Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

I remember YoshiP saying that if they don't deliver something that the players enjoy, then they have failed. While Shadowbringers has been a great expansion so far, I think the changes to AST have fallen completely flat and alienated a large part of the AST community. In this regard, the dev team have failed.


.
There's a lot I want to get into, but I will preface this by saying while 4.0 AST was not perfect by any means, I believe players enjoyed the job for what it was and that there were many satisfying aspects about the job that were loved. However, I also do believe that the current system could very well work and be enjoyable if more work was to be put in it, but as of now it is very clunky and uninspired.

The first things I want to talk about are

- Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition:
I'm not sure why they removed/reworked these abilities when they were not only incredibly versatile and useful, but a vital part of the job lore and aesthetic. Was it difficult to balance? Is time magic no longer an identity to AST? Whatever the reason, I feel that a lot of depth and flavour has been stripped along with these skills.

- Cards:
There are two arguments here, one side preferring the RNG, unique and versatile nature of 4.0 cards. Another is pro 5.0, where the cards sacrifice much of that for consistency. I think the proper question to ask here is, what's fun for the players?

Much of the outrage I've seen regarding cards has been surrounding the lack of any flavour of the new cards. With all having the same effects, they are just not that interesting anymore. Surely some middle ground could have been met? Personally after having played AST for over a year as my main, gone into Savage and farmed EX trials to death, the new cards do not interest me in the slightest.

If you asked me what I hated about the 4.0 card system, I would have said that it felt a bit too linear that we always went for and AoE Royal Road followed by whatever DPS card, yet somehow 5.0 has managed to make the card system even more linear. There are no questions asked and no decision for you to make, only the right 6% buff and the wrong 3% buff. The cards even tell you who to buff and you just do it, it's very robotic.

- Seals and Divination:
This is what our minigame culminates to. Yet at the same time seals are too easy to obtain, you only ever want one seal combination, the individual seals themselves don't do anything, and Divination feels entirely pointless after all the button pressing it took to get there.

The ability also does not make much sense on a probability scale. As it stands, it is less likely to get 3 of the same seals, than it is to get 3 different seals. Yet why is it that we are punished for a less likely outcome by having the lowest DPS potency buff? Again, the element of choice is absent, because we only ever want three different seals.

- Minor Arcana:
I am of the opinion that the Minor Arcana we had before was fine. It was never meant to be the main focus of our arcarum just like how the minor arcana are overlooked in Tarot decks by many. Yet now I find myself throwing out more Lord and Lady buffs than the primary 6 cards, and they are stronger to boot. Minor Arcana has now also become a huge contributing factor to oGCD bloat.

- Sleeve Draw:
How do people feel when they use the new Sleeve Draw and how is the experience compared with the old one?

For me, I was always excited when Sleeve Draw came off cooldown and seeing my empty guage suddenly become a puzzle for me to sort through was amazing. The ability was simple, yet incredibly impactful gameplay wise. It was a very fitting level cap ability.

But with the new Sleeve Draw, it is something that I have come to despise. It feels very clunky to use and in conjunction with Draw/Redraw/Minor Arcana/Play, the sudden overload of oGCDs that I now have to weave before the buff expires is offputting and frankly ruins the experience. Why not at the very least make Sleeve Draw automatically trigger Draw for us? AST was known as the job with oGCD issues because of the card system. It was so bad, it became the sole reason why cast times were reduced for Malefic in patch 4.3, but now they have magnified the issue even more.

It's upsetting that so much was removed and all we received in return are unimpactful, plain and short buffs, culminating into an equally unimpactful and boring system we use maybe 3 times in a fight while spamming Minor Arcana in a manner I can only liken to that of 4.0 DRK's Dark Arts.

- Horoscope:
This ability to me just seems incomplete. It puzzles me why the buff doesn't trigger the heal upon expiration. If I've already satisfied the condition by using Helios, why should I then be punished by having a party member run around with a 20s buff that does nothing if they just happen to be slightly out of range for the second cast? And again, Horoscope itself contributes to the oGCD bloat due to the mandatory second cast.

- Neutral Sect:
Looks good at first, but its value quickly diminishes once you remember that shields and regens don't stack. You would use maybe two heals with this ability and I think that's an issue, especially when comparing it to the WHM equivalent bringing a much more useful 10% mobile party mitigation.

