AST Cards: Why they aren't fun and how they can be made better

[Fuura]

Hello, I played AST as my main job from patch 3.5, up until 5.0. I exclusively played it in progression throughout Deltascape, Sigmascape and Alphascape Savage and have tried AST in every Eden Savage fight. I believe the core design of AST has been removed and replaced by an awkward and clumsy feeling design which only superficially appears similar.


AST in Stormblood followed a flowchart of decisions to try to maximize the benefit from the cards given to you. Here are some examples.

If you drew an Ewer or Spire from an empty hand, you'd RR it. However if there was someone who has run out of MP, it could be ideal to give the ST Ewer to them if you had no other options, such as Refresh or Manashift.

If you drew an Ewer or Spire while holding an AOE RR, you’d Redraw it. However if someone has run out of MP, it might sometimes be ideal to remove the AOE RR effect and then give the ST Ewer to them if you had no other options, such as Refresh or Manashift.

If you drew a Balance, Arrow or Spear from an empty hand, it would be statistically in your favour to put Balance or Arrow into spread, however in some scenarios (Such as a speedkill) you may choose to redraw a Spear or Arrow in an attempt to try to beat the odds and get a slightly greater rDPS benefit out of a lucky redraw.

If you drew a Balance, Arrow or Spear while holding an AOE RR, it would be ideal to play it. It was not worth it to redraw any of them.

Bole was the only card which was typically an automatic redraw, however you could use it in niche scenarios to your benefit. While generally an rDPS gain is the most important thing, if you were nearing the end of a fight and were on track to beat the enrage timer, it would be safe to play Bole on the MT to act as a 30 second Rampart.

An AOE Bole could also be safe to use if there was incoming AOE damage which might require mitigation. If another player were to forget to use their mitigation, it could save the party. So while playing Bole was not generally ideal, it was still the safest option sometimes, which is valuable in a way which is difficult to quantify.

This is just the surface of the mechanic, as there is an additional level of decisions to be made when you Redraw into a card with other RR effects and Spread cards already held.

This entire gameplay mechanic has been removed. It was certainly the defining characteristic of the job prior to Shadowbringers, but it no longer exists and instead has been replaced by a mechanic which superficially appears similar but functions entirely differently.



AST in Shadowbringers follows a much simpler, and entirely different flowchart which feels less like mastering RNG, but rather more like clumsily matching shapes.

If you draw a Balance, Arrow or Spear while not having any seals, you give it to your best melee DPS.

If you draw a Bole, Ewer or Spire while not having any seals, you give it to your best ranged DPS.

If you already have the seal for the card you’ve drawn, you redraw until you get a different seal and follow the same path I just described. If you have run out of Redraw charges, you MA it and give it to the best DPS for that cards role.

To optimize the rDPS gain from your cards, you can redraw a card which would grant you a seal you don’t already have in an attempt to get a card for a different role which is doing more DPS. For example, if your party has a MNK, NIN, RDM, DNC, you may wish to Redraw an Ewer for an Arrow or another melee card to give to the MNK.

The problem with Redraw is that it only grants you a different card, it does not always grant you a different seal. This means that you can get Redraw loops where you Draw Spire, Redraw Spear, Redraw Spire, Redraw Spear, convert to MA, use MA. That’s 6 oGCDs (15 seconds if you are properly weaving the cards between GCDs) spent resolving one Draw for a “bad” result you didn’t want. In Stormblood the worst result would be Draw, Redraw, convert to MA, use MA. Which is 33% less time spent resolving cards for a “bad” result.

There are further issues with AST cards in Shadowbringers which are most annoying during your opener and Sleeve Draw. Ideally you should be using Divination within ~10 seconds of the fight starting. This is to line Divination up with other raid buffs to increase the multiplicative gain you receive from damage buffs. This means that you want to use Sleeve Draw, Play three cards with as many different seals as you can manage on different DPS within ~10 seconds.

This means that the opener plays something like this if you are lucky enough to only need one redraw at the end. The opener will feel more annoying when you have to redraw more cards while racing to get Divination off at the right time. Every additional redraw will push Divination back.

Draw a MA card prepull
-1.5s Malefic
0s *Boss is pulled*
Weave Lightspeed

1s Combust
*Target DPS*
Weave Play
*Target boss*
Weave Sleeve Draw

3.5s Malefic
*Target DPS*
Weave Play
*Target other DPS*
Weave Play
*Target boss*

6s Malefic
Weave Redraw
*Target DPS*
Weave Play
*Target boss*

8.5s Malefic
Weave Divination at 9.5 seconds into the fight.

