Astrologian changes 6.0

**EthanMoonkin** · 10-15-2021 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by Sqwall

I disagree with this statement. Gravity isn't RNG, Combust isn't RNG, Malefic isn't RNG. Personal DPS doesn't have to all be perfect, and for some to think that everything related to DPS needs to knock their socks of just further dilutes the job. Otherwise AST should have just been a R.DPS. At AST heart is a healer, and it is possibly the best healer in the game. Possibly.

I don't believe those that think the RNG on AST is bad....it's not. Far from it really. MNK currently has worse RNG, BRD has worse RNG. For me personally it's not hard to get a Divination opener, it's not hard to throw out a card every 30 sec, it's not hard to redraw, it's not hard to see when my non-sleeve draw Div isn't coming together well...and when I need to toss out minor arcana when I run out of redraws for 1 seal to get ready for Div.

AST has ALL the tools it needs to heal and DPS effectively. If people want to think it's DPS is completely behind an RNG system, then your missing the point. Minor arcana is fine with the new iteration, because it's basically an after thought currently. AST is the buff healer, and it's cards also serve as it's DPS. Every time you toss a card onto a Dragoon or a Black Mage, you the healer just increased your DPS.

You play AST well, and roll with the punches you can increase DPS quite a bit. The new Lord and Lady does NOT break the job at all. If anything it gives me more to do during slower moments.

I'm happy with the new changes.

Let me clarify since you seem to fail to understand how this game is designed. Your ability to do your job properly as an AST with this design is entirely RNG dependent. Using your basic dps abilities is the bare minimum. AST has tools that give it large boosts of damage which will always be beneficial for your team, but those tools have more or less a 50% chance to fail.

Being a buff class does not automatically make it an inconsistent class. The current design of minor arcana and draw/astrodyne do make it inconsistent. If you like inconsistencies for the sake of it, then good for you. I’m not trying to change your opinion. Just reiterating that the class design is objectively flawed and hope they fix it for the sake of players who want their hard work to be paid off consistently.

Instead of practicing and improving on a class like AST where I’m destined to fail 50% of the time, I could just play sage whose damage is guaranteed every pull. I will always be benefiting my team to my jobs fullest extent, not barred by pointless coin flips.

**Sqwall** · 10-14-2021 02:45 AM

Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

"Oh, but Divination is consistent!"

Whoopty-doo. I could deal with losing out on some damage in my opener because my Divination was pretty consistent everywhere else. Now? Well, who knows if I'm getting my personal damage buff or if I'm just getting that MP regen that's really not even necessary, even with the mp economy nerf due to the reduction on mp recovery from Draw and the loss of Sleeve Draw.

You're miffed about literally 1 seal? Hell 2 different seals?

The current RNG is 100%/33.3%/100% RNG for the opener. I hardly call that RNG. At most it's 50/50 for the second Draw.

If you can't muster up 2 different seals with the new astro changes...maybe you should turn your astro.....card???? LOL couldn't help myself

**Saefinn** · 10-14-2021 01:44 AM

I'm looking at AST's changes and thinking that they're a step in the right direction.

Minor Arcana

It means we go from 8 Cards that are basically "The Balance" to 6. And it can result in a potential DPS move, how it works is not ideal because you might get a heal and have to hold onto it, but there's a chance I'd need to heal within the spec of 60 seconds, so it might be okay. But I can see Lady of Crowns getting wasted.

Since the last changes to AST I am using Minor Arcana less.

Astrodyne + Divination

With current Divination, I honestly don't feel the difference between getting 1 seals or 3 seals, but I know there is one. But the seals never felt meaningful. AST cards in 5.0 feel like. "I got The Balance, let's reroll for The Balance, oh I can't use The Balance so I'll use the slightly better The Balance that's seal free, I'll roll again and look it's the Balance I wanted and now I have 3 seals so I can now do an AoE version of The Balance".

We still get 6 versions of The Balance and an AoE version of The Balance. But at least in how I use those six cards, I can end up getting up to 3 beneficial effects for me so I get to feel the difference. NGL, the MP bonus is 'eh' because it's rare I run out of MP but then it's the "fail" scenario, so my incentive is to get the other two. So you get a shorter cast time and recast and then a your own damage & healing increases. I prefer that. Whilst if I compare to 4.0's cards, I could still feel sad because there's things I'd have liked to have kept, but if I compared it to 5.0 then this is an improvement. I was a SCH main prior to 5.0, so I come at AST from the perspective of somebody who used to love SCH rather than as somebody who loved AST.

