Petition: Revert AST card changes

[KanameYuuki]

While it certainly works better and is much more predictable for raiding and such it sure is boring as hell to use now. Bored me to the point I don't feel like playing AST much nowadays.

At this point I don't get why we even have cards at all. Might as well cut the fat, remove all the abilities tied to them and just give us a straight up DPS boost ability with a card animation. Not like there's anything special to the cards or any decision making that we didn't have before. It's just busybody work now.

That's the point of AST change and specially this expansion, it is all about raiding as its main standpoint and focus, just look at so many stupidly annoying "can only be used in combat" skills, a pain in the ass for normal content, but this was all for raids. Most of the positive comments will always mention more consistency for raids, and from a personal experience the AST I've encountered and asked about the changes, they all mention they do casual content and hate the hell out of the new cards.

The funniest part from all of this? Healers are balanced, healers are fine for raiding yet AST raid numbers are abysmal, and which classes used to have the same problem? Good numbers yet low player count? MNK and MCH, because they were not fun to play.

For those of us who do main them, (I main AST) we understand the underlying reasoning and new rotation changes since we adapt to them more heavily than casual players.

We AST mains who have played more than 2k hours on the job understood how each card had a place and use (because more content outside of savage raids exist), and "useless" cards were necessary for whole the system itself, we understand the underlying reason that this change is nothing more but to cater to the hardcore raiding scene and especially the WoW refugees.


Unfortunately this system is here to stay at least until 6.0 when they ruin healers further and release the 4th healer just as yet another re skin of WHM. Is this new card system the worst creation on human history? not at all I'm happy a lot of you like it, heck I know I can have a decent time with it after 5.05, but it could have been for the 4th healer, I just find this a slap in the face the reasons behind it for all of us who used to enjoy the old system.

[Aeducan]

We AST mains who have played more than 2k hours on the job understood how each card had a place and use (because more content outside of savage raids exist), and "useless" cards were necessary for whole the system itself

I cannot stress this point enough. Balance fishing was a thing because of the 20% damage iteration it had at one point; it was just too good and outweighed the other cards. Cardplay became a lot better after the Spear change (along with Balance nerf) and I never hesitated to burn Balance if it wasn't the card I was looking for at a given time. Personally I found all cards useful, timing and order of acquisition were more important to me than what the actual cards I was getting. Not everything has to directly influence damage; if my card eased my teammate's rotation (AHEM, 150% Arrow on BLM), then it was worth it.

This "Balance or bust" mentality is the reason why we have this new system now and I find it very unfortunate. It feels very pretentious and lacklustre; damage buff ability on 30s cd would've achieved the same thing.

[alimdia]

I don't know how anyone can look at this and say "AST is fine"

All raids



Titan



It's anything but.

They fixed a lot of healing issues and AST is able to clear content, but most people no longer find it fun, the changes just aren't good for most people, and the change to cards is the worst of them.

[Hatstand]

The new card system is fine in itself (could use some QoL improvements, though), but it’s not a good replacement for the old card system. The old card system encouraged a play style where you had to adapt to what you drew to get the most out of your kit. It was a bit unreliable, but that could have been mitigated by a) adding new tools for burning cards you don’t want in a way that’s useful (like the new minor arcana system, for example) and b) adding tools for getting the card you want reliably (my personal suggestion is a cooldown which changes your basic moves into card icons a la dancer to allow you to draw the card of your choice), and c) bag randomisation, which means that each card you draw is removed from the set of cards to be drawn from until all 6 have been drawn. This means you’ll get exactly one balance every 3 minutes, and exactly one spire, etc.

The new system (with a non-card flavour) should have been the basis for a new healer class. That way people who don’t like the rng can go without it and people who do can keep it.

[NorthernLadMSP]

I prefer the new system. Sorry, not signing this petition.

[MPNZ]

The old system was way better, and bole was really useful during progression because it gave me time to think and breath, apply dots, apply regen, dps, benefic I, et cetera at a more comfortable pace than what is basically now multiple stone vigil clones because tank have zero difficulties controlling aggro which has made wall to wall pulls worse.

Raise a party member = tank dies
Use sleeve draw = tank dies
Cast benefic I = tank dies
Heal another party member = tank dies
a Tank actually walks out of an AOE = rare

Bole actually changed the whole flow of combat. The current system is just not designed for most of the content in the game, and is basically designed for eight+ player instances as a dedicated co-healer (raids, trials, extremes, savage). It's feels so miserable to play this class without it's entire kit atm because some of it's more essential abilities are locked into the higher levels