Thread: Level-headed review of 5.0 AST

first of all you can edit your post to bypass the character limit.

Secondly I agree with some things and disagree with others.

I don't mind the devs vision and i'm mostly okay with it. The only thing the devs seems to go for which i disagree with is... if DPS can have a range from selfish dps to supporty dps why can't healers do the same? They're okayish balancing DPS but suddenly that's impossible with healers? are we meant to only be stuck playing whack-a-mole with HP bars? why can't healers also range from selfish to more supportive? why do healers who in pretty much every other game have healing + support rolled into one have to have their utility stripped because of dancer who is... a DPS? Why are DPS the utility people? I don't fully understand why that is happening. Are they afraid that ast + dnc would give way too much rdps?
With that said i don't understand your support of AST having their support bit stripped away.

I'm fine with the idea of lower personal DPS for the sake of higher rDPS. It's been that way with DPS even if they sometimes suck at balacing it. I'm fine it applies to healers as well. However it has been mathematically proven that AST has low personal DPS and the rDPS they bring is not worth it over bringing a WHM who has so much personal DPS that puts AST's rDPS to shame. You can be fine and support the devs vision but you cannot deny what has been mathematically proven.

The thing is... the devs sometimes have the right idea but from a mathematical standpoint they fail. In a way this is good because all they have to do is tweak the numbers. It would be much worse if the problem was just the kit which is only changed when an expansion hits. From a mehcanical point of view my biggest issue is sleeve draw really. Everything else desperatly needs number tweaking.

Regarding the card system i'm mostly okay with it. It has a different type of decision making. It grew on me. I agree with Divination being bad but I would like to point out that no, sometimes it's not more flexible than the previous card system. It's more obvious in 4 man content. If you have all ranged dps it's sort of fine because you can throw your cards on the tanks but if you end up in a all melee team? half of your deck is now nerfed. The only person you can throw the ranged stuff on is yourself and if the tank is bad good luck making use of it. It basically leaves you with half a deck of gimp buffs you can give to the melees.

I sort of like horoscope. You're literally the only healer who can space out aoe healing with the same skill. Plenary is a massive burst of aoe healing. Horoscope lets you space out the healing. If we have more bosses like the bat in the lvl 75 dungeon who has that consistent aoe damage going it can see how it's useful. Also the 30 second timer on it sometimes let you cover 2 boss aoes so you can cast helios to cover the first aoe then pop horoscope to top people up once the second aoe hits. Other than that i mostly agree with your assessment.

There's some other stuff but i've written an essay as it is and i g2g to work.

Originally Posted by LeftHandedLion

I'm unsure if you read this part of my post, but I call out the numbers stuff specifically. I do ask for increasing the contribution to rDPS since personal DPS is very low. I haven't attempted to do the math but would love to read the findings of those that have (if anyone has). Before I have that information, I'm hesitant to make a claim that cards are a system that don't add enough rDPS. My non-knowledge is inferior to the insider-knowledge the development team had while tweaking the numbers. I'm personally just currently not equipped with enough information to decide if I need to go grab a pitch-fork.

i didn't, this is true, i read the forums while doing other stuff and type up a few sentences while tabbing in and out of other things, so i skimmed the rest of your posts, and didn't bother, because i failed to see anything related to the actual mechanics of the card system, just numbers, especially since you had already stated that you enjoyed the card mechanic itself, which is baffling, and did in fact skew my thought process afterwards

"just numbers" are not the only problem

this is a LOT of buttons dedicated to increasing outgoing rDPS

before, the card buttons had different meanings, even if you ignore "muh nostalgia" on the mp refresh/damage resist
(because yes, i agree that bole/ewer/arrow/spear weren't the best way to go with the class, as mp/damage resist shouldn't be things you want to have randomly come into your kit at completely sporadic times, maybe only mp, but even then it's "meh" overall, and the dps cards don't actually change that they're just dps cards)

lord/lady were a damage or a heal option, which is already 2 buttons (arcana and play, at least, current play, it "was" 1 button before, which makes the current concept even worse, since that was still 1 button for 2 options, where now it's 2 buttons for 1 option) dedicated to two separate roles
even if they were bad to waste cards on, the concept is what's to strive for

royal road gave us an aoe option, a burst option, or a sustained option, giving 1 button 3 different meanings
(which, yes, can be seen as the problem, as you'd only ever want to AoE the damage cards, anyway)

but the concept of giving 3 options on 1 button is the part to focus on; rather than having 7 buttons for 1 concept

the current card mechanic is ALL entirely based around increasing someone's damage, and your only "optional" idea would be "is there a melee or ranged in my group" (which is completely asinine as a concept in the first place, for various reasons)

now we sit there and spam lord/lady, not to mention..... this makes even less sense thematically, because they are the "Minor Arcana" of the deck...

