How could you do this to AST?

[ForteNightshade]

I mean it basically gives Bloodbath to a target, regardless if they're DPS, healer, or tank. So if you put it on a WHM, and they use Glare, they're healing for a percentage of the damage they dealt to a target. Same would go for anybody it's put on, including say, a DRK who just entered Walking Dead.

This just makes Balance extremely situational, if not entirely worthless. Not only would this almost never see use, you're trading a damage card for it when simply slapping a Regen or having the DPS use Second Wing or Bloodbath themselves. Part of the issue with Astro's old cards is mitigation simply can't compete with damage buffs. Hence why Spire and Ewer were often relegated to Royal Road fodder.

[RyuDragnier]

This just makes Balance extremely situational, if not entirely worthless. Not only would this almost never see use, you're trading a damage card for it when simply slapping a Regen or having the DPS use Second Wing or Bloodbath themselves. Part of the issue with Astro's old cards is mitigation simply can't compete with damage buffs. Hence why Spire and Ewer were often relegated to Royal Road fodder.

And that's why Royal Road will still not exist. You redraw or use the card. And for the record, DH and Crit buffs are ONLY damage buffs if you actually DH or crit. If you don't, it wasn't a damage increase. Because of people constantly trying to find Balance instead of using what they had, we ended up with what we got this expansion. By removing the hard damage increase on Balance and instead giving it to Minor Arcana (albeit with a cooldown), you fix the problem because anything can be a damage increase once a minute. Meaning you have to keep seals going for Divination, or just sit on a card for Minor Arcana that could have been used another way.

Now tell me, if you got a Solar, Lunar, and Celestial seal already, Divination and Minor Arcana are on cooldown for 30s, and Sleeve Draw is on cooldown for 60s...are you going to use another Celestial seal for a crit/dh buff that would result in a damage loss on Divination's buff due to 2 Celestial seals? Are you going to hold onto the card and just use it with Minor Arcana? Or are you going to attempt to reshuffle it to another Solar card in the hopes you get some use out of it?

[Vyrerus]

And shields in general are objectively weaker than regens in their current design.

Wrong. Fight design makes regens objectively better for almost all content. Conceptually Shields are always more powerful than Regens, because while Regens have greater healing potency, Shields grant temporary HP, allowing for living through things players shouldn't, while also expanding the Healer role's power to influence the Tank's efficacy.

You underestimate me. I know full well that actually optimizing regens is a pain in the ass. That doesn't change its power conceptually. The most powerful regen in the world won't save you from a hit that deals 1 more HP than your HP total. If they wanted to, they could balance fights such that shields are required for every single raid wide, or all non-tanks die. They don't do this in hardly anything.

[ForteNightshade]

And that's why Royal Road will still not exist. You redraw or use the card. And for the record, DH and Crit buffs are ONLY damage buffs if you actually DH or crit. If you don't, it wasn't a damage increase. Because of people constantly trying to find Balance instead of using what they had, we ended up with what we got this expansion. By removing the hard damage increase on Balance and instead giving it to Minor Arcana (albeit with a cooldown), you fix the problem because anything can be a damage increase once a minute. Meaning you have to keep seals going for Divination, or just sit on a card for Minor Arcana that could have been used another way.

Now tell me, if you got a Solar, Lunar, and Celestial seal already, Divination and Minor Arcana are on cooldown for 30s, and Sleeve Draw is on cooldown for 60s...are you going to use another Celestial seal for a crit/dh buff that would result in a damage loss on Divination's buff due to 2 Celestial seals? Are you going to hold onto the card and just use it with Minor Arcana? Or are you going to attempt to reshuffle it to another Solar card in the hopes you get some use out of it?

Your solution is trading consistent, albeit underwhelming, card effects for completely situational ones. Changing the effects as you described while keeping the seal system means Astro's will be forced to play new Balance/Bole in scenarios where they accomplish nothing. Not only does Bloodbath barely see use, it's already on 90s for the jobs that have it. The new effect would be of minimal to near non-existent benefit due to how infrequent scenarios are where an AoE heal wouldn't already cover outgoing damage. In the event an individual DPS is targeted, healers still have a myriad of reliable ways to heal that isn't a random card effect. Put another way, you aren't going to plan around something that won't be available without an Astro present. This was entirely what people criticised about Bole. While useful, it's lack of reliability meant it couldn't be planned around.

[Rilifane]

I know full well that actually optimizing regens is a pain in the ass.

Then don't argue in a way that makes you seem like you don't or imply that shields need more thought or planning. Healbotting doesn't need planning either way. Optimising needs a lot of planning in both cases.

