How could you do this to AST?

[IceBlueNinja]

Shadow bringers card system is so boring and basic and divination is too much work for its short duration and mere 6 buff, for all the work to do this and its horrible cd they could have least make the damage increase be 15% or least 10% , nothing whack than having 2 melee dps + tank for light party dungeon and only me the healer who is range aint going to bother card himself since dps is there for the major damage dealing, what makes it annoying is getting range cards and redrawing like 3 times only to still get a ranged card , ofc opposite too when its 2 range dps tank is only melee. While some did not like the SB cards and find it tactical I found it to be way better and effective. Bole was nice migi balance was good for attack buff, arrow to make black mages burn things down real quick, crit for monk/bard, spire I always just burn it and save my ewer for mp self restore. I am one of the few who find every old SB card of some type of use. Still agree with Recon106 about each class doing abit of regen and shielding. there always be healer fights because of this personal pure heal vs pure shielder things. Sometimes I wonder if tanks atm or dps are having fights with each other as bad as healers mains are atm. SE must gonna have fun redoing ast story line.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Shadow bringers card system is so boring and basic and divination is too much work for its short duration and mere 6 buff, for all the work to do this and its horrible cd they could have least make the damage increase be 15% or least 10% , nothing whack than having 2 melee dps + tank for light party dungeon and only me the healer who is range aint going to bother card himself since dps is there for the major damage dealing, what makes it annoying is getting range cards and redrawing like 3 times only to still get a ranged card , ofc opposite too when its 2 range dps tank is only melee. While some did not like the SB cards and find it tactical I found it to be way better and effective. Bole was nice migi balance was good for attack buff, arrow to make black mages burn things down real quick, crit for monk/bard, spire I always just burn it and save my ewer for mp self restore. I am one of the few who find every old SB card of some type of use.

Crit% looks 'nice' until you realize it's an unreliable damage increase over such a short period of time. Mitigation is very niche to use, probably useful to throw at tanks who often forgot their cooldowns, but in the end they are excessive & tanks have plenty cooldowns themselves. Sks/sps increase may cause drifting and many classes don't want that. TPs are relics of the past expansion. MP gains are only great so long as the players are terrible at MP management, and MP management---while takes some time to get used to, are terribly easy to conquer at this point.

This is why DMG% always wins. It's the most consistent of all offered buffs. I'll give you this much: ShB cards is somewhat boring, yes. They're not the best but it works especially with the way the game encounters works.

Also 10% buff is already too strong (hello old Balance). Divination buffed into 10% will just break it (hello 8-man party).

[ty_taurus]

I always ran in diurnal anyway, so I'm not worrying much.

I also sort of wondered when this was going to happen as astro was playing dual roles for healing, and with a new healer introduced astro being be pruned down seems necessary long term.

Also has me speculating on Neutral sect and what it will be worked into. It is such a powerful buff and on a short cooldown I use this every time it's ready. With shields gone will it just be meh? Also synastry I feel this could be worked into another skill, celestial intersection maybe since shields are removed?

Just speculating.

Other then the healing I feel like we are going to get more seal skills like divination. We can build different seal combos for different effects.

Divination would stay raidwide damage increase with all three seals represented.

Where we would have an alternate seal spender on a 45 sec cooldown that interacts with the seals that you have. This would fill the gap right after a divination use so that you can still throw out cards and us your seals before divination comes off cooldown. I wouldn't mind if minor arcana system get's the boot honestly.

Seals would also play more of a role in what your choosing to play. i.e. seals have special bonuses baked in respectively. These bonuses can only be granted with the new seal spender (divination) ability.

Lunar - Incoming healing increase
Solar - Skill/spell speed increased
Celestial - Reduced incoming damage

Each seal value is 1%/2%/3%

Example: This would allow you to stack 3 Lunar for 3% Incoming healing when you use the "seal spender"

Or combine 2 Solar and 1 Celestial for 2% skill/spell speed increase and 1% reduced incoming damage

Just thinking about the gap after a divination use and filling it in with more cards and a seal spender.

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

[Sqwall]

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

LOL right...but you get the idea for something they could add to AST to further it's card gameplay

[Mikaeus_The_Lunarch]

Hi, Dancer here. Please don't ever give me skill speed.

it wasn't until i really started playing dps (mch) at the beginning of ShB did i realize how stupid it was for ast to give speed to people and i can't believe some asts actually want that back at all.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

LOL right...but you get the idea for something they could add to AST to further it's card gameplay

Probably replacing the sks/sps boost for... certain percent damage absorption from damage dealt. Dmg taken reduction would probably used to mitigate something like raidwide (yay party old bole)... definitely will add more flavor. But I’m unsure how that will translate to an actual gameplay.

