Goodbye Astro

[Mesarthim]

You must be new to the internet. You don't partake in a public discussion forum, say you're done, then backpedal and continue to argue your semantics.

You didn't even respond with anything relevant. You just project your view onto someone else and tell them what they think they should be doing.

[Brandedblade]

I will continue to defend the new card system because 5.05 is the first time I've ever considered playing AST as anything other than a break from SCH.

Don't pretend like there's some kind of unanimity. I'm not the only one who prefers the new card system. Excessive RNG is bad for you.

I literally had a member of my static message me this morning saying he enjoys having me on my ast lol. I'm in the same camp, now that they fixed AST's ogcd healing and made Divination line up better with raid cooldowns, I'm actually heavily debating maining it over scholar. Heck the Gravity change makes dungeons so much more fun to play.

[xxvaynxx]

The card system isn't going to change honestly.
I personally like it. I like having every card be useful.
That being said I still feel for all of you that liked the old system.
My job samurai changed a bit as well and I prefer 4.x samurai. But it's not coming back.
I think everyone here just needs to accept the new card system if they wish to stay astro because honestly, the old one is not coming back seeing how we have the seal system and that new skill that makes aoe balance.
They'll have to rework astro which ain't happening until 6.0.

[KanameYuuki]

The card system isn't going to change honestly.
I personally like it. I like having every card be useful.
That being said I still feel for all of you that liked the old system.
My job samurai changed a bit as well and I prefer 4.x samurai. But it's not coming back.
I think everyone here just needs to accept the new card system if they wish to stay astro because honestly, the old one is not coming back seeing how we have the seal system and that new skill that makes aoe balance.
They'll have to rework astro which ain't happening until 6.0.

I really hate this situation because certainly people love the new system just as the old one and it is a good one (far for perfect ofc) , shame we don't live on a perfect word when this could have been the 4th healers or heck Noct AST or something.

But yeah, the core card system is here to stay at least until the next expansion.

[Brandedblade]

Having 7 abilities for an effect that other classes have with 1 ability is crap, especially if you pay for it with less healing options than the other two classes. Explain to me how that design will hold up in the future, if they we take their stated goal of "healers healing & every healer combo should be able to do the content" seriously. Either SCH & WHM excess abilities will turn out to be superflous and groups will want the % scaling Divination buff maybe even 2x, or AST will be gimped in the healing department and be dropped.

Its healing isnt gimped though, they buffed the heck out of it in the last patch. And yes I get it WHM and other classes do more for less. But the cards are fun and unlike whm, ast has nigh unlimited weaving space to take advantage of it. Number wise AST does its job, it's the gameplay loop that is the issue, and unfortunately how gameplay feels is subjective.


For example, SB MCH was very ping reliant and punishing , but there where still people who loved playing it. SB Ast might've had a more interesting card system, but I'm also fond of the system of being able to build up to a divination, especially when I run with my friends and we can coordinate our buffs together. Maybe in an ideal world we can have both? But the way it is now, I'm finally interested in maining another healer besides scholar.

[NorthernLadMSP]

I like AST as it is right now. It's pretty perfect now IMO other than maybe one or two very minor things. I'd like the stun back on Celestial and I'd like a 500 MP regain on something, maybe Lightspeed.

If they over buff it again like they've done in the past, I'll lose interest.

[Nimloth]

I tried to play AST in savage content and I've managed to clear E2S, currently working on Levi prog at the moment. I have to say the new card system is just bad, it's really a clunky mess to use. After a while, I began to realize that it's incredibly difficult to weave cards in between GCDs, this is partially due to having to constantly select who to give the card to, something that wasn't as much of a problem in SB. This is compounded by the fact that fishing for a seal can be a huge pain in the butt. In the worst-case scenario when fishing for a seal you end up drawing a card, re-drawing 3 times, using minor arcana to burn the card, and throwing it out to a DPS; That's 6 oGCDs which doesn't even amount to a seal. For simplicities sake, say that an average GCD is 2.5s, that means that you spend 15 seconds just trying to get a card out, assuming you don't use lightspeed. Then you have Sleeve Draw on top of that, which fills up at the very least 4 oGCDS and at the worst 7 oGCDs. I realize that these represent the worst-case scenario, but no class, particularly a healing class that relies on oGCDs to heal, should have to spend 15 seconds to get a buff out.

