Petition: Revert AST card changes

[NorthernLadMSP]

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

[MomomiMomi]

This sums up your entire post.

It is easy to point, pick, and prod at classes that you don't main.

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.

Since you never main this class, why do you feel the right to request a change for it?

I mained it. I no longer do because I very much dislike how it is now.

This isn't about the lore, it's about the gameplay.

The lore falls under "theme," which is one of the major reasons why multiple jobs even exist. Theme is one of the big deciding factors to choose one job over another. It's an incredibly important part of game design. Taking a step back from jobs for a moment, you can look at it from the point of view of two different games. One has pirates and the other has ninjas. They could both be mechanically the same game, but they will both appeal to different players.

For me, they butchered the job's theme. Fate was a major part of the job's theme: their ability to alter or mitigate the effects of fate. This was apparent in their gameplay mechanics. You might draw Card #1, but you might spread it to be used at another time, delaying your fate. You might instead use it for a different purpose (royal road). Or you might just redraw it, changing the fate completely. Of those, only redraw still exists, but with all the cards being pretty much the same anyway, it isn't the same thing it used to be.

[ForteNightshade]

The strategical input is knowing when to use your cards, and on who - not drawing your cards. Lining up a card with something like trick attack, or using cards/divination during burst phases is the key.

Except... the supposed strategical play is no more an illusion than the old Card system. In fact, it's even worse. Pulling the second fastest E1S kill and fourteenth fastest on Titan. Let us look at how their Astro "strategized" at an optimal level.

Starting with E1S. Of the twelve Melee cards drawn eleven of them went to the Samurai; one on the Dragoon. Of the six Range cards drawn, four went on the Black Mage; two on the Dancer.

Now onto E4S. Of the sixteen Melee cards drawn, fifteen went to the Samurai; one on the Dragoon. Of the sixteen Range cards drawn, twelve went on the Black Mage with the remaining four the Bard.

Excluding one instance outside the opener in both parses, the Bard and Dancer only received additional card(s) because the Black Mage already had one. This suggests the new card system actually has very little thought process baked into. You will almost always target the highest damage dealer between the Melee or Range, and this should be either Black Mage, Monk or Samurai. The only exceptions are in the opener due to certain jobs having a slow build up (Dragoon, for example, bursts almost immediately whereas Samurai takes quite a while to "charge" up) and if the preferred target already has card. Now... I will acknowledge this is partly due to how horrendously balanced a lot of jobs are at the moment. But it still highlights the new card system has illusion of choice just like the old one did.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

and its just another example of players wanting something and not realizing what that actually means, and players not knowing what they want. (people didnt like useless cards = cards will be made to be pretty similar then).

The entire reason the Dev changed the card system to a coin flip was because the community complained about fishing for The Balance. People want most if not all cards to be useful.

[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.

[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

[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.