[Seoulstar]

And here I am still hoping for the slight chance of getting different cards..either that or just becoming Sage main.

[Side-Eye]

And here I am still hoping for the slight chance of getting different cards..either that or just becoming Sage main.

You and me both. I absolutely loved AST before 5.0, when I felt like we had been absolutely crucified -- not only was our card system stripped of variety, but we lost Time skill/aspects which had been staples of the class, as well as our only stun (which another heal job was allowed to keep, so let's not pretend that Squeenix didn't think healers should have it at all). For a while, I switched to playing another class as main. After several patches which boosted our heals, I started using AST again.. but the job has definitely not been as engaging, interesting, or compelling. Being able to heal sufficiently (or even more than sufficiently) just isn't what job satisfaction is about.

[IceBlueNinja]

You and me both. I absolutely loved AST before 5.0, when I felt like we had been absolutely crucified -- not only was our card system stripped of variety, but we lost Time skill/aspects which had been staples of the class, as well as our only stun (which another heal job was allowed to keep, so let's not pretend that Squeenix didn't think healers should have it at all). For a while, I switched to playing another class as main. After several patches which boosted our heals, I started using AST again.. but the job has definitely not been as engaging, interesting, or compelling. Being able to heal sufficiently (or even more than sufficiently) just isn't what job satisfaction is about.

I Triple that, though I did not play the job when it just came out in HW, I have read its past abilities and was amazed at the things it had like disable/detriment. SE just tend to mess with things that do not need messing with and hate to be a little off topic here but it is the MAIN issue with their fighting game Dissidia NT that is causing them to decide soon they will be shutting off the servers. It had many potential to be better in many ways and people will always feel why its psp part duodecim and even its mobile version opera omina is doing far better.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I still do not see no details exactly how is noct weak when I have put some where in like page 3/4 of prime examples how it is not and it even actually migitates better

Shields are situational. It is strong if it performs their functions as necessary, which is increasing your eHP to survive. This is something that regen cannot do. Doesn’t matter if you can stack 999k regen per tick if you can’t survive the initial damage.
The thing is... mitigation isn’t only shields’ privileges. In a party, mitigation is an effort of a whole party & the time when noct/sch shielding are needed are usually during progs where players are inevitably going to make mistake and take damage. The nature of shields is whoever has it needs to take damage in order to consume the shield & in decent runs people already knows how to dodge those damage. That only leaves the unavoidable damage that often aren’t lethal as long as the healers are keeping the party’s health on healthy range. So when you reach this point, you may ask yourself, -objectively-: “Why do I go for the more expensive shields if players can survive without it? Is there any cheaper options?”. Yes, you guess it right: Regens. I’m not saying people shouldn’t use shields after the group’s able to play decently. It’s just that objectively shields will be outshined by regens, unless the way an encounter works is adjusted in a way to make shields necessary.

ast as is the hybrid healer like how a rdm will be a mix of a white mage/blm their heals are decent but not that strong to a standard whm and their dps too is decent but not too powerful than the standard blm.

Well here’s the thing: yes, AST is a hybrid, but guess what? They can do almost everything the other healer do! Even better than WHMs & SCHs in fact. They shield better when played properly on noct stance, they heal MUCH MORE than WHMs, they lose the least from using GCD healings amongst the three healers, and their mobility allows a very forgiving gameplay to not always preposition themselves & dodging bad stuffs are much easier. ASTs are arguably tad overpowered as of now compared to the other healers. The only thing that WHMs and SCH has that AST doesn’t have is perhaps WHM’s [Cure III] spams that’s evidently very expensive & situational, and SCH’s incredibly short oGCDs.

Noct can do something dirunal cant do.

Another niche use of shields, I’ll give you that.
This is however something that rarely players will do in real practice UNLESS the said debuff is very debilitating. I.e. e10s slapping damage downs on your DPSes.
If it’s something as insignificant as your example, healers can safely eat that debuff and proceed on to help dps to burn mobs down faster. Yes, all 3 healers can do this just fine, that’s just to show how powerful healer kits are & how insignificant most of these niche uses are.