't a defensive spell like Asylum or Sacred Soil, it shouldn't have a secondary effect, they just need to bring CU up to par.

Personally, I am not a fan of the new cards or of Divination. I was very much fond of the old card system after playing AST for 3 years with it. I know some people will just say to get over the old ways, but the original card system was what drew me into playing AST. I enjoyed the variety of the cards, and how sometimes your Ewers were used for MP instead of the coveted Expanded Balance—how Boles were nice to have during prog if you pulled one. How giving a (Stormblood) Spear to a BRD during their burst window would cause their procs to fly off the charts. I enjoyed the variety. Yeah, Balance needed to be addressed, but I disagree with the decision to make all the cards mini-Balances.

I also miss the time effects you could apply to cards with extending them (either with RR, Time Dilation, or COpp), and I miss being able to spread cards/buffs to my party more than just every 3 minutes. I’m not a fan of single-targeting cards, but that may also be my own personal bias due to playing and raiding with an AST that insisted on just padding one person.



With regards to Sleeve Draw, I think the new one is a good and neat idea in theory, but its execution leaves Sleeve Draw/Divination windows feeling unnecessarily cumbersome. It also requires Lightspeed if we’re talking about optimizing, simply because of the amount of double-weaving we will have to do within the time frame—deploy Divination, have a MA card ready, start Drawing other cards, MA them, Play to the appropriate job and Redrawing if necessary, etc.. It just feels clunky. The LS requirement also removes a lot of versatility from that skill, as we can no longer use it for heavy movement, MP conservation during heavy healing, or for quick and dirty Gravity spam on trash.

With regards to Neutral Sect, I think it’s nice, but you can only use it at level 80—so its another skill could have been put to use at lower levels (if for nothing else than for Aspected Benefic shield buffers on a tank pulling trash), but that cannot be because of the level its acquired. A quick note, though: WHM/Di AST/SCH Whispering Dawn regens do stack with one another (they always have), and the Neutral Sect shields will stack with SCH Galvanize because they are not Nocturnal Field but a different buff. So the not-stacking is a non-issue here. The only regens that will not stack are two Di ASTs regens, but Di AST/WHM regens are fine.

COpp depresses me. Same with CU. I think COpp is far too weak for its 2-minute cooldown, and I would rather have the extension+Stun effect back because I really liked having that—and the Stun was very useful in dungeon trash packs to allow the tank a bit of a breather from all the autos. CU needs a buff because Asylum and Sacred Soil crap all over it—especially the latter. I don’t know how they thought that it was acceptable in its current state next to those two skills.

Horoscope is also a skill I think should either deploy on its own, or function like WHM’s new Plenary Indulgence, where the Helios/Aspected Helios automatically procs the 400 potency heal from Horoscope. Having to weave in Horoscope a second time for the second heal just feels unnecessary when I compare it to Plenary. I guess they didn’t want it to be a reskinned, weaker Earthly Star, but I personally think allowing the heal to detonate on its own would be nice. It would also give it some optimization like Star where you would have to think about a good place to use it so that it goes off after a party-wide AOE.

Celestial Intersection is the only new skill AST got that I like. The shield before trash pulls in dungeons is really nice to have. It feels weaker than Divine Benison, so I think a small potency buff for it would be nice but maybe not necessary. I’m still feeling cynical about how much weaker AST feels in terms of healing compared to the other two healers. Playing WHM is like night and day compared to AST—the former is so much more comfy.

OP hit the nail on the head. I have played all of the healers throughout the years, playing them against each other to see which play style suits me best. AST has gone through a lot of changes since its inception, but it has been so nice to watch it grow and turn into such a fun and impactful job to play. At the end of 4.0 it was Fluid and the amount of diversity in skills gave you lots of options to play with. The Time abilities, two of the most versatile and fun skills to use, being stripped away broke my heart and I am still confused as to why this change was made in the first place.

AST is a shadow of it's former self in regards to how it's playstyle linked up with it's job fantasy and lore. It feels silly to say because ability wise it didn't lose a lot, but the ones we lost felt like an integral part of the job as a whole and helped to really make it feel different from the other jobs. The cards no longer feel important or different, making the lore we got behind them all in the job quests all but useless. They are now just different colors of damage up. There is no flavor anymore, no depth, no choice. It makes me sad to see my favorite job reduced to a balance-bot . It's like being used to having freshly made Ramen at a Ramen House and then being handed a bowl of Instant Noodles. Yes it's still the same in essence, but that's about it.

Originally Posted by Aomine1992

I still disagree, People only used balance and spear that was not engaging, now you have to decide on the fly and plan on actually using stuff instead of just spread balance, spread spear and that’s it. But like you said this is about the kit because the uniqueness is still in tact

That is a pretty broad statement. Most ASTs I know did not just fish for balance or spear. Yes Balance was optimal and spear to a lesser extent, but most ASTs I know used what cards that came or strategized which cards to hold onto. I loved being able to stash a ewer or a bole for those "Oh Sh*t" moments. I LOVED throwing my BLM an Arrow. The most fun, and yes sometimes aggravating, part of the cards was that they were always different, you had to think on your feet and every run was a different experience because of it.

Collective Unconsciousness is in need of a major buff now, it is inferior to sacred soil in every way,
-has longer cd
-roots ast in place and no casting allowed
-heals less
It is baffling sacred soil buff got through while CU is left in this state

Time Dialation felt needlessly removed and could have add a bit more complexity to the more linear card system

Celestial Opposition is too weak for its cd and needs a buff

Nocturnal is just no at this point 1k mp for a shield that disappears like a knife through butter on tanks.

Sleeve draw and minor arcana were better in SB hands down though minor arcana could've remained the same, Sleeve draw had to have changed with this system so no real idea for that.

Divination is boring, the goal of the new card system is boring, rather than trying to deal with what we got handed we have a very clear you want this only scenario no ifs, ands or buts, 3 different seals or don't bother because it is not worth the cd otherwise.

Earthly star is still awesome ty for not breaking that

Heals feel weak but not 3.0 levels thankfully (yet)

I miss so much of HW/SB ast it was fun, yea it had dud cards (spire) but you could make use of them if you were skilled enough, the card system as in the actual moves draw,RR felt far less clunky than what we have now.

Will say ty for making Gravity a lower level spell we really needed that a long time ago