I wish AST never had a DPS buff

[ZeroFool]

So how would AST actually change were it to lose The Balance, or rather, the effect associated with it? With the discussion around the cards always coming back to chasing this one buff, how would people then react to the RNG mechanic if it was no longer there?

I saw the original idea of having different buffs being effective in their own ways but balanced around being unpredictable as a draw to its unique playstyle. But with how heavily weighted DPS is in combat, the problem becomes that only buffs which cater to that are seen as 'useful' in that it's more generally applicable than the others.

It was my hope that by removing the DPS buff and replacing it with something just as niche as its counterparts that the system can be embraced for what it was designed to be: random, varied and engaging.

As for the mentions of 'fishing', I wish to see Redraw as a skill removed too. In concept, it would provide more control over the RNG, but I find that it backpedals on the very idea of chance without actually doing anything to affect the outcome. It tricks people into delving for 'optimization' and only heightens the frustration at the end when it is not reached, instead of just making the most of a given draw. I attribute much of the distaste for the chance-based mechanic to this trap of a skill.

[Bsrking5]

I understand people want healing to be different but perhaps SE has decided this is how healing will forever be.

SE already said they want healers to be a heal centered, ie pure healer. Which doesn't line up with healing demand in most cases. Honestly I hate how homogenized the balance for 5.0 is, not just healers, all jobs.

[Saefinn]

SE already said they want healers to be a heal centered, ie pure healer. Which doesn't line up with healing demand in most cases. Honestly I hate how homogenized the balance for 5.0 is, not just healers, all jobs.

Yep. I think this is kinda where they've missed the mark.

Gutting what we do in our downtime and adding more to our healing kit doesn't make a job more healing focused. Blue Mage proves this. It's the job with the strongest healing focus (when a healer) in the content it does despite having the least healing spells and a butt load of DPS ones.

They could keep everything they've gutted out, you could have the most complex DPS rotation in the world and the healing focus would remain exactly the same.

This is simply because your healing focus is determined by mechanics requiring you to heal and the tools you have available to handle it. If those tools handle it super well, then your healing focus is small.

And I think if that healing focus is small, then we need a different focus to keep us entertained between healing.

Actually I think it would be a smarter idea to give us more to do in our downtime and start adding more and more content that pushes our healing abilities harder. To me, this is how you improve a healing focus. It'd pretty much be a waste to retroactively make all old content more healer focused, healers will still have solo stuff to do and not all new content will be a challenge (to suit people of different levels) you will still get healer downtime, so make that more interesting. Then by adding more content that push healer checks, you'll get more of a pure healing focus.

[Rai_Takara]

SE already said they want healers to be a heal centered, ie pure healer. Which doesn't line up with healing demand in most cases. Honestly I hate how homogenized the balance for 5.0 is, not just healers, all jobs.

If you're referring to the snippet back before ShB release about healers being tuned with healing in mind, that's a mistranslation. What Yoshi meant was that healers would rely less on shielding and mitigation and rely on healing spells and ogcds. The current healer designs fit that goal. I think SE knows exactly what they want from healers and that's why they've kept it as such. After all, this was the expansion, this was their chance, and they seemingly balanced all healers better than they have ever before.

Actually I think it would be a smarter idea to give us more to do in our downtime and start adding more and more content that pushes our healing abilities harder. To me, this is how you improve a healing focus. It'd pretty much be a waste to retroactively make all old content more healer focused, healers will still have solo stuff to do and not all new content will be a challenge (to suit people of different levels) you will still get healer downtime, so make that more interesting. Then by adding more content that push healer checks, you'll get more of a pure healing focus.

I don't think they need to add healing checks. But you are right, they should add more things to do between healing downtimes. I think this aspect of healer is the most engaging (aside from saving a run that goes south real fast).

[Dyvid]

The issue isn't AST's DPS buff, it's the other healers lack thereof. SE needs to change course in 6.X and start designing Healer/Support jobs rather than "pure" healing.

