Astro changes 5.1

[Brandedblade]

Everything you said makes it self evident what is wrong with your argument.

There was always a "best" card. There will always be a "best" card. But only if you are a worshipper at the optimal > all altar. That is the sum total of your lack of understanding of our objection.

We don't give a flying fuck about optimized play. We want engaging play, we want enjoyable play, we want variety to not be bored out of our minds. Most play is NOT optimal. It is improvisation, it is using what works best at that particular instant and that is *gasp* NOT ALWAYS MORE DAMAGE.

Optimal. Does. Not. Matter. Non-janky does.

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.

[Crushnight]

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.

[Maltothoris]

Another thing to think about is that Noct stance has almost always had a trade-off with its buffs while Diur stance barely had any and has only gotten straight buffs. Granted they had to with some of the shield percentages but still something to think about. Noct lost the regen but the changes to Celestial Opp, to aspected Helios and Collective with only staright buffs to Diurnal and trade offs with Noct hasn't really increased the competitiveness of Noct sect vs Sch. SO I wouldn't be surprised if we got another "adjustment" to Noct sect in 5.15 or 5.2.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

[MPNZ]

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

[ForteNightshade]

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?

I would vehemently disagree. Card management was vastly superior in SB simply because there was a lot less busywork involved. You may not fancy macros but hard targeting—which is the only option on PC—will cause DPS loss since you'll inevitably clip. You still might with macros but it can be more manageable. Regardless, Sleeve Draw remains a huge offender.

You may fancy the changes, which is your prerogative but they are undeniable not popular. If statistics for Savage remain, Astro now offers the most rDPS and is still almost a fourth behind White Mage and Scholar. That alone speaks volumes to how much people dislike the design.

As for people not discussing the changes. There isn't much to discuss. Noct received almost nothing as per usual considering they haven't figured out how to make it work going on four years now. And CU changes are both hit and mess. The potency increase was needed but the Noct version is straight up inferior, thus Diurnal remains the better Sect. Simply put, Noct is dead until it can compete with what Scholar offers. Those are all the changes, which circle back to the core issue people have: the current card/seal system.

[Brandedblade]

(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.

(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.

[HyoMinPark]

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.

[ForteNightshade]

(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.

[LariaKirin]

I wonder if this is going to be too much.

The Malefic/Combust changes are an approximate increase of 7% to the AST's dps. The CU buff in Diurnal is massive.

AST + SCH might once again become the strongest combination.

After realizing I failed to account for another factor, I'll correct this. It is in fact too much.

The buffs to DPS jobs that happened across the board has put AST at the top by quite a bit.

And now AST+SCH is dominating, being above WHM+SCH by a very significant amount, even in E1S.