Wrong. Fight design makes regens objectively better for almost all content. Conceptually Shields are always more powerful than Regens, because while Regens have greater healing potency, Shields grant temporary HP, allowing for living through things players shouldn't, while also expanding the Healer role's power to influence the Tank's efficacy.

Yes and no.
You can redesign fights that they require specific, even generally weaker skills. You can redesign skills, that they're now generally worse or better. Both are valid ways to go about this or better yet, a combination.
Regens grant healing without having to actively heal, shields grant HP beyond the usual HP pool. Both are concepts that are stronger depending on the situation. Shields may protect you against a hit that would otherwise kill you while regens can heal you even while incapacitated or having your skills blocked from a mechanic. The latter is an unknown concept in FFXIV and I don't expect to ever see it here but has seen some use in other games.
It comes down to fight design and skill design. Shields are conceptually strong in a vacuum but wether they are in the field aswell comes down to what limitations they devs put on them.

But current fight design is what it is and a lot of arguments were made with current fight design, not some hypothetical paralel world. And not even current savage requires shields aside from a few scenarios that will never apply to the vast majority of raiders, leaving regens ahead and as the more efficient tool - if planned properly.

That doesn't change its power conceptually. The most powerful regen in the world won't save you from a hit that deals 1 more HP than your HP total. If they wanted to, they could balance fights such that shields are required for every single raid wide, or all non-tanks die. They don't do this in hardly anything.

That much is true but I'd like to stay somewhat realistic.
And with the overall design we have, shields are weaker than regens in most scenarios with a few exceptions that only apply to a very small minority. And I think we all have an inkling about how SE goes about fights by now.

[RyuDragnier]

Your solution is trading consistent, albeit underwhelming, card effects for completely situational ones. Changing the effects as you described while keeping the seal system means Astro's will be forced to play new Balance/Bole in scenarios where they accomplish nothing. Not only does Bloodbath barely see use, it's already on 90s for the jobs that have it. The new effect would be of minimal to near non-existent benefit due to how infrequent scenarios are where an AoE heal wouldn't already cover outgoing damage. In the event an individual DPS is targeted, healers still have a myriad of reliable ways to heal that isn't a random card effect. Put another way, you aren't going to plan around something that won't be available without an Astro present. This was entirely what people criticised about Bole. While useful, it's lack of reliability meant it couldn't be planned around.

Well here's the thing, the AST playerbase complains about how the old cards were taken out. As it was pointed out by you, ALL THOSE CARDS WITH THE EXCEPTION OF 3 WERE SITUATIONAL. You don't want situational, yet you want the old card system back? They changed it to the current one BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE DIDN'T WANT SITUATIONAL. But people want the old one back. Here's the thing... IF YOU WANT THE OLD CARD SYSTEM BACK, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SITUATIONAL CARDS. NOW EITHER YOU WANT THEM BACK, MEANING YOU WANT THE OLD SYSTEM, OR YOU DON'T, MEANING YOU WANT THE CURRENT SYSTEM. THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN!

[ssunny2008]

Sry if i repeat something, but i don´t have time to scroll and read through 12 pages imo.

I´m fully with OP. It´s sad to say that AST is going to be changed once again and losing pretty much the rest of his uniqueness. It´s not even about "meta-play" or balancing. Even if noct has worse shields than a SCH and diu might be the overall better choice, it does its job and for badass mechanics everyone can use neutral. To take that from AST away is a bad thing.
It´s something which is up to the players choice and preference. You was able to adjust to your Co-heal or to different bosses as you thought "it´s better to play noct/diu this time." Again, it might doesn´t match perfectly in numbers to be called balanced, but it worked. To get ride of such variety and players decision making is a step back in game design. It´s the same with the cards before. "All for the damage!". Why not change the cards that you can hold more cards at once and cards you already own can´t appear anymore? So you could´ve always give the tank the damage reduction at tank busters or dps at burst phases meanwhile searching for new cards? No... all have to become simpler until the last guy on earth can press this one button...

It´s sad and it shows once again how stubborn and uninspired SE can be. They don´t want to give the players more than one option to play different classes. They force them into that major role until every tank, every heal, every dps plays and feels pretty much the same. This is a big mistake in my eyes and lots of different MMO´s do a way better job here. That the player can choose between different skill upgrades or stances by his own, situational or preference based is a good thing! Even if a metabuild will appear and balancing might be a bit harder, variety and uniqueness is what all classes need in FF14, that´s what SE can´t get in their head and probably one big reason why 99% don´t give af about PvP too.

R.I.P AST, i don´t want to play a WHM 2.0 version.

