Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

Originally Posted by Liselsia

So I am just a casual player so my opinion means little. When I first heard about AST changes I was excited. I had it in my head that AST was playing like XI's RDM or WoW Cassic's PLD where it was a buffer job that also healed. Obviously jumping into the class it was very much not the case. With long cooldowns buffing still takes a large backseat.

So what if they removed cooldowns entirely ? If AST main job was to maintain 100% uptime on both Cards and Divination with healing in between ? Obviously numbers can be tweeked but I am more so talking about the playstyle.

I would really like to disagree with you on your first point--casual players have just as much a right to offer feedback as anyone else. Most of FFXIV's millions of subscribers are casual and I do feel that such serious problems with AST are much harder on casual players than they are with "hardcore," because the hardcore already came into the expansion with the mindset that they will level several jobs, and will play what best meshes with their established group. Most serious raiding healers I've encountered are omni, because that flexibility is valuable.

So the casual player will struggle a lot more -- keeping up on the heals, but also, what are they going to do? A casual player levels their jobs a lot slower and the prospect of leveling another healer to see if it doesn't suck as bad is overwhelming. They won't think "the problem is the class."

I am super concerned about a toxic meta this time around. There will always be a meta but I never felt like the SCH/AST meta in SB was toxic. I was WHM main when I first jumped in to savages (Delta) and I rarely encountered any exclusion of WHM. If anyone harbored resentment I never got that vibe, because WHM could do the content. It wasn't fun or engaging on WHM, but doable. I feel that AST right now is not really doable. I'm afraid that this meta will be more pervasive. The actual hardcore raiders will switch mains quietly and play. The midcore/pug raiders will vocally disown AST, and that will bleed down to casuals who don't really understand why AST is bad, just that "everyone" hates it.

Originally Posted by tesni_g

I would really like to disagree with you on your first point--casual players have just as much a right to offer feedback as anyone else. Most of FFXIV's millions of subscribers are casual and I do feel that such serious problems with AST are much harder on casual players than they are with "hardcore," because the hardcore already came into the expansion with the mindset that they will level several jobs, and will play what best meshes with their established group. Most serious raiding healers I've encountered are omni, because that flexibility is valuable.

So the casual player will struggle a lot more -- keeping up on the heals, but also, what are they going to do? A casual player levels their jobs a lot slower and the prospect of leveling another healer to see if it doesn't suck as bad is overwhelming. They won't think "the problem is the class."

I am super concerned about a toxic meta this time around. There will always be a meta but I never felt like the SCH/AST meta in SB was toxic. I was WHM main when I first jumped in to savages (Delta) and I rarely encountered any exclusion of WHM. If anyone harbored resentment I never got that vibe, because WHM could do the content. It wasn't fun or engaging on WHM, but doable. I feel that AST right now is not really doable. I'm afraid that this meta will be more pervasive. The actual hardcore raiders will switch mains quietly and play. The midcore/pug raiders will vocally disown AST, and that will bleed down to casuals who don't really understand why AST is bad, just that "everyone" hates it.

We have had this problem before, when 3.0 ast was released it was horribly undertuned in terms of heals, dps and buffs (sch fey wind reliably beat out aoe balance), the heals weren't addressed until 2 weeks after savage was released, buffs 3.2, personal dps never changed which was fair.

The exclusion from 3.0 to 3.2 was real and absolutely horrible as an ast you even felt like you were holding your group back compared to the other 2 hlrs in content especially noct asts.

Then what happened with 3.4 was horribly stupid on the devs part they made balance 20% and so aoe balance 10% for 30 secs which could be extended with Celestial Opposition, this resulted in whm getting the swift boot out of groups left and right, thus was whm now classed as the 'worse' or non-meta healer right up to ShB.

What has ShB done?

repeated 3.0 making ast undertuned so i hope the devs really don't repeat 3.X in its entirety because there will never be any semblance balance and certainly never a 4th hlr at this rate

Nice post OP!

As it is now i will level my AST to 80 and shelve it with tear in my eyes. The class went from my favourite by far to class which I feel is chore to play and I cannot wait to finish it and be done with it.

Is anyone monitoring Japanese forums? How they feel about AST? I dont know if they will listen to vocal minority of EN forums but they might to their own.

Thank you for putting all this in writing, OP
These are exactly my feels.
And let me just add: even with mouse over macros for easier distribution of cards, I screamed the whole time during sleeve draw.

I have stopped playing AST as well.
Maybe it would be better with potency increases, but for me they'd need to fundamentally change most of the class to really maybe enjoy playing it again.

Oh and short edit since someone asked about the Jap. Community.
Their Astro Thread is currently almost 500 pages long. My Japanese has deterioarted a lot, so I just dipped into a few messages there (also not used to the Japanese terms, so welp...), but all from what I saw it is pretty much along the lines of our discssions here in various threads. Heal potencies too low, card system etc.