Question from a new player - can AST change back to what it was before ?

[ColaSama]

Hello fellas,

I started the game 1 month ago. I tried nearly every mmo on the market, but never FF14 strangely, it was a friend of mine that hyped it up for me. Tbh, when I started, I didn't even know about ShB release. When my friend introduced the different classes, I knew I would like AST, because of the card system.

I leveled up slowly to 50, enjoying the story. But a week before ShB release, my friend told me "are you still into AST ? because the card system is no more, all the cards are just dps buffs". I... I kinda lost the will to play for like 2 days, because playing AST was my main goal : I did all the boring fetch quests between the end of ARR and Heavensward knowing that I would finally play this goddamn AST. And they removed the most interesting part of his kit ? That's frustrating to say the least.

I want to know : why did they do that, was it a lazy attempt to balance a rng based class by transforming his iconic mechanic into "here is a damage buff lol" ? can it change in the near future or are the devs at SE as stubborn as the ones at Blizzard ? they ruined the class I wanted to play for the next years of the xpac, no hope at the horizon ?

It's not the end of the world, I will continue on my tank... but still, what a bummer really. 50 levels and a shit tons of quests with this damn Alphinaud (bless you Estinien for putting him at his place btw) and "we ended the class you wanted to play". Fuck.