Thread: Everything wrong with 5.3 AST sleeve draw [Translated JP duplicate thread]

I'm part of the AST crowd who kinda liked not having quite so many cards to spam- but I really like the breakdown on point #1. I was thinking, "ehh, it sucks that I lost 2 cards, but I'm happier to be able to dispel the RNG curse of Balance - Bole - Balance - Bole..."


But reading point #1 makes me wish that they had done a better fix that dispels that curse without damaging the job's integrity. AST is already the last refuge for healers who want their job effectiveness to increased based on their skill-
...which is a mechanic in Final Fantasy XIV, developed by Square Enix for the PC and PS4...

I know this is just a sidenote from an old Live Letter, but it's- it's just such an obvious thing that it shouldn't have to be said, yet it's something we have to shout, isn't it?!

Originally Posted by AmurT

I've said it before all the way back in 5.0, and I'll say it again, the new card system was doomed from the start.

I just don't know why there's only one card. Why is there only one card? There's one single card that comes in 3 different colors. And why melee / ranged split? One card covers 4 jobs (plus tanks) and the other covers, like, 6 (plus healers) ? I rarely see balanced 2:2 comps. Hell, I often see 1:4 in 24 mans, too.


Guess they ran out of time and resources after iterating multiple times over BLM (to please Yoshi P) and didn't have any leftover time or resources to polish AST more than a single iteration, if that.

Originally Posted by Gravagar

But reading point #1 makes me wish that they had done a better fix that dispels that curse without damaging the job's integrity. AST is already the last refuge for healers who want their job effectiveness to increased based on their skill-

I just don't know why there's only one card. Why is there only one card? ...

Guess they ran out of time and resources after iterating multiple times over BLM (to please Yoshi P) and didn't have any leftover time or resources to polish AST more than a single iteration, if that.

I wasn't intending to post further, but since you've put this in a particular way I felt compelled to share my views on this matter... 4.x cards.

In your post you suggest that the old 4.x iteration of AST rewarded player skill more, but this statement is simply untrue. In fact many players in JP (and NA/EU as far as I can observe) that play this game at the highest level voice a very strong preference towards the 5.x card kit because its optimization factors are magnitudes deeper than the 4.x iteration of the kit.

Put simple:
4.x optimum: Spam AoE on trick. Very heavily luck dependent.
5.x optimum: Spread every party member's potency timeline and choose the maximum. Far smaller luck factors.


A more detailed explanation:
The 4.x optimum was spam AoE on trick, which meant you want two cards/60s, RR and the balance. Because draw and play shared cooldowns, there was nothing a player can do aside from hit draw every 30s and immediately get rid of it praying its the one you wanted. You could almost never draw balance + RR per 60s for the entire fight, so you'd find yourself doing a million compromises during pull; playing Spear, Arrow, non AoE cards, skipping a buff window for the next... the best possible option was blatantly obvious, yet you were only praying you could play that way. And MA was just even more RNG disaster.

On the other hand, I will quote the original post for the 5.x version:

Originally Posted by hiz

There are many possible ways to play Shadowbringers AST cards as they are single target and can be played to any party member anytime during a 30 second window. Optimizing cardplay thus requires knowledge of your party’s jobs in addition to your own,

Do you see that the number of options and the level of control we have toward achieving optimum are magnitudes higher than the previous iteration? We can pick the optimum target and oGCD window for every card in the fight. There are still luck factors (melee/ranged and Seals), but we can account for this and play pretty much optimally every pull.

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That said, I am in total agreement that RNG curse of looping between two cards feels terrible. I'll point to a post of my own regarding this, as an alternative solution to reverting to 4.x cards. I hope this post overall clarifies a few things for you.

Originally Posted by hiz

I wasn't intending to post further, but since you've put this in a particular way I felt compelled to share my views on this matter... 4.x cards.

In your post you suggest that the old 4.x iteration of AST rewarded player skill more, but this statement is simply untrue.

I meant in relation to the other healers- the skill ceiling has totally collapsed on WHM and SCH, and there're just not many other mechanics to make up for it. Lilies and fairy gauge are fairly passive mechanics, more of a feeling like... "it's there when you need it and useless when you don't." Hell, someone at SE greenlit removing Energy Drain, so it's clear there's a general disdain for what healers consider skilled play.



Sorry for the misleading wording. And, I mean, putting it like that- I do understand a lot more about your dissatisfaction. Thank you for elaborating further. I've been wondering why my logs as AST haven't been as good as I think they should be, and you have given me some insights into that. I have some ideas to take into tomorrow night's reclears... I'm a bit conflicted now, since I view both systems as having the exact same intrinsic flaw (RNG- drawing only melee cards when you don't have multiple melee VS drawing only utility cards when you don't need utility... and drawing only single-target RR cards when you want an aoe VS that one seal you need not showing up for the rest of the fight), with the same % chances of screwing you up, but different extrinsic consequences (tossing bad cards into minor arcana VS less damage, I guess.)