Exaltation + 2 Celestial Intersection Charges + Noct Sect Loss

We knew Noct Sect was going anyway and I cannot help but feel Neutral Sect was the first step to that. And honestly I don't mind and Exaltation adds another shield-ish thing. And I am happy that AST actually gets to keep a decent number of shield related stuff. It does seem odd with the pure/shield heal divide and that is something that I am worried about, because AST is still quite shieldy and SGE is still quite healy and I am worried that content won't push healers enough for that distinction to matter. That said, I come from a Scholar background and if it's AST that I end up continuing to play, I think I will enjoy keeping neutral sect, having 2 Celestial Intersection Charges and the damage reduction from Exaltation.

And it's all this kind of stuff that sets it a part from White Mage, so it's not White Mage with stars, which was one of my worries...but one of my worries that did come true is that WHM is still 'eh'. Whilst I don't main it, my co-healers do and I know one of them mostly quit WHM in ShB for MCH because they stopped having any fun and AST is not their thing.

Macrocosmos

When I look at AST's & SGE's capstones and then SCH's and then WHM's, I feel bad. They all offer good healing benefits but AST and SGE get damage attached to theirs and look cool. WHM's still looks cool, but SCH's is...very...eh.
The animation for Macrocosmos is definitely cool looking and I like its concept, in that people take damage to heal themselves. But to me, it's another button to break up the monotony.

I was kinda thinking SGE would be the step in the right direction to me enjoying a healer and I still think it may be a positive step and enjoyable. But AST's changes might win me over more.

That is not to say I don't think there will still be problems, but those problems I think are general healer complaints, but AST may have made extra steps to improve how it feels in its downtime versus 5.0 and I picked it in 5.0 because it was the only one that I could break up my downtime with and be able to get some enjoyment. And some of the flow issues got fixed and we're losing stacks of Redraw, which I think will actually feel better, I hate shuffling cards over and over. But on current AST I am doing it less than I used to since the Sleeve Draw changes.

There may be mechanical issues I have not considered, like what changing Minor Arcana will mean if we get 2 unique seals and the card we don't want, whether we take the reduced benefit. And of course what this means in terms of balance.

**Liam_Harper** · 10-14-2021 02:49 AM

I dislike the Lord and Lady changes. It's not about dps, it's about consistency. I'd actually be happier if both were heal cards than what we have now. A heal tied to rng becomes far less useful. If you're unlucky it might not appear for 3-4 minutes. You can never plan around it.

It's either a highly inconsistent heal or a tiny bit of damage. It's just needless button bloat really. There is no choice, it's either pop immediately if it's Lord, or hold for 60 sec for the tiny chance you might need it if it's Lady.

**Payadopa** · 10-14-2021 03:22 AM

I'm a big fan of getting some RNG back with AST. Very nice changes overall.

**PangTong** · 10-14-2021 05:14 AM

If you do the math, you can work out that you only have a 56% chance of getting 3 unique seals in 3 consecutive uses of Play, even when accounting for Redraw.

On your very first draw, you have no seals, so playing anything is fine. There's no chance of being screwed over. No problem.
On your second draw, you have a 2/6 chance (33.33%) of drawing a card with the same seal as your first Play.
You can use Redraw on this card, and since redraw prevents you from drawing the same card again, only 1 of the 5 remaining cards will give you the same seal. So you have a 1/5 chance (20%) chance of being screwed here.
So in total, to be screwed on your second Draw, you need to fail both the 2/6 Draw and the 1/5 Redraw. Together that's (2/6) * (1/5) = 0.0667 (6.67% chance) of being screwed on the second Play and being forced to use a card with the same seal as the first Draw.

On your third Draw, assuming you managed to get a different seal on the second, your chances of success are much lower because now there is only one specific seal you want.
So you have a 4/6 chance (66.67%) of Drawing a card with a seal you already have. Redraw eliminates a dud card, but out of the 5 remaining possible cards there are still 3 that have a seal you already have.
So this Redraw has a 3/5 chance (60%) of getting you a failure card.
Putting these together as (4/6) * (3/5) = 0.4, you have a 40% chance of getting screwed on the third Play.

