Quote Originally Posted by Brandedblade View Post
Making them all damage boosts is overall healthier for the design of the game in the long run. Knowing that AST will contribute X-Y% damage means that the dev team can far easily balance its output to be more in line with the rest of the classes within its role. With the old rng you ran the risk of said X-Y% being too drastic to properly quantify. Like I said in an earlier post, it does however, seem the devs intentionally made the support dps have INCREDIBLY low pdps out of fear of their buffs being too powerful, and the live letter did mention that alot of these classes, such as AST and DNC, are getting damage boosts in 5.1

Its biggest issue, however, is that it had support options tied into the system when in this game, playing optimally means optimal damage. Yes, pulling that prime Bole felt amazing when you happen to have a tank on the verge of death, but what if the tank wasnt struggling? Bole would be useless then, and what if you drew a Balance at that time, sure the extra damage might help but the tank might be dead without the extra mitigation.
That's why they had redundant lesser versions of balance that were like arguably better for certain classes like brd with spear and BLM with arrow, one total dud for burning, redraw, and two defensive cards that were really great in like stone vigil because some tanks will just refuse to gear up (which makes the modern system useless, and will be mitigated a bit by the 5.1 tnk changes). Basically, AST is too consistant with very little flexibility outside of perfect or upper-middle good conditions, and the card system is the result of literally no reading the room. It's not fun. It's cold and boring with zero depth, or ability to change situations or even adapt when mistakes happen. It's perform perfectly or suffer. Especially in pugs, which used to be total lol from 2.0-3.0