(cont...)

(...cont)

the problem is, even if you reduce the cooldown and boost the strength of Divination, it's still an absolute eyesore to look at on paper and in game;

why do we have to dance around all these mechanics on 7 buttons for what other classes have on one button, when they're already in the process of homogenizing everything in the first place?

they could give us the exact same kit, and boost all the numbers into absolutely broken levels making AST a must-pick, and it still would be, in concept, fundamentally flawed


Sleeve Draw is another good example
this has the same issue SMN is dealing with
what's with the whole "trying to cram all these oGCD skills in here" that makes the sluggish combat system even more clunky?
if you aren't utilizing things on the beat, your efficiency plummets, and this game can't handle the way this works, leading to a lot of wasted cooldown timers or GCD uses, making the "already poor" damage bonus, even worse

Change Divination to apply Haste and not +dmg, I mean Ast is the Time Mage of FFXIV.

Clickbait title is clickbait.

It infers that people who don't agree with you aren't "level-headed" and their scrutiny is less valid.

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Clickbait title is clickbait.

It infers that people who don't agree with you aren't "level-headed" and their scrutiny is less valid.

That's not clickbait, though. Clickbait would be stating something outrageous, or leaving a sentence unfinished... to, well, bait clicks.

Speaking of outrageous... It is maybe not the most diplomatic of titles, but let's face it, these forums have been very emotional lately.

Originally Posted by LeftHandedLion

I'm unsure if you read this part of my post, but I call out the numbers stuff specifically. I do ask for increasing the contribution to rDPS since personal DPS is very low. I haven't attempted to do the math but would love to read the findings of those that have (if anyone has). Before I have that information, I'm hesitant to make a claim that cards are a system that don't add enough rDPS. My non-knowledge is inferior to the insider-knowledge the development team had while tweaking the numbers. I'm personally just currently not equipped with enough information to decide if I need to go grab a pitch-fork.

—————
Divination.
It feels very underwhelming in its current form. Much too long a cool down, and for very little benefit.

When I try to rationalize why it was designed the way it was, I find my best theory to be related to how all existing jobs’ raid support/utility was curbed in order to make room for Dancer. I don’t doubt that math was done to ensure that the DPS gain from Arcana and Divination put AST’s overall DPS contribution (personal + cards) at a comparable level to that of WHM and SCH (though perceptively it still feels lower) but I can’t shake the feeling that Divination just feels like a poorly thrown bone.

I’m hoping that numbers are coming back to the dev team to show that AST could use a helping hand in the rDPS department. If that’s the finding, I would very much prefer the buff to come in the form of making Divination better. I would suggest:
- Reduce the cool down to 150 seconds (currently 180).
- Increase the 3 Seal Type DPS boost to 8% (currently 6%).
- Reduce Sleeve Draw cool down to 150 seconds (currently 180).
With this arrangement, AST should still get to use Minor Arcana four times between each Divination, keeping it useful. I don't think the individual cards themselves need any buff to the DPS increase since the AST is drawing one every thirty seconds.
—————

With Divination, I think it should be brought down to 120s instead of an awkward 150s. 150s lines up with literally nothing in terms of raid buffs, which would hurt the impact of the skill further since you could never stack it with anything outside of the opener (and it probably also would not line up well with a lot jobs’ personal burst windows):

Trick Attack—60s
Brotherhood—90s
Chain Stratagem—120s
Technical Finish—120s
Embolden—120s
Battle Voice—180s
Battle Litany—180s
Devotion—180s

At least with Brotherhood’s 90s timer, it still lines up with the 180s buffs with every other usage. It also lines up well enough with the burst windows of a WAR. 150s would line up in the opener, and then wouldn’t line up again with any other raid buffs throughout a normal encounter*.
Normal encounters can be as short as 6 minutes and 30 seconds or as long as 11 minutes in terms of kill times—150s would line up again with other raid buffs at the 15 minute mark. Currently, there are only two fights that can reach that timer: UwU and UCoB (and the former can be killed faster than 15 minutes).

That said, I don’t know how well just buffs to rDPS will do, because AST would have to compete with WHMs, who are doing monstrous amount of personal damage right now. And AST is fairly far behind them even when you consider the current rDPS gains from near perfect card usage.


For me, I’m just old-fashioned I guess. I prefer the older system because the utility variety is what attracted me to the job. And, despite being a DNC main now, I dislike the idea of single-target cards; but, I’m also biased because I raided with an AST who insisted on padding one member of the static I was with at the time with every Balance she drew. Even at the cost of proper Lucid Dreaming + old COpp management.