The Great Astrologian Divide

[Halik]

So, I would like to go over my thoughts on the 5.05 patch changes first, but you can skip to the large letters in the next post to get to what I'd like to discuss.

The Sleeve Draw is the big change. I actually enjoyed playing Astrologian more when I was synced below the level of Sleeve Draw because of how horrendous it felt to use. It definitely feels good now without losing the functionality. I also personally like how it doesn't just line up with Divination now so you don't just trivialize the seals every time.

Divination being only 2 minutes also helps a lot with having us actually engage with the seal system instead of literally getting all of our seals in the first 15 seconds (with Sleeve Draw) and then sitting around for 3 minutes turning every card into a Crown, because having to use an extra oGCD for every card draw because the seal system doesn't matter 80% of the time was fun. :|

Reducing the cast time on everything to give us time to draw and play all of the cards during every GCD without losing cast time is very nice as well, even more than I thought it would be before I could try it.

Celestial Opposition was the last ability that, every time I used it, made me wonder why I even bothered using it. I ended up pretty much ignoring it. Actually feels good to use now.

But... Potency and performance were never really that big of a deal for me as a healer if I'm being perfectly honest. As long as I could still do it, I wasn't very worried and even liked the challenge and potency is the easier thing for them to change. As long as Astrologian can preform well enough to function, I'm cool with being an underdog.

The cards are ultimately what drew me to the class and how they function is the make or break for enjoyment. To be clear, from a mechanical standpoint, I actually like the new card system.

The other change to Divination is the epitome of why their new card direction bothers me, and where this divide in Astrologians is coming from:

"Damage increase effect changed from 2%/4%/6% to 4%/5%/6%."

Because Divination is only a 2 minute CD now instead of 3 minutes, it means you have less time to get the seals, especially when Sleeve Draw no longer lines up perfectly with it CD-wise.

I don't think it's too hard to infer with this change, along with why they changed all cards to just give the same damage buff, that they are very afraid of letting the Astrologian have any kind of bad card RNG. If you can't draw bad cards, why even have cards? Why not just have abilities to use for buffs? Heck, if I completely ignore the seals I draw and just spam cards out, I lose at max, 2% damage to the raid during the 15 second buff. Although if you look at the odds you're actually more likely to only lose 1% from spamming cards randomly.

1% for 15 seconds. :( I'm not saying it doesn't add up, but am I really suppose to feel good about spending the energy on getting those seals when that's the reward?

[Halik]

At the end of the day, it feels like the cards have become a busy-work chore instead of something I look forward to. It sucks because, from a purely mechanical perspective, the changes to Sleeve Draw definitely make this new card system more engaging and enjoyable than the old AoE buff spam for raids. The cards themselves are now boring though, and I can't find any way to look forward to drawing any of them so no amount of cool mechanical gameplay will let me care about them when compared to the old cards.

At its core, there's a divide between Astrologians that enjoy the RNG nature of the old individual card buffs versus the non-RNG nature of the current homogenized cards. This is the main concern I would like Square to fix in the future.

Personally feel like the easiest "fix" is to simply add utility buffs on top of the current card system from mitigation, movement speed, mana regen, Anti-knockback, or healing increased and such; non-damage stuff. You could even expand this by allowing cards to buff divination in some fashion to give an AoE version of the utility for cool big moments.

This way, it doesn't affect those that like the current system revolved around managing the damage cards while giving the previous folk a reason to care about the flavor/character and RNG nature of the cards.

If they refuse to add something unique to each card, at the very least they should clean up the gauge UI because at the moment the card symbols are legitimately confusing for new Astrologians and would be a lot cleaner like this:



No multi-color symbols, or having the least useful icon be the largest in the middle.

I feel like there is a solution that can make both camps happy, but to me, this is where most of the Astrologian controversy comes from.

Any suggestions/thoughts about this?

[finnegandadaeon]

Why I don’t like ast right now? It got reworked even if no one asked for this, however, the actual card system gets in conflict with the healing role:
Whm-heals and gains damage by it
Sch-heals, charge its tools and gains time to dps
Ast- nothing, cards right now takes most of your time, especially when u got to redraw while keeping your dps, while keeping and eye on the party
Why?
Cause all of that single buff cards and seals,
4.0 ast was more about trying to spread the buff as possibile, 2 moves max 3 moves and u could keep easily your eye on your party and your dps. Considering that right know ast is basically week in terms of rdps and personal dps, now more than ever you can’t just relax even for a single moment, if u wanna play it at its maximum, but even if u ll do it, even if u coordinate all the buff with your static, even if u put your best to alternate draw/redraw/minor arcana with malefic to not lose dps, your contribution will not even reach the closest of white mage who will simply outclass you with minimum effort.

