They should just delete AST

[Sanghelios]

As a former AST main ive cleared E1S about 3 hours after patch went up as WHM. I always had instant aoe heals up for days, never even slightly dry on mana. It was just a good time. Later today ive done some attempts on E1S with my alts AST and oh boy the difference is just insane. Am not gonna lie, in comparison to my WHM clear, the AST attempts felt absolutely messy, clunky, tryhard and nowhere near efficient or good.

[Selova]

snip.

I find it mildly amusing that people keep trying to blame a specific kind of player being the reason for the AST changes, rather than just accepting that it was obviously the devs vision for the job.


The only thing that has become evident in this thread is people not understanding basic math by calling the buffs to AST nerfs and wanting the devs to give you diversity for the sake of diversity.


You can blame whatever outlier for the AST changes all you want, but one thing is for certain: Thank the twelve they dont listen to the types of players in this forum. I cannot even fathom how much more of a mess AST would be in if they did.

[Rhyn]

For all the guys with tunnel vision concerning the state of nocturnal sect...yes they doubled the potency when they halved the shield, but that only means noct is at the same level it was at the start of 5.0 shieldwise. And I seem to remember this forum exploding because AST was complete trash then. Diurnal received a far greater gain, while it was already stronger.

On the topic of the thread, I didn't main healer before, but enjoyed playing AST in SB dungeons. Now that they removed time dilation and the stun + extend from CO, as well as the homogenization of the cards, it is completely uninteresting to play. The second I saw this patch being basically only healing potency changes, I knew AST was dead to me.

[Mortex]

Yesterday prog whas a farce for us. Just because even with buffs our Astro didn’t even come close to the dmg a whm could do. Astro ist just bad plain and simple. It got better but it’s still a massive pain. And to do whm dmg as Astro you are forced to play at 110 % . We’re white mages just has 2 buttons for dps.

[Mortex]

I still fail to see how this is any different to hoping you don't draw another Spire/Ewer/Bole when you've already RR'd one, or vice versa.
Difference is that now you can Minor Arcana for version that's still useful to you.

It's all just flavour.

The difference is the massive effort now. I can give you 2 examples 1: you have 2 seals and need 1 specific and you have 3 redraw, if luck really hates you, you are forced to reroll 3 times and still end one the same seal and I had that sometimes already as astro when I did dungeons and ex fights and to effectively keep ur dps you are forced to weave in Malefic in between every ogcd action you do, in some situations were you need to heal it gets even worse. Back in sb you could use bad cards to enhance the other cards freely. Now you are forced to do 3 actions in a row if you have 3 seals or even more when you miss a seal and have redraw 3 times. So too keep up with whm dps you are forced to draw/malefic/Small Arcana/malefic/ play/malefic and that’s the rotation you are using the most and I gets worse when you fish for a specific seal. And the 2 thing I utterly hate is when you can’t get 3 different seals in 2 mins just because rng gives you the same seal 4 times in a row. Now it’s just 1 % dmg what still sucks bad, in a world we’re whm just dps you out of the water.

[Seraphor]

The difference is the massive effort now. I can give you 2 examples 1: you have 2 seals and need 1 specific and you have 3 redraw.

so a 1/3 chance?

How about this:
You've RR'd a Spire for an Expanded card. You now need to draw either a Balance or a Spear for an effective AoE buff.
That's a 1/3 chance...

[Brarry]

AST still not fun to play. Might as well delete. Since they are catering the changes to the minority thats just a waste of resources to focus their development on the min maxers perspective. When casual players have moved to something not min max or parser oriented. What's the point of developing a class that only elitists play. Seems hypocritical if they are trying to attract the casual crowd.

[Mortex]

You forget arrow and even then when the card whas not that good you had the option with one more button press to convert it into a king or queen so you were more flexible. Heck even a aoe bole wasn’t that bad in specific situations.

[Seraphor]

You forget arrow and even then when the card whas not that good you had the option with one more button press to convert it into a king or queen so you were more flexible. Heck even a aoe bole wasn’t that bad in specific situations.

Arrow is detrimental to some jobs, such as Ninja and Monk, and barely a bonus to some others. You definitely should not have been Expanding it unless you didn't have an Ninja or a Monk, and even then it wouldn't be nearly as good as a Spear or Balance.

For example, the difference between expanding a Balance, Spear or Arrow was about the same difference in outcome as Divination at 6%, 4% or 2%.

If you need an AoE Bole, you're not playing healer very well. You can't rely on RNG for essential mitigation skills.
This is why AST was a balancing nightmare, it had RNG dps and RNG healer skills, which you can’t balance against the other healers.