Thread: Astro changes 5.1

Originally Posted by Brandedblade

(Hey look! I can do it too. I get it. Disagreeing with you makes me a white knight. Such is the nature of the internet.)

In comparison to WHM and SCH in their current forms, definitely. And like I've said before. The RNG of the old system was a factor because while there where ways of mitigating it you would always run the risk of bad rng giving you a far lower pay off then the former. You may have had decent chances of having an AoE balance set up and spread . But there was always the risk, however slim. That rng would simply not cooperate with you and you would not be able to optimize your buffs. With all cards being +damage you are at least guaranteed that element. Instead of bad rng meaning you do not buff the group. Bad rng means you buff the group less. and guess what? It being raw damage as opposed to crit means that it won't scale as massively with gear growing and it being raw damage as opposed to skill/spell speed means it wont interfere with the classes that the stat is actually detrimental for.

This is a flawed premise. Not only does RNG still exist with the seals, they contribute significantly less than the old system. While yes, not getting AoE Balance meant a weaker alternative. That alternative was leaps and bounds above the current iteration. The old system had flaws but the new system isn't inherently better. Ironically, it requires even less thought now than previously. Before you at least had to consider whether Spear or Arrow benefited certain jobs. Now? Do you have a Samurai? Give them every single melee card outside the opener. They are always, without question, the superior choice assuming equal skill.

As a controller player these Minor Arcana changes are a huge step in the wrong direction, 2 Play buttons is the LAST thing i wanted. can we please just go back to spread buffs, or rather find some other intuitive way to have AST function because targeting abilities aren't user friendly when in the hands of someone using a controller. Having 2 sets of macros is irritating.

Hey Sora,

For this "Problem" I have a solution : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...59XMDFTe4/edit

And for the PC-gamers: http://bit.ly/34uEh9d

I hope the ideas can help asts whos have problem to play out the cards

Originally Posted by Heilstos

Hey Sora,

For this "Problem" I have a solution : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...59XMDFTe4/edit

And for the PC-gamers: http://bit.ly/34uEh9d

I hope the ideas can help asts whos have problem to play out the cards

While this is helpful, and I appreciate the work and thought put into it, no skill should require this amount of set up just to use optimally/without inducing carpal tunnel in a person’s thumb. The Play and Minor Arcana systems are inherently flawed in their design and execution—personally, I’m of the opinion the entire card system is flawed, but Play/Minor Arcana really highlight some of the more glaring issues with these new single-target cards.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I can easily see why all this would end up an issue for controller, but I see M&KB players considering it an issue too and I have to wonder... why? With a mouse, we can consistently use Draw on the very GCD (gap) it refreshes, and Play it on the next, on the correct player, without delay. Between Minor Arcana and 3 stacks of Redraw, I'm far more likely than not to have a perfect Divination every time, often even when spending Sleeve Draw on Crowns for my two (lead) damage-dealers over the same Divination timing.

We could mitigate some issues by removing Draw itself, instead passively generating a new card every 30 seconds (or even allowing us to bank our current card for up to a minute such that we get our next instantly if held for 30+ seconds), but that, too, would likely be considered clunky due to the reduced player input in its timing making it feel... awkwardly loose.

Or, we could look at universal changes, such as allowing for certain actions even during animation locks. Pet actions would be an obvious place for this, but so would future rapid stance-swaps or, for AST, card manipulation.

But, I have a hard time, as a M&KB player for whom the cards feel smoothly busy rather than wonky or invasive, seeing how its entire system could be considered flawed. There's plenty to help it, sure, but is it flawed from a fundamental level? I don't personally think so.

I can’t speak on KB+M users, as I have always played this game on controller, but I always thought that they would have the benefit of mouse-over macros for this, which would be significantly smoother than an entire macro-hotbar setup. I could be wrong, but I saw ASTs play with mouse-over for cards even back in HW and SB. I figured that such would be the same with ShB.

However, that still doesn’t excuse that it’s terrible on controller users, thereby supporting the notion that the system itself is flawed. You can’t say a system is not flawed simply because it works well on a KB+M setup. It doesn’t work well on the other system—a system that the developers try really hard to flow as smoothly as possible compared to the other setup—thereby making it imperfect. Controller users have to supposedly set up an entire macro setup to use AST’s main gimmick in an optimal fashion; meanwhile, KB+M users get to have a single macro (mouse-over) by comparison, with no carpal tunnel of the thumb involved. How can you say that’s not an inherent flaw in the system?

This is to say nothing about Sleeve Draw and how awful it can be on controller, and that optimal execution still requires one to activate Lightspeed (for both KB+M and controller users), thereby taking the skill away from being used in a more versatile fashion (e.g., movement, MP conservation, faster Raises + MP conservation, etc.).

The Draw system before ShB was never this convoluted to manage on a controller scheme. Even when one was deploying a single-target card or using the old Minor Arcana.

Come back and AST still isn't the same job I knew so I know longer care about it.
I know I won't see any major changes this expansion anyway.
Probably won't ever truly go back until the revert the cards and rework spire.
They can buff the job all day and that's great but if they don't bring back
what AST was really about then bye lol.
-Tips my SCH hat to ye-