[finnegandadaeon]

Wanna save ast?
-Let draw outmatically work placing the relatively card in your play spot once its timer refresh (the passage from draw and play let u loose a lot of time and dps)
-buff the duration and the percentage of the card buff maybe giving them 3% of speed/crit/direct to differentiate
-let minor arcana be a big buff
-divination must be buffed to 8% -5%-4%, buff also its duration to almost 30 secs
Stances must be revisited, right now are the cause of the continuously imbalance between healing jobs, their design is awful, until they wont get reworked one heal combination will be forced out of the meta

[finnegandadaeon]

Let malefic be instant and buff the dot duration to 60 sec so u won’t lose too much time between redraw and dps

[SakiKojiro]

In my mind when I saw all of these number changes, the devs insulted the players of this job.

The majority of us seem to hate this new system, as seen by polls. Primarily because it lacks flavor and depth, not because it's difficult. The flow itself actually feels fairly good, there's just no flavor to it.


So then they hit us with this change, which in my mind, is entirely "Oh, they hate it because it's too hard now. Let's dumb everything down even more!". I can understand some of the potency buffs because AST was strugging too much with healing, but the way they went about reducing the shielding features and replaced it with raw potency, and then made getting the right draws for arcana matter less is just...a slap in the face. They just reduced the skill ceiling AGAIN.

Last expansion was all about "Increasing the gap between good and great players, and lowering the gap between bad and good players." This expansion seems to be "lol just kidding, let's reduce everyone down to the bad players now."

[Brarry]

What's so good about ast now? Not the unique time extenders? The unique cards system? The 2 sects? Unique heals? Engaging downtime dps? Collective unconscious? More like the Devs collective unconscious destroyed this class.

Nope none of those just the special effects and boring buff slave and cheap copies of sch whm heals. What Astrologian? There's only 2 healers

[LariaKirin]

What's so good about ast now? Not the unique time extenders? The unique cards system? The 2 sects? Unique heals? Engaging downtime dps? Collective unconscious? More like the Devs collective unconscious destroyed this class.

Nope none of those just the special effects and boring buff slave and cheap copies of sch whm heals. What Astrologian? There's only 2 healers

Buff Malefic III to 300+ potency and there will still be "two healers". Except, they will be WHM and AST. What would that change? Nothing.

When you learn that the so-called meta is based on pure raw DPS potential in high-end gameplay, you'll notice that SCH has nothing special. The reason SCH has always been meta is because it has never been the bottom DPS of healers.

And finally, when you learn that what makes two healers meta and the third one "garbage" is a difference of 500 DPS, you'll realise that there are actually 3 healers, all of whom can do the job.

[Almostward]

What's so good about ast now? Not the unique time extenders? The unique cards system? The 2 sects? Unique heals? Engaging downtime dps? Collective unconscious? More like the Devs collective unconscious destroyed this class.

Nope none of those just the special effects and boring buff slave and cheap copies of sch whm heals. What Astrologian? There's only 2 healers

I agree. Everything that made Astro unique was taken away. The old card system was in depth and more complex than this simple.....balance bot. Last version had buffs for any situation. We even lost our time Mage spells and got nothing good this expansion to replace them, and all the new moves are meh or underpowered.

Whm is in a good spot and Sch is probaly going up in the world with their energy drain back

[Brightamethyst]

At the end of the day, it feels like the cards have become a busy-work chore instead of something I look forward to. It sucks because, from a purely mechanical perspective, the changes to Sleeve Draw definitely make this new card system more engaging and enjoyable than the old AoE buff spam for raids. The cards themselves are now boring though, and I can't find any way to look forward to drawing any of them so no amount of cool mechanical gameplay will let me care about them when compared to the old cards.

That's how I feel about it too. I don't hate the new system, but I don't like it either. It's boring and uninteresting. Drawing a card is now something I have to do, rather than something I want to do.