Note that “Weave” here means you are using these oGCD abilities in between your GCD spells without delaying your next spell. If we’re expected to not cast any GCDs here, then why is Square Enix planning to address Ninja feedback where players are annoyed by getting their GCDs delayed, but not Astrologians? Furthermore, if we were expected to not cast GCDs during this opener, our rDPS would drop far below the other healers. It’s clear that we must weave our oGCD abilities between our GCDs spells in such a way that they do not delay the next spell.

What I’d like to emphasize about the opener is the frequent target switching and targeting of other players. In Stormblood AST would rarely target other players to buff them, with your AOE RR automatically giving the buff to everyone in the party. In Shadowbringers AST now has to target another player every 30s, and three times in quick succession every time Sleeve Draw is used. This significantly increases the amount of actions (Any click or button press) AST needs to do in their opener to be greater than what any other job in XIV has required, with the possible exception of current Ninja.

So what is the problem with targeting other players so frequently? Well besides the significant increase in the actions you need to do, it’s considerably slower for players who use a controller compared to players who use a mouse. It can also be incredibly annoying to switch back to the enemy target you want to hit by TAB targeting between all of the enemies on screen.

These are all reasons why players generally try to avoid targeting other players as frequently as possible. Every DRG I know has a macro to automatically target another player for Dragon Sight. Every PLD I know has some sort of macro which does the same with Cover.

I know it is possible to create a “mouse over” macro for Play to use with a mouse, but that doesn’t solve the issue for controller users and all macros will introduce some delay to the action and can sometimes fail to work properly. I also don’t believe any job should require any form of macro to feel good to play, nor do I believe that a mouse over macro makes the job feel nearly as good as it did in Stormblood.

In all I believe the frequent targeting of other players and the very simplified decision making process when dealing with cards is the crux of why far fewer people like AST now, and it should only be solved by going back to how AST cards were in Stormblood with some changes.



Rebuttals:
Q1: Balance was the only useful card, no one used the others.

A1: This was kinda sorta true prior to patch 4.05. However at the very start of Deltascape, SE had reduced Balance to a 5% damage boost when AOE, which made it practically equal with Arrow. Additionally in patch 4.2 they finally increased the duration of Spear to 30s like the other cards, which was able to bring it up to the point of being a statistical gain to play with an AOE RR. This means that throughout all of Stormblood savage fights, it was ideal to spread Balance or Arrow. It was also ideal to play Balance, Arrow or Spear if you already held an AOE RR.


Q2: Why is this even a problem? AST is being played and can clear all content.

A2: AST is virtually tied with Ninja as the least played job in challenging battle content. There are websites which log which jobs are being used to clear battle content and AST is currently the least played of all jobs in three savage fights. Even in more accessible content such as Eden Normal, is AST among the least played jobs, despite being one of only three healer options available to players.

If the outcry from people who used to primarily play AST isn’t enough, then surely the amount of people playing it being less than what WHM was at it’s worst in 4.x, is certainly an issue.


Q3: I like AST now!

A3. I’m glad someone out there enjoys it, but I don’t think that should come at the cost of the enjoyment of people who played AST for the past four years. 5.05 AST is closer to what I feel a fourth healer should have been, rather than being a replacement for something that a greater number of people had enjoyed for years prior to now.



Response to Yoshida:

“We are truly sorry about the initial issues with the feel of the job. That said, card effects were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." It does indeed lower the feeling of "drawing a good card," but if we make certain cards significantly more powerful than others, then we'll just return to fishing for the good ones, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with this style for now.” -YoshidaP


The feedback these changes responded to were based on outdated or incorrect information. As I described above, there were no useless cards. Some were certainly better than others in some scenarios, but no card was universally better than another in all scenarios. This led to interesting gameplay which revolved around optimizing the cards, making you feel like you’ve mastered something.

If you wanted to remove the feeling of players getting useless cards, why was giving the player Redraw charges not enough? Why did you not buff Minor Arcana, so that even a bad result isn’t really that bad? I can’t help but feel like the feedback you have responded to did not represent the people who would ever enjoy AST, because it is now one of the least played jobs, despite being rather well liked before. Please change AST to be more similar to what it was before. I really enjoyed it.



