Who else is worried about SE and Ast?

[ForteNightshade]

They admitted NIN needed fixing as soon as it was released and it still took them time to rework them. AST system, even though people complain, is fine and that's the dev's position thus far. That's why you don't hear anything about changes coming in.

DRK also had people who liked the SB iteration more than the HW iteration, same as BRD.

Yet the vast majority don't do ultimates but development time is still spent on it. Because SE knows that small community matters. Hell they fixed LB cheesing that plagued speedrunners and speedrunners only. It was something that rarely affected non speedrunners but was a huge problem for speedrunners. Even in ShB people found out a way and SE quickly squashed it.

I don't disagree with AST being balanced and WHM being not good. My point there still stands. Even when it wasn't good and not as smooth as AST to play (with their 1.5 cast in sigma), people still played WHM more than AST. I also suspect the only reason there are slightly more AST parses in Alpha was because it was speed running/parse tier at the end of expansion.

I can tell you why people don't play AST in TEA, because WHM is easier and as competitive. Ultimate being a harder fight, people would rather play the easier healer, always. Funnily enough when my group cleared my WHM wanted to try AST but wasn't allowed to because we didn't want to change healing for reclears.

That's my point though. They addressed Ninja quickly unlike in Stormblood where jobs were left in the dust for the entire expansion. It may their position that Astro is fine despite the very vocal complaints but that was also their stance regarding Red Mage in Stormblood. They were forced to renege when, as the community kept telling them, Red Mage's damage was far too low. Why does Astro need to wait a year or more—or any job for that matter? Even if they can't do a complete overhaul, there is no excuse for the disaster that is current Sleeve Draw and Astro's abysmal MP economy.

Those people were very few and far in between. Let's be honest here. The only reason they (SE) clung to Dark Knight's design was, like Monk, they were stubborn.

That's a contradiction. They knew small communities matter yet they completely change Astro's gimmick... which pissed off the vast majority? So they cared more about making speed runners happy than everyone else? Call me crazy but sounds like the exact opposite thing SE would do. Regardless, we already know why they changed Astro. There were some complaints about "useless" cards. And it looks far more likely they overreacted to what was otherwise a small complaint.

Astro took the lead over White Mage in Alphascape because it was objectively better at nearly everything, especially with how movement heavy that tier was. There simply wasn't a reason to play White Mage beyond it being easy mode. Ironically, that's part of the issue now. Astro has to jump through several hoops just to achieve the same results White Mage and Scholar do within a couple buttons. The easier job shouldn't also be better at almost everything yet White Mage is better. And Astro's popularity hasn't been this low since its initial release. Even in Savage it's lagged three to six times below either of its counterparts. So it isn't simply Ultimate where these results are so one-sided.

Ultimately, if they want to keep the Seal system. Fine. But certain aspects need to be addressed now not pushed over until the next expansion. That same mistake is why Monk is once again dying, and what buried Machinist for years.

[Rai_Takara]

That's my point though. They addressed Ninja quickly unlike in Stormblood where jobs were left in the dust for the entire expansion. It may their position that Astro is fine despite the very vocal complaints but that was also their stance regarding Red Mage in Stormblood. They were forced to renege when, as the community kept telling them, Red Mage's damage was far too low. Why does Astro need to wait a year or more—or any job for that matter? Even if they can't do a complete overhaul, there is no excuse for the disaster that is current Sleeve Draw and Astro's abysmal MP economy.

Those people were very few and far in between. Let's be honest here. The only reason they (SE) clung to Dark Knight's design was, like Monk, they were stubborn.

That's a contradiction. They knew small communities matter yet they completely change Astro's gimmick... which pissed off the vast majority? So they cared more about making speed runners happy than everyone else? Call me crazy but sounds like the exact opposite thing SE would do. Regardless, we already know why they changed Astro. There were some complaints about "useless" cards. And it looks far more likely they overreacted to what was otherwise a small complaint.

Astro took the lead over White Mage in Alphascape because it was objectively better at nearly everything, especially with how movement heavy that tier was. There simply wasn't a reason to play White Mage beyond it being easy mode. Ironically, that's part of the issue now. Astro has to jump through several hoops just to achieve the same results White Mage and Scholar do within a couple buttons. The easier job shouldn't also be better at almost everything yet White Mage is better. And Astro's popularity hasn't been this low since its initial release. Even in Savage it's lagged three to six times below either of its counterparts. So it isn't simply Ultimate where these results are so one-sided.

Ultimately, if they want to keep the Seal system. Fine. But certain aspects need to be addressed now not pushed over until the next expansion. That same mistake is why Monk is once again dying, and what buried Machinist for years.

RDM damage is a balance thing. AST changes are a playstyle change. One is objective, the other is subjective.

Personally, the seal system for AST is good. It should be expanded upon, but I doubt they'd do so this expansion. It's not a rework but adding onto the system which comes with expansions. Heck NIN only got rework so quickly once they saw how well the DNC step mechanic worked well and copied it over for mudras.

