Goodbye Astro

[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.

[Kabooa]

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?

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

[tikiwiki]

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

and in prog or in bad runs i could fish for other things like ewers or boles plus it was a fun system even if most of my results were aoe damage

[TankHunter678]

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

I fished for balance like I fished for bole, ewer, spear, and arrow... because every situation had a card that was good for it. Even back when Spear gave cooldown reduction.

[Seoulstar]

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

Most of us didn't fish for balance. Its getting really annoying having to repeat that for the 9000th time.

[ReiMakoto]

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

You fished for a royal roaded buff every min, if that happened to be aoe balance then even better, just because balance was the "best" card doesnt make the other cards worthless crap if you threw one of them out instead, giving crit would make your brd or mnk love you, same with sam and blm with arrow

[nalol]

No, you turned into balance fishers because every other card was worse than it.

This isn't a hard concept.

u could still make use of others. Crit onks or bards, arrow to blm .. ewer could be usefull on yourself or RR .. same for spear ... bole had it use ... but was it really a bad thing that some cards were better than others ? when u could still RR or change it to lady/lord ?

plus the satisfaction when u had a balance on the group. now u don't get the satisfation .. even getting 3 different seals for divination doesn't feel as satisfying.

I don't say the card system didn't need some changes ... but I prefered old system to new one.


also the AST feels way to busy compared to H and ASt .. so maybe would have been a better idea to add a tiny bit more complexity to those classes also while toning a bit down (compared to now) the AST complexity ... or busyness ... of the class

[Nimloth]

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?

When I mentioned optimization it was in the sense of clipping GCDs, the goal in a raid environment is to get out as many GCDs out as possible. You mention that you couldn't optimize the old system due to RNG and that you had to learn how to deal with the cards you were given, that is a skill ceiling; It's similar to how a DPS who do not properly learn their rotation will deal less damage. So yes, you had to deal with what you were given to be a good AST, that was part of learning the class. There was always the option to play other healers if the card system was too difficult for someone.

As for your argument about why people took up Dancer, I don't know the answer and you don't either. This is a bad faith argument because people can take-up classes for a multitude of various reasons and discussing Dancer isn't really part of this thread. Also, its RNG elements are entirely different from AST and it's not a healer.

That being said, the old system had flaws, I'm not going to deny that. However, the development team made the decision to throw the baby out with the bathwater and now we have a worse system in place. The current system requires you to still fish for cards, albeit you are fishing for a seal. SE saw that fishing was going to be a problem and gave us three re-draws to deal with it, but in doing so made it where we spend more oGCDs fishing for a seal in an expansion where they gave us even more oGCD heals. In addition, manually targeting people every single time for every single card is exhausting in a raid environment. Next, the re-design of Sleeve Draw is terrible since you still have to resolve three oGCDs at a minimum before draw comes off cooldown. This is compounded by the fact that you are single targeting every person for each card that is produced by Sleeve Draw. AST is no longer a difficult class to play because of its skill ceiling, it's a difficult class to play because it's mechanically difficult to work with due to poor design.