Solutions:
What I’d like to see is a revert to the card system we had in patch 4.5x, with some changes which would address annoyances which did exist at the time.

Unlimited Draw/Redraw charges when out of combat. By far the worst thing about AST cards in Stormblood was waiting to get a Balance and AOE RR before pulling the boss. With unlimited Draw charges out of combat, you would easily be able to get your cards without waiting.

Redraw keeps three charges in combat. This will significantly reduce the chances of a poor result and give the player greater control to achieve what they want.

Spire would be made into a copy of Ewer. AST has the worst MP of the three healers, and it makes sense to give them something for emergencies, even if it’ll primarily be used to gain an AOE RR.

Minor Arcana could be turned into an ability which uses the drawn card to inflict damage on your target. What I mean is that using Minor Arcana with a card drawn, would remove the card and effectively cast the Stormblood Lord of Crowns on the enemy you have targeted with just one button press rather than two. This would smooth the flow of the class and remove the bad feeling of getting the weak Lady of Crowns heal.

Arrow and Spear could be made the same as Balance. Ultimately the difference in effect between those three cards did not change how AST felt to play. To an AST which knew the real value of every card, Arrow was nearly equal to Balance, and Spear was only a bit worse. Making these three cards have the same effect would not greatly alter how AST felt to play, but would relieve some complaints other players had with how it felt to receive them.

Bole is the only card I’m largely uncertain of, it was the closest to a “useless” card, but I think removing it would ruin the probability which determines how AST plays. I think it would be okay to keep Bole as-is because of Redraw charges and a Minor Arcana change allowing you to get a benefit out of your draw even if you don’t need the Bole at that moment.

And finally, a minor nerf to the potency of the damage increasing cards would likely be required. I would not like to see WHM fall to the wayside, so the potency of the cards must not push AST far above WHM, but it should be noted that if AST cannot do at least slightly more rDPS than WHM in an optimized group, than WHM will always be taken over an AST because of WHMs stronger heals and greater MP generation.


Terminology:
RR = Royal Road (Ability)
MA = Minor Arcana (Ability)
rDPS = Raid Damage Per Second. Total party damage.
AOE = Area of Effect. Something which affects everyone nearby.
ST = Single target. Something which affects one target or party member.
RNG = Random Number Generator. Something which is determined randomly by the game.
MT = Main tank. The person who has aggro/enmity of the boss.
GCD = Global Cool Down. An ability like Malefic or Combust.
oGCD = Off Global Cool Down. An ability like Draw or Essential Dignity.

[Semirhage]

I'd like to see the cards made fun again too. But absent other changes, this:

I would not like to see WHM fall to the wayside, so the potency of the cards must not push AST far above WHM, but it should be noted that if AST cannot do at least slightly more rDPS than WHM in an optimized group, than WHM will always be taken over an AST because of WHMs stronger heals and greater MP generation.

is the first ingredient in the tried-and-true recipe for benching WHM down the line.

[Hatstand]

Love your analysis. Couldn't agree more about the use of the cards.

I'd like to see the cards made fun again too. But absent other changes, this:

is the first ingredient in the tried-and-true recipe for benching WHM down the line.

I'm kinda sick of these arguments about which healer should do the most damage. Minmaxer speedrunners are always going to have preferred healers. One healer is always going to contribute less rDPS than the other two and if the content can be completed without them that healer will be left on the bench (by those specific teams). If it can't they will be always used alongside whichever of the other healers does the most rDPS. Yes, try to ensure that all 3 healers do as close to the same amount of rDPS as possible while still making them unique and fun to play, but we shouldn't be worried about who does slightly more than the others. I'm happy for WHM to have the highest rDPS (by a little) because it seems to be important to them. However, I think we should be focused on making sure all the healers are viable and fun.

[Acidblood]

I get that people are obsessed with rDPS in savage raids but that is far from the only content in the game; Bole was very useful for Dungeons, Maps, and even PotD (Tank taking 20% less damage = 20% more time for the healer to do other things).

[IanFrench]

Yoshida made RDM/dancer dps lower not only for their utility and but also for the simple playing style.

Then I look at WHM vs AST, and deeply confused...

AST right now is like MCH in 4.0, with all the efforts and trouble, you get very little reward out of it... AST's bundle of card utilities ain't even bring it rdps to what "glare" offers.

