Thread: 5.3 changes

My concern now is that with fewer cards to weave and less MP management to worry about is that AST will end up less interesting for me to play.

Given my main thing has been that AST is more interesting to play versus WHM and SCH because it has more to do in its downtime with card weaves, MP management and the fact Noct sect is inefficient (though I don't Noct so much because I am not going to be that guy who self nerfs for content)

I get why the changes were needed, so I just hope they go out and address for 6.0 why healers feel dull to play.

I understood it as only 1 card and that seems fair? idk I retired my star globe at 5.0, but I guess you guys will find out tomorrow
I've only switched to ast twice since, once to wear a dress to an eternal bond and another to demonstrate the battle stance emote

I concur with Saefinn. It does appear that the mp changes to ast have basically removed any mp problems diurnal could have. I think Nocturnal is probably on sch's level now but with faster recovery from death.
Now its actually worthwhile for controller players who don't parse to actually use play, draw and sleeve draw because it gives mp. (on the rare occasion I've seen astros recently they haven't been using cards or divination. Which is fair enough i guess)
About time horoscope got changed to auto trigger

I'm surprised whm didn't recieve another nerf to holy or deletion of the water pistol (fluid aura)

same with scholar, surprised that didn't get a nerf, or a useless buff/tweak


all in all 4/10
+ Astro gets some much needed mp and a QoL change to horoscope
+ No unneccessary changes or nerfs
- Made ast too strong in diurnal mp wise
- no neccessary nerfs either to healing potencies
- does nothing to fix any other glaring issues, despite the complaints, even though other jobs have been given fixes by this point

While I understand the players who say AST is more boring to play with better MP management and less cards to play per encounter, for me this makes AST more interesting to play.

The reason is that I absolutely hated Sleeve Draw. The constant target switching was so annoying that I only played AST very rarely ever since ShB.
I will definitely play AST more now.

BUT I still think that the card system has been dumbed down way too much. I'm happy that the "500 button presses in 30 seconds" Sleeve Draw is gone. AST will now not make my hands hurt so much after playing it for a few minutes, so I'll be actually able to play it. But will it be fun? I'd rather have some card utility other than two draws, redraw and two plays. Things like Royal Road or Spread, which made the cards more fun. I wonder why they couldn't think of anything new when revamping the card system.

Personally, I don't care if it does less DPS if it's better to play. But now that we got less cards to play per encounter they could have at least buffed Divination or something like that.

For the MP management, I think it would have been enough to give Draw 5% of MP and maybe reduce MP of Nocturnal Aspected Benefic and Helios. Now it seems a bit too easy even.

I know it's a buff but I'm conflicted about it.
A death was extremely punishing for AST because we had huge gaps between our MP tools, so dying with both on CD was a guarantee for papercuts and Ether addiction while punishing for the team aswell if GCD heals were neccessary. So having more frequent MP tools is a good idea, escpecially if it's tied to a class mechanic and strongly encourages using it.
But having 1270 MP/ min more than before even when not casting a single GCD heal is pretty big and makes MP management next to non-existent unless you stubbornly refuse to even draw cards.

That Horoscope auto-triggers upon expiring brings it in line with Star and Excog but I also liked the idea that you could actually completely waste a skill if you didn't pay attention. Having it not auto trigger meant you needed to plan ahead a little because it needed to be spread out to two Malefic casts and keep an eye on the timer or you're left with nothing.

That Sleeve now gives a seal you don't have yet is great but only giving one card now feels underwhelming. I know controller players rejoice because less target switching and all but I liked the busy opener and reopener. With the change to LS and Sleeve, LS is now almost solely for movement because you neither need to marry it to Sleeve for weaving nor keep it on CD for MP.

The slight nerf to dps by having less cards than before is probably offset by having almost guaranteed 3 seal opener Divination and being able to signifcantly reduce the amount of Piety needed but makes it also more difficult to get seals back in time if you died. Overall it makes AST gameplay easier because MP is not tight, slightly reduced APM, auto-triggering Horoscope and LS being a simple movement tool outside opener now.
Overall I'm not hyped.

Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

I main ast and I like the changes but I do wonder about the sleeve draw. Am I gonna need to draw, wait 30 seconds before pull so I can get the two seals and third with sleeve draw? Making my entire party wait 30second before any pull is a bit meh. And ik a lot of randoms in pfs wont want to wait so my divination will be 30seconds out of wack the whole time.

Waiting for Draw to come off CD after pre-pull Draw is standard practice. Most ASTs want a 20s pull timer anyway for pre-shielding or early Star and adding additional 10s to a 9-14min fight is nothing.
In most parties you can pre-Standard, wait for it to come off cooldown and pre-dance again if you ask for it. I don't how this should be an issue in savage.
First thing AST always does when respawning is use Draw. So even if they do an instant 15s pull timer the moment everyone spawns, your Divination doesn't go off at 30s but more like 15-17s. Which is still bad but not fully misaligned and will most likely realign at the 2min mark.
Nonetheless, a half-way decent party always lets ASTs pre-pull Draw and wait for it to come off CD.

Originally Posted by Saefinn

One of the reasons I switched to AST is because MP management adds a dynamic to a magic class.

Indeed. Simplification and homogenisation seems to be a trend everywhere now. Sigh. It really is a shame that it goes to such an extent that players seeking even a little bit of complexity and challenge eventually won't be able to find it anymore because those elements are just heaved out the window in favour of the former. But oh well, I digress. I'm just a salty SCH.

Originally Posted by Rilifane

But having 1270 MP/ min more than before even when not casting a single GCD heal is pretty big and makes MP management next to non-existent unless you stubbornly refuse to even draw cards.

This is less an AST issue, and more a kind of "the concept of MP and resource management" issue. AST now won't care about piety, like the others healers.

MP management is tricky. I think I'm going to trend towards a rather radical stance: MP should probably be removed like TP, eventually. The real resource in FFXIV is time/GCDs. Any time MP stops someone from casting they are going to complain, because no one wants to be standing around doing nothing.