- Potencies:
While I understand that they were probably in a rush to launch Shadowbringers, I do not believe it's an excuse for abilities like Collective Unconscious and Celestial Opposition to be released in the way that they were. The numbers are frankly pathetic and red flags were going off for many once the tooltips were revealed weeks in advance of official launch. For an expansion serving to homogenise healers, there are a disturbing amount of inconsistencies where one ability serving a similar/equivalent purpose is vastly superior for no apparent reason.

I won't dive too deep into this as potency values are much more easily adjusted in patches and you need only to go look at raid logs to see just how much AST is falling behind in both personal damage AND healing. And no, the cards do not make up for the difference, not even the old ones with good Balance RNG.

Additionally with a buffing playstyle now hugely focusing on single target buffing, I am finding it to be a real pain to have to manually go click on someone every single time I use a card. Every 30s would not be an issue, but having to do it 4 times in a row during Sleeve Draw all the while buffing the cards with Dark Ar- I mean, Minor Arcana is terrible gameplay and this is from a PC perspective. How are console players finding this, is Sleeve Draw and targetting equally as daunting?

In the end, I'm probably just ranting but I do not believe that AST is in a good state and is in major need of not only buffs but reworks and possibly even reverts. Taking the job apart now, we only really have Malefic spam, copy paste WHM heals and the card system. With the latter being as bad as it is, what reason is there to stay on AST? Earthly Star is possibly the job's only saving grace at this point and I really hope SE take a good second look at it, because I'm not about to wait another 2 years for another rework that ends up being even worse.

I MinorArcana really MinorArcana hope MinorArcana it MinorArcana works MinorArcana out MinorArcana for MinorArcana us

I'll just broach those points I most strongly agree with so as to not make a long post or repeat info. That does not mean I do not agree with the rest of the info above.

I couldn't agree more. I've been playing AST since it came out (switched from WHM) and the previous system was, at least, fun to play. You'd have to royal road your way to a party-buff that would at least make you feel useful whilst also healing at the same time as making your party appreciate your contribution. All I do now is simply draw cards to find a combination of the three seals, because why would I bother in casting Divination for a 2% party-wide buff with a 180s cooldown when I can do it for a 6%?. And I know what some people might suggest: "then reduce the CD of Divination by 1/3 or 2/3 if 2 or 1 seal(s) are used, respectively". Well, that doesn't fix that AST has lost some of its identity with the new expansion. I know others think AST is ok as mostly everyone yelled at you (not angrily, though) whenever you drew a Balance card and now everyone seems content with having cards thrown at them all the time. But this means that us healers are sacrificing our "fun" just so others can enjoy more DPS (basically we're a summon's Aetherpact for some).

Regarding Sleeve Draw, I cannot stress enough how upsetting it is having to draw quickly before the timer runs out, without trying to repeat seals whilst using the card upon a right member and healing appropriately altogether (and I didn't even mention range for healings/cards in case they are not in range or Minor Arcana). I can't help think they could've done better. Something along the lines of getting buffs for multiple people within seconds instead of drawing/re-drawing + using the cards, which might consume around 15-25 seconds of your time (and, again, while healing). For example, they could have tweaked Sleeve Draw to buff party members withouth drawing cards, basically a question of luck, everyone would get a buff regardless of their job, being lucky enough to get one that provides you with a 6% instead of 3% (or (8% - 4% if Lady - Lord).

Horoscope - Happens to me most of the times. I end up not re-using it because I'm either way too busy drawing cards and healing or because someone is not in range. Although I admit that 1 out of 20 times it's because I've forgotten I even used it.

Yea it glares it’s ugly head in dungeons!! Like I love ast but the obnoxiously long cd on divination makes cards use during the down time ugly.

Our heals are to damn weak I just don’t understand, while this matters little in raid content it’s disgusting in simple dungeons if a tank pulls wall to wall as they should.

Celestial opposition is just a joke now and too long of a cd.

Sleeve draw is gross to use now and does not synergize well with divination.

Horoscope and celestial intersection are like your only really done well abilities even without aspected horoscope.

Our kit just lacks way too much to keep up with the other healers, which like I said really only shows more in casual content or heal intensive fights.

Since our kit still lacks, yes MP can still be an issue for some of the more inexperienced ast. I will always still play ast cause it’s my fave healer but SE needs to go back to the MUtherfuging drawing board