Thread: Astro changes 5.1

- I still never use Nocturnal stance ... even when i play with WHM, shield exist to save live and they are too weak to be noticable. The hybride part is the identity of AST but we play most of the time in regen stance.

- Give us back the possibility to use card ( get symbole ) outside of battle.

- Give us back our stun.

- Give us motivation to use the good card combination. 4% when you don't care, 5% when you care a little and 6% when you focus your effort to get 3 symbole .... 4 to 6% ? It should be 1% with 1 symbole and 10% with 3 symbole.

Originally Posted by Seraphor

Nocturnal/Diurnal are the reason I play AST, the versatility of two different play styles in one job.
I also play on controller, and these changes, both in 5.0 and 5.1 have been a huge improvement over the SB version in terms of playing cards and minor arcana.
I read people use macros for playing cards... wtf?

This versatility would be beneficial if it didn't hinder design decisions as much as it currently does, it hinders AST as its kit could never embrace one or the other yet they have routinely over the years added abilities that benefited Diurnal far more than Nocturnal, with ShB being the worst about this, if they wanted to truly keep this versatility Intersection and Neutral should never have been made. With these two abilities they made Diurnal a far better healer than Nocturnal, I honestly believe that right now the devs design AST around Diurnal then tack on Nocturnal, nearly every change they have ever done to AST since 3.0 has benefited Diurnal in some way.

Right now Diurnal is how AST should be played if doing anything optimally with it, Nocturnal is the "if I have to" stance(some may do it for making healing more engaging but that says more about the healers as a whole than AST specifically) and has been since inception, so as things currently stand deleting Nocturnal would do next to nothing to AST and if cards can lose their individual identity no reason the stances cannot either(i'd rather than be able to support both but after 4-5 years of failure there comes a time where enough is enough just stop trying).

The way the healer role is currently designed with reactive healer, preventive healer and versatile healer it leaves little room to get a new healer design into FFXIV that bucks the current roles, a new healer would need to go into one of these three groups only giving a choice to one of these groups. Whereas reworking AST into the reactive healer group would allow a second option in the preventive healer group and both groups could be balanced against themselves and then the healer role as a whole. The problem with this is SE does not want to see it that way and is why SCH in its healer kit has only gotten more powerful through the expansions because it must be both a preventive and a reactive healer, yet poor WHM barely gets anything preventive it is nearly all reactive, and lastly AST which is a far better reactive healer than a preventive one yet the latter is continually forced onto it despite it being better if it weren't.

As for the macros it is for 8 man content due to having to use the dpad up to 4 times to select each party member, it is more beneficial to use a macro as it drastically reduces the button input from doing manually especially during optimization where you need 3 seal divination by the 4th gcd. Normal play shouldn't be an issue but yea optimizing AST on controller is not good and would be the 1st time i say the design team failed to account for both peripherals.

Originally Posted by Crushnight

This versatility would be beneficial if it didn't hinder design decisions as much as it currently does, it hinders AST as its kit could never embrace one or the other yet they have routinely over the years added abilities that benefited Diurnal far more than Nocturnal, with ShB being the worst about this, if they wanted to truly keep this versatility Intersection and Neutral should never have been made. With these two abilities they made Diurnal a far better healer than Nocturnal, I honestly believe that right now the devs design AST around Diurnal then tack on Nocturnal, nearly every change they have ever done to AST since 3.0 has benefited Diurnal in some way.

Right now Diurnal is how AST should be played if doing anything optimally with it, Nocturnal is the "if I have to" stance(some may do it for making healing more engaging but that says more about the healers as a whole than AST specifically) and has been since inception, so as things currently stand deleting Nocturnal would do next to nothing to AST and if cards can lose their individual identity no reason the stances cannot either(i'd rather than be able to support both but after 4-5 years of failure there comes a time where enough is enough just stop trying).

The way the healer role is currently designed with reactive healer, preventive healer and versatile healer it leaves little room to get a new healer design into FFXIV that bucks the current roles, a new healer would need to go into one of these three groups only giving a choice to one of these groups. Whereas reworking AST into the reactive healer group would allow a second option in the preventive healer group and both groups could be balanced against themselves and then the healer role as a whole. The problem with this is SE does not want to see it that way and is why SCH in its healer kit has only gotten more powerful through the expansions because it must be both a preventive and a reactive healer, yet poor WHM barely gets anything preventive it is nearly all reactive, and lastly AST which is a far better reactive healer than a preventive one yet the latter is continually forced onto it despite it being better if it weren't.

As for the macros it is for 8 man content due to having to use the dpad up to 4 times to select each party member, it is more beneficial to use a macro as it drastically reduces the button input from doing manually especially during optimization where you need 3 seal divination by the 4th gcd. Normal play shouldn't be an issue but yea optimizing AST on controller is not good and would be the 1st time i say the design team failed to account for both peripherals.

In general: the shield and regen healer dichotomy has to like go if they want healer design to improve. Every AST in DS just kind of proves that already. And, the toes-stepping is really annoying

Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Well unfortunately, I'm in the camp of optimized = interesting play. The fact that AST is currently the most interesting of the healers to optimize my play on is a huge factor of why I love it so much now.

To optimize AST now means janky play. Play/Minor Arcana is terrible—especially for controller players who do not get the benefit of using Mouse-Over macros for the cards and either have to use their D-Pad up to 4 times > press Play/Minor Arcana, or have multiple macros to assign card buffs to individual party members, removing the need to D-pad spam. Sleeve Draw is still a hot mess to use. Now, you don’t deal with card RNG, because all cards are boring and homogenized in terms of effects—you just deal with Seal RNG instead. There was very little change in that regard: the RNG just shifted.

Honestly, I have a lot of fun on AST....when I start to ignore its main gimmick. That should not be the case.

Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Well unfortunately, I'm in the camp of optimized = interesting play. The fact that AST is currently the most interesting of the healers to optimize my play on is a huge factor of why I love it so much now.

(Looking at your past posts over this thread, which mostly boiled down to white knighting the dev's removal of most of AST's former card-based layers of optimization via (1) RNG-management through Spread and RR or (2) situational or strategic re-weighting.)

Oh, the irony... But, glad you've had a change of heart, I guess?

Don't get me wrong, I like Divination. I love ensuring I get the 3-seal effect stacked atop a Sleeve Draw's worth of Crowns on the dps. But, we had just as much optimization involved back then atop a greater variety of outputs. To call it, therefore, poor design while saying you enjoy the unification of card effects because it gives you much to optimize is contradictory at best.