[ssunny2008]

LMAO

The new expansion isn't even out yet and you're already complaining? Please stop. Just stop.
You don't even know what they are going to do with AST beside making the job a pure healer, yet here you are spouting nonsense

Well i´m pretty sure every healer will sit on 1 single target attack, 1 dot, 1 aoe, a handful of instaheals, 3-4 aoes heals, a shield which works slightly different from class to class. The pet from SCH will be still a gimmick. Cards will be dps cards. WHM will enjoy the selfbuffs and full heals. Don´t know what´s going to be with the sage, but pretty sure it´s like picking the SCH skills, readjust some numbers and animations, be happy. That one gimmick every healer becomes is negatable and far away from being unique.
It´s the same with tanks. You can play one, you can play all. Maybe you´ve 1 or 2 buttons more or less, but that´s it. Nothing will be unique or up to the player. AST will get diurnal as passiv probably, meanwhile neutral is going to be something like benediction or so. That´s all. I won´t expect much of a great gamedesign. SE showed often enough, in which direction one class after the other goes. In the end, all jobs with its subclasses will work the same, just with different animations.

[ASkellington]

Well here's the thing, the AST playerbase complains about how the old cards were taken out. As it was pointed out by you, ALL THOSE CARDS WITH THE EXCEPTION OF 3 WERE SITUATIONAL. You don't want situational, yet you want the old card system back? They changed it to the current one BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE DIDN'T WANT SITUATIONAL. But people want the old one back. Here's the thing... IF YOU WANT THE OLD CARD SYSTEM BACK, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SITUATIONAL CARDS. NOW EITHER YOU WANT THEM BACK, MEANING YOU WANT THE OLD SYSTEM, OR YOU DON'T, MEANING YOU WANT THE CURRENT SYSTEM. THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN!

Now that I've had ample time to think about it, there is a way we could have the old cards back by lessening RNG. I'll even give two ways to go about it:

Chronos' passive from SMITE
or
Drawing cards on a set rotation

* Note that both of these options straight up require Divination be separate from the seals system like it is in PvP

So for tl;dr of Chronos' passive: in SMITE he has 4 quadrants with his 2 ability used to activate them. The passive acts like a clock and when you press 2 you stop on which ever quadrant it lands on and use it's effects while underneath the duration. Same thing could be applied to AST cards. You control when the draw happens and what card you draw. Does this mean we'll get more consistent Balance uses instead of everything else, yes. But, it also gives us a greater chance of being able to use Ewer/Bole when we want instead of hoping to draw it at the right time.

Drawing cards on a set rotation (i.e. Balance--->Arrow--->Spear--->Bole--->Ewer--->Spire repeat) is also an option. You know when you're going to draw X card cause its in order. Redraw could be used to skip over a card. "I don't need Ewer or Spire at this time", Redraw x2 you're now at Balance, or w/e rotation you want to use.

Neither of these are really perfect. With the card cycle you still have a bit of RNG to factor because it could be missaligned very easily (I played alot of Chronos, I should know) and personally I haven't found away to make Sleeve Draw/Redraw have uses with this.
With the rotation, depending on what order its in could have some problems. Again, Sleeve Draw has no use in this system, or I haven't thought of a good one since I've booted Seals out, and it also doesn't fix the problem of "redraw til you get what you want" aka Balance.

Point is, we could have old cards, with adjustments, we just need to think outside the box.

As for OP's post, I called Nocturnal being removed in 6.0 ages ago. Neutral sect exists, Noct was heavily critizised (either for how much mana its abilities costed at the beginning of 5.0 or for being less efficient than Diurnal), and even the community wanted it to be removed. I don't like it since AST is already WHM but with cards and more lore purging (also, wtf are they going to do for the SB questline? doesn't it call for Noct Asp. Benefic?) and there's 0 news on if they're going to alter/change the card system again. /shrug Here's to hoping we get a unique healing playstyle come 6.0

[Payadopa]

Well here's the thing, the AST playerbase complains about how the old cards were taken out. As it was pointed out by you, ALL THOSE CARDS WITH THE EXCEPTION OF 3 WERE SITUATIONAL. You don't want situational, yet you want the old card system back? They changed it to the current one BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE DIDN'T WANT SITUATIONAL. But people want the old one back. Here's the thing... IF YOU WANT THE OLD CARD SYSTEM BACK, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SITUATIONAL CARDS. NOW EITHER YOU WANT THEM BACK, MEANING YOU WANT THE OLD SYSTEM, OR YOU DON'T, MEANING YOU WANT THE CURRENT SYSTEM. THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN!

Yeah, pretty much. I'm not one of [those] people, as you described. Don't get my wrong, I do want the old card system back but only because it was more fun and it [felt] way more impactful to me since I had to constantly make decisions. If broken down on a spreadsheet I'm sure there was an optimal way but that's not how I play. Game feel will always determine the fun I have, not how optimal it is.