[Side-Eye]

Yoshida made RDM/dancer dps lower not only for their utility and but also for the simple playing style.

Then I look at WHM vs AST, and deeply confused...

AST right now is like MCH in 4.0, with all the efforts and trouble, you get very little reward out of it... AST's bundle of card utilities ain't even bring it rdps to what "glare" offers.

This. There is now an AWFUL lot of clicking and re-targeting for the minimal DPS benefit provided from the card system -- a card system which is now missing any extra utility that used to make it interesting and engaging.

I've seen a bunch of ideas on re-revamping cards, but based on what devs did with the cards in 5.0, I seriously doubt they're listening to the people actually playing heal jobs as main. Perhaps a non-healer would like to present those ideas to SE... you know, so they'll be read.

[xDaemianx]

Response to Yoshida:

“We are truly sorry about the initial issues with the feel of the job. That said, card effects were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." It does indeed lower the feeling of "drawing a good card," but if we make certain cards significantly more powerful than others, then we'll just return to fishing for the good ones, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with this style for now.” -YoshidaP

I'd like to see whether they checked how many of these players (AST, I assume) truly used the job at its fullest potential, not just for raiding content. I mean, did these players come to the content just becuase they knew AST had a card that could buff their party? If so, did they only think of "Balance"? As mentioned, cards like Arrow or Spear could buff your damage as well. And, yes, I know, balance is flat damage %, but arrow meant more SkSp/SpSp so you could use abilities faster = more damage; Spear being the least favourite as it did not mean that crit % ensured a critical hit.

So I see two possibilities, although there might be more, for this:

A- either they listened to players who complained about "useless cards" but were not ASTs, which means that they'd rather listen to a mob even if it means ruining the experience for people who enjoy playing AST, and forcing us ASTs to do their bidding just because they greed more DPS;

B- or they listened to ASTs who complained about "useless cards". But then again, did they somehow check these players played AST in other situations/content? Did they listen to ASTs or other players who did not only fish for balance? It's easy to complain and be listened if you gather the right amount of people who do what they do (fish for balance, think other cards are useless, talk to people and make them think that if they stick together and complain in a united front they'll get what they want).

On a side note, the RNG aspect seems gone with the new AST. Prior to its update, you didn't know the card-effect you were going to get and had to adapt. Now, it's simply a matter of selecting the right job for the right card. Don't like the seal? Redraw. Don't like it either? Redraw. No likey? Redraw! (Shocking). Still no? Major Arcana. What I mean is that whatever you do, it doesn't feel RNG, it feels feeding DMG and whatever you do, you'll end up with three seals. In the past, you had to work to get the best out of it.

[TankHunter678]

Bole is the only card I’m largely uncertain of, it was the closest to a “useless” card, but I think removing it would ruin the probability which determines how AST plays. I think it would be okay to keep Bole as-is because of Redraw charges and a Minor Arcana change allowing you to get a benefit out of your draw even if you don’t need the Bole at that moment.

Only in optimized 8 man group content where added mitigation will never be a factor because the healing math is already figured out is bole "useless". In all other content bole is highly useful. Be it in 4 man dungeon chain wall to wall pulls where throwing an extended Bole that was further time extended (giving an 85 sec duration rampart essentially) would greatly reduce healing requirements and in a good group actually allow for even larger pulls, or in 24 man raid scenarios where in AoE balance could help reduce the damage taken from the clusterfuck situations that can crop up of people dumping aoes on each other in an effort to get away from each other. It also helped in normal raids for similar reason to 24 man scenarios, or for when you got an undergeared tank who could use that extra bit to help get through the TB coming up.

As for your Minor Arcana idea... I would say make it so that if you are targeting an enemy it does that attack you mention, but if you are targeting an ally it does the heal instead. I actually liked getting a Lady of Crowns because it meant that when I ED I could follow up with that to top the target off if ED did not fill them up.

[Acidblood]

snip

I find it ironic that the excuse for the new card system is to avoid "useless" cards, and yet the whole system as it now stands could be deleted if the AST themselves simply had better DPS abilities :/

[Connor]

It’s funny that they made the changes to avoid useless cards, then every time I’m in a double melee/ranged I keep getting cards for opposite role. It’s not useless, but I mean, it doesn’t feel any better than drawing a Bole/Ewer/Spire with Expanded Royal Road already up