[Rasikko]

The issue isn't AST's DPS buff, it's the other healers lack thereof. SE needs to change course in 6.X and start designing Healer/Support jobs rather than "pure" healing.

I feel like they have or are reaching the end of the line with job creation because they keep complaining that it takes so much time to make a job.

[MitsukiKimura]

Anyone who says this card system is fine is only fooling you. This system has so much fishing for seals and cards constantly that you’ll be begging for more redraw stacks. I’ve had instances where I’ve drawn 6 melee cards in a row With sleeve draw and drawing after that. Same with the same seal, I drew 5 of the same seals in a row with no redraw stacks left. This literally happened just now when I was clearing E7S for the week. It’s pissing me off to have this class so Reliant on Rng on its main gimmick. They need to get rid of this awful seal system, fix sleeve draw because it’s a damn mess.

[Brandedblade]

Anyone who says this card system is fine is only fooling you. This system has so much fishing for seals and cards constantly that you’ll be begging for more redraw stacks. I’ve had instances where I’ve drawn 6 melee cards in a row With sleeve draw and drawing after that. Same with the same seal, I drew 5 of the same seals in a row with no redraw stacks left. This literally happened just now when I was clearing E7S for the week. It’s pissing me off to have this class so Reliant on Rng on its main gimmick. They need to get rid of this awful seal system, fix sleeve draw because it’s a damn mess.

Yeah. Ofc theres still rng. Theres still going to be times where you get the perfect set of cards you want for the fight and times you dont. The difference now is you're still providing a guaranteed effect that is universally wanted. But now bad RNG means a weaker damage effect as opposed to no damage gain. You can get away with playing the cards suboptimally and still get a guaranteed gain from it. If you're drawing nothing but melee cards in a savage fight, you likely have melee dps to throw them on, otherwise? from what I've seen so it's actually mathematically better to throw melee cards on tanks.

As I've said time and time before tying utility that needs to be planned around or be able to be used at a moments notice, like mana regen and damage mitigation, to RNG is a bad design, especially if combined with damage boosts in the same system.

[MitsukiKimura]

Yeah. Ofc theres still rng. Theres still going to be times where you get the perfect set of cards you want for the fight and times you dont. The difference now is you're still providing a guaranteed effect that is universally wanted. But now bad RNG means a weaker damage effect as opposed to no damage gain. You can get away with playing the cards suboptimally and still get a guaranteed gain from it. If you're drawing nothing but melee cards in a savage fight, you likely have melee dps to throw them on, otherwise? from what I've seen so it's actually mathematically better to throw melee cards on tanks.

As I've said time and time before tying utility that needs to be planned around or be able to be used at a moments notice, like mana regen and damage mitigation, to RNG is a bad design, especially if combined with damage boosts in the same system.

Having twice the fishing than back then for what we have now is bad design for twice the effort.

[Brandedblade]

Having twice the fishing than back then for what we have now is bad design for twice the effort.

At least you end up using every card as opposed to tossing it away to enhance the only good cards people tried to fish for.

I get the arguments for Sleeve draw being clunky for controllers. Clearly SE was under the impression that ASTs would spread out the cards over the duration of the effect and not to try to throw them all out within the fewest gcds possible.

That being said, I dont get the argument of the fishing at all. I don't see a massive difference between fishing and setting up aoe balances then fishing for a seal. If anything it feels like there's less you have to do. All you do is Redraw a couple of times and if you still arent happy Minor Arcana and try again next draw. Is the issue you're trying to get both a specific seal and a specific type of card at the same time? Again the differences between melee and ranged cards arent so huge that it will kill you to focus more on gathering the seals. And if even then you struggle to get all 3 seals the difference is too little to care unless you're absolutely trying to 100 percentile. You're still statistically likely to get a good Divination even if you have bad rng in getting a 3rd seal