Like, I get that it's strictly a promotion to have every card be the best card of the 4.x deck (but drastically weaker), and that it makes things more consistent, but at that point, why keep the old flaw if all the rest of the old stuff is gone? Why inherit the worst, most frustrating part of the job? I'll at least appreciate that the new sleeve draw mitigates that part, until whatever upheaval in 6.0 happens. Hopefully the job design team is +1 by then, with someone on it who isn't a barren creative wasteland when it comes to tanks+healers.

Originally Posted by hiz

True, and I know you probably agree with this but to spell it out for others technical accessibility (especially latency) are issues that ideally should be resolved independently from your job toolkit. I've played myself on 300 ping once for a few years and boy that felt... not good, but I would rather them fix their networking than rework every job to cater for pings like that because it would ruin the game experience for everyone else.

Unfortunately, I think many of the ping issues might be here to stay. I'm guessing that SE office politics / overlords won't allow Yoshida to take any offer for data storage except the lowest bidder, despite FF14 basically keeping them afloat singlehandedly. The wording he used sticks in my head- he went as far as saying (around the... SB1 data center migration? unless it was HW, but I think it was SB1...) that NA pings will most likely worsen, but it's a sacrifice that players have to be willing to make. I do wish FF14 servers could be moved basically anywhere other than what might be the network congestion center of North America, since that would greatly improve my experience and the experience of many others...

Originally Posted by Gravagar

Sorry for the misleading wording. And, I mean, putting it like that- I do understand a lot more about your dissatisfaction. Thank you for elaborating further. I've been wondering why my logs as AST haven't been as good as I think they should be, and you have given me some insights into that. I have some ideas to take into tomorrow night's reclears... I'm a bit conflicted now, since I view both systems as having the exact same intrinsic flaw (RNG- drawing only melee cards when you don't have multiple melee VS drawing only utility cards when you don't need utility... and drawing only single-target RR cards when you want an aoe VS that one seal you need not showing up for the rest of the fight), with the same % chances of screwing you up, but different extrinsic consequences (tossing bad cards into minor arcana VS less damage, I guess.)

You're welcome. Allow me to add a few remarks here. It is true that there are still RNG factors in the current card kit, but as I've implied in my prior post the factors, or "% chances of you screwing up" as you put it, are magnitudes smaller. I can run the numbers for you, but I want you to have a think.

Re Melee/Ranged RNG, this isn't really RNG as there are usually optimum options for both cards. This is an optimized sample E8S P2 opener cardplay (for my static) I posted previously in this thread. What I want you to notice is that the chances I hit Redraw once is already very small because pretty much every card can be played optimally in this context. Of course there are a few routes slightly better than others, but overall damage difference caused by this particular RNG is marginally small. The same goes with pretty much any card for any pull.

Re Seal RNG, sure this is purely RNG. However, what are the chances of not having three Seals with 5~8 cards (on old SD) + 3 Redraw stacks? Compared with the chances of not drawing RR or Balance on one draw+ redraw, repeat 14~20 times? This is again why many of us that optimize prefer this iteration.

That said, we have both agreed that looping between two cards feel terrible. Like I have mentioned already, I think what this kit needs is a Redraw rework (AND REVERT SLEEVE. Please.) more than anything else.

Originally Posted by Gravagar

Unfortunately, I think many of the ping issues might be here to stay. I'm guessing that SE office politics / overlords won't allow Yoshida to take any offer for data storage except the lowest bidder, despite FF14 basically keeping them afloat singlehandedly.

Or they could just recode network protocol so you don't clip regardless of ping, for example. Easier said than done, sure, but I doubt SQEX has zero alternatives on software stuff that can be done re clipping.

Originally Posted by Ayesafaile

Plenty of 4.x speedkill ASTs made incorrect card decisions, but their mistakes were typically obfuscated by the randomness of the system. I assume that's what you mean when you talk about "rewarding player skill".

To clarify, by "rewarding player skill" I intended that while in the 4.x iteration you were only praying that you could play the blatantly obvious optimum (hit draw and immediately play on cooldown praying it becomes AoE Balance on Trick), the 5.x iteration allows you to pre-plan every card to its optimal oGCD/target for every fight, thus it rewards people that spend time to think a lot more than the previous iteration.
I fully agree with you that in 4.x incorrect card decisions were obfuscated by the randomness of the system, but that can be said for the 5.x iteration as well with Crit DH variance influencing your card strength... and the same can be said for pretty much every other job in the game, so while this randomness is a frustrating part of the game (as you have mentioned) I don't think this is 4.x AST unique.

Originally Posted by Ayesafaile

As someone who has been involved in speedkills in the past (mostly Alexander Creator, a bit in Sigmascape), optimization of the current card system just seems tedious. You're not innovating, you're dissecting FFLogs for the correct answer. I can see how that's interesting to certain individuals, but it just seems like busywork to me.

Part of me understands this, while another part of me asks when was optimizing jobs not dissecting FFLogs/Google Spreadsheets/Excel for the correct answer? Coming up with 5-head strats is one thing, but my understanding is that you always needed to preplan how you would play your job optimally with that 5-head strat, and that typically was spreadsheet work. While I see that this is cumbersome to do, doing this busywork almost always had its rewards for most jobs in the game (although SQEX devs historically has gone great lengths to minimize this reward with pretty much every expansion post HW).