Fix AST's Accessibility Issue

[Recon1o6]

In terms of controller usage, full agreement, current AST is absolutely awful. As in the play button was an idiotic idea, sleeve draw again makes no sense, and the amount of button pressing/holding for one card to play without reward is downright infuriating. 4.0 it wasn't so bad

In terms of accessibility, please no, its already been homogenised as is (which is what SE seems to think accessible means) and it kinda is accessible already from level 30. Sleeve draw has always been a finicky one.

[HyperiusUltima]

In terms of controller usage, full agreement, current AST is absolutely awful. As in the play button was an idiotic idea, sleeve draw again makes no sense, and the amount of button pressing/holding for one card to play without reward is downright infuriating. 4.0 it wasn't so bad

In terms of accessibility, please no, its already been homogenised as is (which is what SE seems to think accessible means) and it kinda is accessible already from level 30. Sleeve draw has always been a finicky one.

Bro, I think you have a different perspective of the term accessibility. What you're thinking of is ability homogenization. What I believe in terms of accessibility is flow. How a job flows helps it become either more accessible to some players or more difficult. Right now, AST is the hardest to access in that regard because it's the only Healer that requires macros to even play efficiently given its state.

[Recon1o6]

Bro, I think you have a different perspective of the term accessibility. What you're thinking of is ability homogenization. What I believe in terms of accessibility is flow. How a job flows helps it become either more accessible to some players or more difficult. Right now, AST is the hardest to access in that regard because it's the only Healer that requires macros to even play efficiently given its state.

I believe you misread my post. I said "Its been homogenised as is (which is what SE seems to think accessible means)
That said, I am in complete agreement. Its absurdly difficult to play efficiently atm not to mention a chore, especially on a controller. The play button was one of several mistakes that's caused me to leave it on my main and barley touch on alts.

With flow and accessibility though, a good example is Horoscope. To me it seems like a poor version of earthly star only you dont place it on the floor, and then you have to manually power it up to detonate it on top of it doing no damage.

I barely see anybody using it, even though it can grant a free aoe heal a short time later after powering it...so why go through this faff when it would flow better with a button that just boosts your next aspected helios potency to 400 and be done with it.

That I feel is better job flow and more accessible if I'm understanding you correctly

[HyperiusUltima]

I believe you misread my post. I said "Its been homogenised as is (which is what SE seems to think accessible means)
That said, I am in complete agreement. Its absurdly difficult to play efficiently atm not to mention a chore, especially on a controller. The play button was one of several mistakes that's caused me to leave it on my main and barley touch on alts.

With flow and accessibility though, a good example is Horoscope. To me it seems like a poor version of earthly star only you dont place it on the floor, and then you have to manually power it up to detonate it on top of it doing no damage.

I barely see anybody using it, even though it can grant a free aoe heal a short time later after powering it...so why go through this faff when it would flow better with a button that just boosts your next aspected helios potency to 400 and be done with it.

That I feel is better job flow and more accessible if I'm understanding you correctly

It doesn't mean that they can't change their definition of it if the community attempts to push that definition on them. How long did it take for them to put MCH in the right direction? 2 EXPANSIONS. For WHM, that was 2 as well after the AST Balancing Act of 3.4.

As for your example on Horoscope, I fail to see how that is an accessibility issue. Horoscope is meant to be planned ahead of time for room-wides and raid-wides; at best though it could certainly do with being able to be popped regardless of range since you have 10s to Helios/Aspected Helios. I prefer to think of it like Healing Storage, similar to how WHM has Lilies; just on a timer to make sure it's not wasted(30s for Lilies, 30s for Horoscope Helios). On top of that, if you need a quick, weak heal at 200 potency, you could literally just hit the button again without applying Helios.

[EaMett]

Bearing in mind that I've only touched AST for a couple of days, for some reason sleeve draw wasn't my main concern.

Main issue has been that the new cards are just no fun. It didn't matter if we used to fish balance spread, I can't remember specifically but iirc you couldn't drop your cards twice in a row without incurring a loss so even in times of bad rng you should've been playing other cards (single balance/arrow, etc.). On top of that you had ewer and bole that had some usage. Even if you only used those anecdotally, the fact that you had the option at all really gave depth to the mechanic and a sense of accomplishment when you used them well. This was all lost and I'm still fishing just as often to boot. Not only that but the AST lore was significantly effed over in the process.

The other issue I have is that noct really lacks an ogcd direct healing skill. I feel like at the very least Neutral sect should just switch your sect completely and not only affect your gcds.

[Crushnight]

Horoscopes issues are twofold
1. Requires a gcd heal, in a game where healers are discouraged from gcd healing as much as possible.
2. It doesn't self detonate, so even if you do proc horoscope you HAVE to manually set it off. depending on situations you could forget about due to not needing or just too busy with other things, this can lead to feeling like you wasted that gcd heal and subsequently dmg spell.

Play fixed one issue brought in another one. (Play fixed the issue of double tapping draw would use the card immediately on you but yea the issues Play causes by existing is arguably worse).

The staple of ShB Ast - Fix one issue to replace with another.

MA change - reduce button presses, added second play button so more macros needed yay >_> (also loss of card animations)

[MerlinCross]

AST before, on paper, sounded hard to use to someone like me who plays on controller. Having to juggle all those cards across different party members sounded like a nightmare. It was something I always wanted to try though.

AST now is far more accessible, on paper, as I don't need the 'right' cards anymore and just throw out cards as soon as possible. Even if it's wrong it's still a damage amp. I just have no desire to play it now though as the interesting spark is gone.

I play WHM cause it was easier than old AST. I play WHM as it feels more fun than new AST.

[Shurrikhan]

The easy fix is just bring Royal Road back and its effects. This would solve all Controller issues with AST and also add depth to the job(since sometimes you need to get rid of that Ewer just to get a Spire, Play, then another Ewer) plus solve other issues as well.

The only way to "fix" the controller issues is to bring back massive imbalance in choices of Card usage so that you either just Spread (Balance > Arrow > Spear if necessary), Expand (Bole or Ewer), Play (Balance > Arrow > Spear) or Undraw (everything else, including whenever Spread or RR have already been used).

So long as there's reason to care who your cards go to, the same controller issues will be present and the game's barebone controller support will show through. Being nearly the only game to have controller support still doesn't make that support actually good, let alone nearly as good as it could be.

If Expand was merely balanced, you wouldn't be able to get away with the wastefulness made obligatory prior to ShB. Instead, you'd likely see RR made retroactive instead of preemptive, so you could use another card on which you did not want to consume RR. You'd likely see RR usable from a Spread card. And even then you'd still want to occasionally place an Arrow specifically on your BLM or a Balance specifically on your gauge-high SAM, which would bring back the same issues short of improved Controller features.

[Mortex]

Funny enough as bad is astro is in feeling to play it’s still way more fun to play then white mage. And i still love whm. But it’s just so boring in comparison too astro.

[NealSnow]

I mean I play on controller and don't use macros for ast, it's not that hard to play any healer on controller for me anyway and I'm not some god of xiv