Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

For a job I mained from 3.4 to the start of Shadowbringers all it took me was one run to figure out something was wrong. I healed very well in dungeons on AST but I did one Castrum Abania run and my performance was a shell of what it used to be. This was when Play had a queue problem but that wasn't the whole problem with this job.

SCH has a few problems of its own but I've taken up residence with the job until "this" gets fixed. Removal of the time skills and COpp stun didn't help matters for me. This job was not playtested.

Just give us back the old system. You shouldn't drastically change a core system that lot of people liked, and nobody was complaining about. AST was not MCH. We were pretty happy with our job. The main complaints I saw were about Spire being useless, and about obligatory pre-pull Balance fishing in hardcore raiding groups.

So make Spire not useless, and give us a really long CD ability that stacks the deck with Balances and resets on raid wipes. As for job balance, take away expanded RR and I don't think you'll see many complaints; buffing everyone instead of picking a party member made the process less interesting anyway. You can even nerf the effects of our individual cards if we're still putting out too much rDPS.

But why the hell would you replace the entire card system? Even if the new system was something that people like... make a new ****ing healer job with that system. Don't take something that people enjoyed and get rid of it. AST was the only healer job in an MMO that I truly enjoyed, and now as far as I'm concerned, it's dead. Even if I could end up enjoying the new system, I still wouldn't play it, because I can't pull out my star globe without thinking about the great job that we lost.

Originally Posted by Mesarthim

For a job I mained from 3.4 to the start of Shadowbringers all it took me was one run to figure out something was wrong. I healed very well in dungeons on AST but I did one Castrum Abania run and my performance was a shell of what it used to be. This was when Play had a queue problem but that wasn't the whole problem with this job.

SCH has a few problems of its own but I've taken up residence with the job until "this" gets fixed. Removal of the time skills and COpp stun didn't help matters for me. This job was not playtested.

I feel that pain. At Stormblood launch, I was freaking out about the changes to Scholar before they reverted some of them... I wound up playing Noct AST for the first raid tier, partly because I'm not so much married to the idea of being a scholar main (despite the fact that you COULD say I've been a scholar main since 2.0) but rather I'd like to be the most effective shield healer I can be (accounting for personal biases, of course- I'm sure SB1 SCH would have gotten the job done, it just didn't mesh well with me.)


If only I knew where things would stand on the next expansion launch, I wouldn't have been so pessimistic. The way things are right now, I feel like I would just be contributing to my party's woes if I joined as AST (or SCH), instead of the only job that can't be a shield healer, and my sense of group-responsibility just doesn't like being so selfish as to play the sub-role that ~I~ want to play when it hinders progress.



It's also neat to see someone who had the opposite experience as me weigh in. I wanted to play AST because my SCH feels are too negative... But maybe I'm being too negative, maybe SCH is the lesser of two evils.

I don't really post on the forums at all, but I felt that since AST is objectively bad for me to play, I wanted to give a little feedback. I mained an AST healer in Deltascape for a static and I had a lot of fun with it, it honestly was my favorite class to play. I felt pessimistic going into Shadowbringers. However, I really wanted to give the class a fair shot, so I got AST to 80 and cleared Titania EX a few times.

Unfortunately, the class is just extremely clunky to play. For example, as many have pointed out, sleeve draw just feels bad to use. It's difficult to optimize playing every card, and it draws a lot of attention away from other things you should be doing. Ideally, you're fishing for the correct seal, and then playing a card every time it comes off GCD. The problem in this lies in the fact that you are drawing single-use cards and manually clicking on each party member every 5ish seconds (during sleeve draw) while fishing for seal, or while converting to minor arcana.

