Please return AST card gameplay.

[Vitreus]

Completely agree, I miss the old system so much. Not only is the current one less enjoyable but even the lore is completely screwed up. I can't imagine what new players have to be thinking doing the job quests as astrologian and seeing the discrepancy.

The old system, which I love, had two major flaws that were easily fixed without a rework. The first is that the cards were unbalanced and led to min-maxing savage raiders fishing for Balance. They just needed to tweak the numbers. Lower the damage buff Balance gave or increases the other values. Done.

The second problem was that you could get unlucky rng and draw utility cards (Ewer, Bole, Spire) too many times in a row. Utility cards weren't inherently bad because they could be consumed with Royal Road for the card buff. Well how about redesigning Redraw so that it only returns an offensive card (Arrow, Balance, Spear)? Of course Spire still needs a new role because TP is gone but they can just make it direct hit. So we'd end up with four offensive cards and two utility ones that can be consumed or used when needed.

I know they have the ability to reimplement the old system and I really, really hope they bite the bullet and admit the rework was a mistake and so. I will respect the ever living hell out of them if they do. The new system is so much less enjoyable even with Divination. It doesn't feel like an interesting job mechanic so much as a distracting minigame with less impact.

I mean even when I'm not playing Astrologian I miss the old card system. I miss getting 10% haste or 10% crit, especially the latter on my bard. It was so fun.

[ZeroFool]

Completely agree, I miss the old system so much. Not only is the current one less enjoyable but even the lore is completely screwed up. I can't imagine what new players have to be thinking doing the job quests as astrologian and seeing the discrepancy.

As one such new player, the departure from the lore was indeed as confusing and disappointing as you say. I came into 5.0 AST expecting a refreshing take on a support role having RNG mechanics to offset its amazing versatility, alongside it being the most thematically interesting to me out of all the healers. But aside from the admittedly beautiful effects and gorgeous aesthetic, it feels completely hollowed out.

Knowing what I do of the previous iterations of AST, it's almost insulting to see each card have a distinct visual when being casted despite having no such variety in its effect.

To think I could've played a class that was not only stunning to watch, but also incredibly involved and effective; to have all that in one was apparently too much.