Overall, ASTs are functionally viable on paper, logs have shown us that the rDPS is slightly below an SCH, but they have an overall higher healing output than WHM and SCH. However, it functionally has a lot of problems with its core mechanic and it's MP management. The MP management is somewhat easy to resolve for SE, since they could easily attach it onto an existing skill. However, the card system is just a mess and needs a rework, it's difficult to achieve proper optimization with the class due to the way the card mechanic functions. That being said my complaint in this post doesn't even address some of the problems I and other people have with the cards which lie in its simplistic nature.

I plan on switching to SCH next week, it's no longer worth the headache to deal with cards and somehow get my oGCDs out. I really don't understand how anyone could like the current system, particularly based on how clunky the card system is, but this thread has shown that some people like it for some reason. I'm really disappointed with SE, AST use to be one of my favorite classes to use, but I can't play it in its current state.

[Almostward]

I started leveling Sch. Already had it at level 70 so not much work to bring it up. Its level 74 and not sure why, but I hate how Selene and Eos are the same. What's the use of even having 2 faries anymore? Also, kinda messes up even more lore on healers cause I'm pretty sure Selene had her own.

[Boomsmash]

However, the card system is just a mess and needs a rework, it's difficult to achieve proper optimization with the class due to the way the card mechanic functions. That being said my complaint in this post doesn't even address some of the problems I and other people have with the cards which lie in its simplistic nature.

I plan on switching to SCH next week, it's no longer worth the headache to deal with cards and somehow get my oGCDs out. I really don't understand how anyone could like the current system, particularly based on how clunky the card system is, but this thread has shown that some people like it for some reason. I'm really disappointed with SE, AST use to be one of my favorite classes to use, but I can't play it in its current state.

I do wonder if a lot of what we liked about the old card system was the fact that the RNG meant you couldn't optimize it. You had to improvise, and surf it, and lots of folks couldn't deal with that and turned into Balance fishers.

RNG bad, RNG horrible! How come so many people took up Dancer, then? It got MCH's proc RNG, and with nothing to help buffer the chances. Is it because they're able to go with the flow?

[TankHunter678]

I do wonder if a lot of what we liked about the old card system was the fact that the RNG meant you couldn't optimize it. You had to improvise, and surf it, and lots of folks couldn't deal with that and turned into Balance fishers.

RNG bad, RNG horrible! How come so many people took up Dancer, then? It got MCH's proc RNG, and with nothing to help buffer the chances. Is it because they're able to go with the flow?

Yes and no. It depends on the inherent objective and if the RNG goes against it, as well as aesthetics.

On MCH the RNG was bad, because MCH ultimately pushes for optimization in its rotation. Which made it feel bad whenever the RNG simply refuses to work with you. You often felt like you had to force the RNG.

On Dancer the rotation RNG is fine because it feeds into the aesthetics of the class where each move flows into each other like a dance and what needs to be optimized are the dances which aside from RNG on the order of steps and what steps get selected is just a simple press this to complete then here is your huge damage spike reward and buffs thrown out. With Flourish to create moments of activity when the RNG was not going your way.

With the Old Card system unless you were pushing yourself for optimization the card system did not, you worked with what you got, worked around it, and tried to plan ahead. Getting a card not for the situation at hand was not a bad thing, you had options to make use of even "bad" cards.

With the New Card system everything in it pushes for optimization. You have to pull the right cards for your party configuration. You have to get certain seals for Divination. You have to put out as many proper cards with sleeve draw during the divination window. Which makes the RNG frustrating and feel terrible whenever it does not give you what you want. It helps with making the cards feel useless when you get the wrong ones because there is no better option when you get the wrong ones, unlike with the Old Card system where you can turn an situationally bad card into a good effect.