Next, fishing for celestial seals feels really bad, even with the 3 redraws. There are several instances where you will draw nothing but a single type of seal, particularly when you are fishing for the last seal you need for divination. Which brings up the next point, divination is just too long with little to no impact, 3 minutes for a 6% AoE buff with an incredibly short range is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's move on to Horoscope. Currently, it's is just clunky to use, the closest thing to Horoscope is Plenary Indulgence, and that triggers on the character being hit by the appropriate healing spell. Horoscope requires you to use it, then use it again after the appropriate spell. Horoscope might have some clever use in later raids, but it's really easy to forget about on top of all the tedium of keeping cards going. I don't understand why the effect doesn't just proc after the duration ends, it seems like that should be how it works.

Finally, I don't really see any reason you'd ever want to play AST over WHM atm. AST doesn't offer anything over WHM, since WHM can make up the difference in card contributions through pDPS. However, WHM has better unique healing spells than AST, both in GCDs and oGCDs and more of them. It offers better bang for your buck while being easier to play. AST in its current state reminds me of the difference between BRD and MCH in the prior expansion. You could do well on MCH during raids, but it had so many issues with the way the class was constructed, so most people favored playing BRD over MCH.

The biggest drawback to AST right now is simply the card system, it requires so much micromanagement that it makes it extremely difficult to play well. It's like they made the system more complex but in an extremely bad way. The card system needs a revision away from the current system. I don't really care if they move back to the old system, or restructure the new system. Either way, something needs to be done.

I really dont mind the new card/seal system. My issue with AST currently is their skills have stupidly long CDs for very little potency.

Originally Posted by Nimloth

I don't really post on the forums at all, but I felt that since AST is objectively bad for me to play, I wanted to give a little feedback. I mained an AST healer in Deltascape for a static and I had a lot of fun with it, it honestly was my favorite class to play. I felt pessimistic going into Shadowbringers. However, I really wanted to give the class a fair shot, so I got AST to 80 and cleared Titania EX a few times.

Unfortunately, the class is just extremely clunky to play. For example, as many have pointed out, sleeve draw just feels bad to use. It's difficult to optimize playing every card, and it draws a lot of attention away from other things you should be doing. Ideally, you're fishing for the correct seal, and then playing a card every time it comes off GCD. The problem in this lies in the fact that you are drawing single-use cards and manually clicking on each party member every 5ish seconds (during sleeve draw) while fishing for seal, or while converting to minor arcana.

Next, fishing for celestial seals feels really bad, even with the 3 redraws. There are several instances where you will draw nothing but a single type of seal, particularly when you are fishing for the last seal you need for divination. Which brings up the next point, divination is just too long with little to no impact, 3 minutes for a 6% AoE buff with an incredibly short range is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's move on to Horoscope. Currently, it's is just clunky to use, the closest thing to Horoscope is Plenary Indulgence, and that triggers on the character being hit by the appropriate healing spell. Horoscope requires you to use it, then use it again after the appropriate spell. Horoscope might have some clever use in later raids, but it's really easy to forget about on top of all the tedium of keeping cards going. I don't understand why the effect doesn't just proc after the duration ends, it seems like that should be how it works.

Finally, I don't really see any reason you'd ever want to play AST over WHM atm. AST doesn't offer anything over WHM, since WHM can make up the difference in card contributions through pDPS. However, WHM has better unique healing spells than AST, both in GCDs and oGCDs and more of them. It offers better bang for your buck while being easier to play. AST in its current state reminds me of the difference between BRD and MCH in the prior expansion. You could do well on MCH during raids, but it had so many issues with the way the class was constructed, so most people favored playing BRD over MCH.

The biggest drawback to AST right now is simply the card system, it requires so much micromanagement that it makes it extremely difficult to play well. It's like they made the system more complex but in an extremely bad way. The card system needs a revision away from the current system. I don't really care if they move back to the old system, or restructure the new system. Either way, something needs to be done.

I play AST cause I can switch back and forth between regen and shields. I personally dont care about dps as my dps is secondary priority and only done when no healing is needed. Whm for me is the snooze fest healer right now brain dead easy to play..