Difficulty and efficieny shouldn't matter as much as its presumed to. Also, this doesn't come close to how AST was in HW release. People didn't play AST then. Extreme PFs locked AST out. No static wanted one. This is nothing compared to then.

One thing to note though is AST was underpowered this expac release. So all the decent players ended up with WHM. 5.1 fixed AST, but too early to swap things. I can forsee the switch slowly being made come future tiers though. Same as in SB, when people realized AST was very competitive.

[tikiwiki]

I can tell you why people don't play AST in TEA, because WHM is easier and as competitive. Ultimate being a harder fight, people would rather play the easier healer, always. Funnily enough when my group cleared my WHM wanted to try AST but wasn't allowed to because we didn't want to change healing for reclears.

A lot of people pick their classes and start progging the fight without knowing whats in it though and whm has better mp economy and the fight could have been unfriendly to card buffs so many people go with the safe sch/whm pick for those fights

RDM damage is a balance thing. AST changes are a playstyle change. One is objective, the other is subjective.

FEELINGS about play style are subjective

[YusiKha]

NIN and SMN changes were playstyle changes too.

[AdamFyi]

Personally I just want them to address the high CPM (casts per minute) for AST, especially on controllers — similar to what they did to both NIN and SMN. I always dread the opener and whenever Sleeve Draw comes up. Targeting people with cards on controller is particularly nasty lol.

[Mesarthim]

Sleeve draw is one of a few reasons I dropped AST as my main job, which is kind of sad when I mained it for like 3 years (basically the entire time a month after I started). Pretty telling when it goes from my favorite job to a job I want absolutely nothing to do with. Guess I'll find out if I'll go back to it at 6.0 ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Or a new healer if they finally remember we exist. That's not to say I hate every change but Sleeve Draw and Celestial Opposition's removed stun are the two biggest offenders.

[KDSilver]

I've been reading some weird statement about Ast gameplay consistency with cards in lvl 70.
Truth is, in the Savage environment (since that was the subject), you could have consistency in damage buff. Sleeve Draw fixed this issue.
Yes, it was not the balance all day. But if you managed your cards properly to have the aoe effect and store and use your cards correctly, you could always have a buff.
Problem was the balance straight damage buff. And the solution to this is to change its effect or reduce the damage buff so that there's not a huge gap between cards buffs.

The hypocrisis here is, that "damage consistency buff" only work for perfect play. In FFXIV, not only you'll never have 100% of your encounter happen perfectly, but also, you have ton of different content and situation. So, for the damage buff, you had tools to get what you want if you were aiming for that big shiny parse.
I've been raiding a lot in this game. I did fished for that golden Balance and dps cards on good and consistent group of players. But I also played with less experiment players in the Savage/Extreme environment. I also did many content like Eureka/deep dungeon... Ewer/Bole saved me more that one time. If everything was okay, i could go for the pure damaged buff. If I had to adapt, i knew i had these cards for that.

And that was the fun with Ast. You could ADAPT the way you play your cards depending on the content or the situation you are in. Ast was a great class that was fun to do any content with for that type of reason (and also for this timer managment tool, time dilation/celestial opposition.

I'm not even interested in people agreeing with me or not. I just know what I played these last 5 years and I know what helped me and why I was having fun.
All of this is now gone for this so called "consistency". From HW to late SB, they kept working a card system they decided to completely overwrite with a new one, like all these years were nothing. We were closed to get something good and "balanced" "consistent".

[SieyaM]

The variety of AST is really what was lost with the card changes. There were times in dungeon runs where I would throw an enhanced Bole onto the tank and then I would regen and time dilate then it was gravity for days since I had a solid minute of not needing to heal at all. Sometimes you ended up not being what would be considered optimal for savage content but you could certainly make use of what you had.

[Malmstrom]

You think you know what the community is going to do but yet you do not.

I can assure you the vast majority of the AST community did not fish for balance all the time.

"You think you know but you don't, because I clearly do instead!"

Nah. It's best card or gtfo.

[Semirhage]

I'm almost positive that's what's going to happen. It's a pattern by now. As a WHM fan and former main, I'm more brimming with anticipation for another year of AST and SCH mains drifting between

"Our classes are unfun! Give our complexity back!"

to

"Eeeeeeeh, some healer has to bite it and be the low skill floor newb friendly job, and after much deliberation I regrettably nominate the one I don't play. Also don't give them a skill ceiling above knee height, because if you want any flexibility you should just swap to one of the other two"

to

"Now that we're complex again and WHM still isn't, you should nerf WHM or buff us. It's not fair to get similar output for more effort."

to

"It sucks that WHM is the weakest *and* most braindead healer now, but that'll change eventually!"

to

"Oh but meta doesn't matter until SCH's lifetime appointment in it is threatened".

We'll loop back to the top in 6.0.