Thread: 5.3 AST Changes

Originally Posted by Saefinn

But I expect for Savage and Ultimate, MP could be s hindrance for AST players? Not sure how much of a difference it makes there as not taken mine there.

It's brutal if you're aggressively DPSing, have to raise or even misalign your Lucid Dreaming casts. Basically, Astro will bottom out no matter what you do unless the fight has ample enough downtime to make up for it. Dying just makes you want to die again. The big issue is Astro has absolutely no way to recover. Both White Mage and Scholar can effectively relegate Lucid to their backup spell whereas Astro clings to it for dear life. It doesn't help that prior to the forthcoming change, Lightspeed was used for Sleeve Draw because of the sheer amount of weaving you have to do.

Now if you aren't as aggressive DPS wise, it's a bit easier to handle. Raising still hurts far too much relative to the other healers. Personally, I actually wouldn't mind more emphasise put back into resource management but at the moment, it's not fair only one healer has to deal with it while the other two don't.

Originally Posted by IllyaPrisma

If WHM had the same mobility and weaving capability as AST, the balance of healers would be completely thrown out the window. There would need to be potency reductions across the board for WHM to even consider it.
You also can’t compare WHM and BLM, as Shadowbringers displayed clear DPS favoritism from a development perspective.

Take a step back and think about balance rationally, and not just what you personally think is best. It’s the community spouting ludicrous ideas like yours that got healers into the homogenized mess we are currently in.

You're really overstating how powerful White Mage actually is. At optimal levels, you'll barely lose a single cast due to movement issues. Even if there was a discrepancy, lowered potency for better movement tools would be a far superior design choice. Clipping is not fun gameplay hence why they've made so many additions to Black Mage's kit. It had nothing to do with DPS favoritism but other people's dislike towards their design. Well, that and Black Mages so readily eating mechanics to avoid moving.

And lets be honest with ourselves here. The homogenization occurred because the dev team keeps trying to cater towards the lowest common denominator. And because they still think we heal through GCDs and need to consider our casts instead of how we actually play, which is to spam Glare/Malefic/Broil 70-90% of the time.

Originally Posted by Saefinn

On the flip side it means PvP balance doesn't affect the jobs outside of PvP.
...

And yet, Fluid Aura keeps getting nerfed anyway... WHM has a lot less CC now than prior to the PvP minigame split, which, tbh... speaking as someone who abused the heck out of WHM's insane CC back then, oh boy did they deserve to get all of that nerfed. Yet, fast forward... All of the CC has been nerfed despite the fact that it's split- Fluid Aura is RIP, I don't even know if they still have Repose or not, Stone for Heavy is gone entirely, Blizzard 2 for Bind is also gone... Removing WHM CC only really affects PVP, yet, it still got removed from PVE anyway.


Where am I going with this? Probably... that I can't trust this team to upkeep two whole different versions of each healer when they're mucking up one version of each healer this badly. Also, the way you've worded it, I have to ask (edit: I'm curious and would like to hear more thoughts, tone isn't meant to be confrontational or anything)- what would you gain outside of these raid battles that would make your job gameplay more interesting? It sounds like you envision gaining things during raid battles, but would you also lose something when you enter them?

I honestly love the old card system in stormblood, I started as a whm am only 1 year old on the game almost 2 now and when I was checking out the other 2 healers, the astro really give me that kick like ok that is my sure to go class, though before it was red mage until I did a trial as a white mage and seeing the stuff this astro class I have not know about do am like omg it just seem so useful with those cards. every card but spire had some good about it, if i have a blm, amma sling a arrow on them so that they can burn the heck out of mobs fast along with their leylines so they just poping fires like crazy, bole i love on my tank for more having to put abit more dps and less healing, ewer to restore mp , spear to give my monk/bard/machinist some crits or balance depending on the situation, only pointless card to me was spire which i always royal road for aoe to give another card to team base on situation. Overall every card in the old system was of used to me cept spire, I love the rng and the luck it took in old storm blood with ast. Sbh just killed most the fun, sure they top up our regens and shields and I am glad about that but jesus the main thing of ast power was the cards, aint nothing annoying than having 2 melee dps + tank themselves is melee, half the cards in the deck becomes useless cause am not gonna card myself over the dps or tank so am flipping with more annoying rng getting more range/ healer cards than tank/melee dps cards. Nope I will always hate this card system we got. Ah glad I made memory vids of my storm blood ast how way funnier it was with cards then. But all in all the overall thing I want is us to have some way to get mana back 2 spells to give us back mana just like whm/sch does and people will stop gaping about that on ast, reality is people more hate the mp issue more than even the now crappy card system of AST. I bet if at least the mp issue is fixed even this lame card system is not much of a bother. Only slight thing am about confused that most people say Ast dps is high yet our potency on malefic is only 250 where broil is 280 and glare is 300? I guess then again the faster cast of malefic vs the glare/broil could be the thing else if some other reason why let me know :P. Most people do not like noct stance or dont care for it(but it can be used based on how ur ast is set up right and be broken for many a times my shield will save my behind over my regen even at full hp if I some how slip on some would be 1 hit mechanic but point is the 500 mp increase to aspected benefic when use in noct stance need to also be removed, that was really truly not necessary period for our already lack of mp management tools.