Goodbye Astro

[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.

[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

[LariaKirin]

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.

It is not gimped at all and you do not pay for it in healing options. AST's healing is very strong following the changes in patch 5.05. As I've said before, the healers are pretty well balanced right now and AST is just as strong as SCH/WHM. It will take a while for people to realize this, but it will happen.

We're overflowing with threads saying "Goodbye Astro", "AST is dead", etc... that discourage people for playing it. But soon enough some encouraging posts will surface. Such as the E4S noct AST solo heal.

As for doing more for the same effect ... Well ... Haven't people been complaining incessantly that there's nothing to do? You'd expect AST to be the darling of the community right now.