In order to get 3 unique seals in 3 consecutive Plays, you must succeed both the second and third Draw RNG.
Your chance of failing on the second Draw is 6.67%, so your chance of succeeding is 93.33%.
Your chance of failing on the third Draw is 40%, so your chance of succeeding is 60%.
So your chance of succeeding both is 0.9333 * 0.6 = 0.56 i.e. 56%

So almost half the time you will fail to get 3 unique seals for Astrodyne. You could potentially delay Astrodyne and hope that your NEXT card will give you the third seal, but this is wasting a seal that could potentially go to your NEXT Astrodyne, so it's not really worth it just for the 5% damage buff. It's pretty lame to get screwed over at this high of a rate through no fault of your own. 56% success rate is quite low for an action you'll only be able to use a handful of times per boss or dungeon.

I've seen some people say that Astrologian is the gambling job and gambling is no fun if you can't lose. But I think that "random" is not the same as "gambling". Astrologian is about reading futures, and playing the hands that fate deals you. Getting a random outcome is not necessarily the same as randomly getting a win or a loss. It's about how you choose to use what fortune has given you. If you are given one of a variety of tools at random, that doesn't necessarily mean that one is superior and the others inferior. You just have to adapt to the tools you're given to get the most use out of them.

But there's no adaption to be had in just getting a buff vs not getting one. You're not being given different tools that you have to think about and apply in different ways. You're just getting less. So in that way it becomes gambling. There are wins and losses, instead of different responses to different outcomes. I don't think that's right for AST, nor does it make for satisfying gameplay.

For this design, I think either cards need more RNG protection/mitigation built in, or the buff for 3 unique seals should be changed to something less important. But really, I would rather see a design where different combinations of seals resulted in different, unique buffs, with no outcome being inherently better or worse. You could try to go for specific outcomes, but ultimately the result changes only your approach, instead of just being good or bad.

**Portions** · 10-14-2021 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by PangTong

For this design, I think either cards need more RNG protection/mitigation built in, or the buff for 3 unique seals should be changed to something less important. But really, I would rather see a design where different combinations of seals resulted in different, unique buffs, with no outcome being inherently better or worse. You could try to go for specific outcomes, but ultimately the result changes only your approach, instead of just being good or bad.

To your bit at the end, I'm not going to say it's a satisfying answer (I will say that I'm not sure I agree with it), but the logic of taking away the unique buffs was likely that if they are designed such that "with no outcome being inherently better or worse", they may as well be the same buff because they're less subject to potential min/maxing as they are now which could make certain comps preferable. The reason I've never liked this argument is because it also favors standardizing other jobs' buffs and that's also insanely boring but the problem is somewhat inherent to this game design as a whole. Similarly, while I agree with the comment above that they could actually make undraw useful to mitigate RNG, doing it to return a redraw would be a bit redundant unless undraw had a long timer attached. Another alternative they could do is make undraw shorten the timer on draw, similar to how hypercharge works with MCH's gauss OGCDs.

On the whole, AST's cards probably could have just stayed the same. I like the idea of astrodyne, I play on console and I've never had problems targeting, and I'm actually okay with the idea of Div not being 100%, but that's the difference between this game and how Corsair could operate- this game is designed for balance and the slower pace of FFXI made it okay to have the occasional bust if you had particularly poor luck.

**Liam_Harper** · 10-14-2021 11:27 PM

I hate RNG. I respect that others like it and we're all entitled to our opinion, but it has no place for me in a scripted game on one of the most calculated healers, where your heal gameplay revolves around oGCD timing, heal range, planning, placement and understanding class burst windows. I don't enjoy that sometimes I just do slightly worse because RNG says so. When I redraw the same seal 3 times and have to throw out a 5% Divination, I'm not thinking "wow, this is fun, I love being screwed over!".

RNG isn't a choice. You get lucky or you don't. Lord and Lady for a skilled player is meaningless because you'll either blow Lord on cd, or Lady will be useless because you have the fight mapped out and it doesn't fit. There isn't an engaging toolkit here to pick from, just an extra button that might give you a tiny bit more dps, or be useless.

I don't get why it's "ok" to get randomly screwed sometimes? What does it add to the game? How does it reward effort? Would we be happy if BLM had a 5% chance to get a damage down debuff every time they used Xeno? Personally I think it's just attractive to bad players because they can pretend their bad performance is out of their control and delude themselves into thinking they're useful, or just don't really care how well they're doing, but I won't judge. I just think it's a waste of a great healer that normally rewards planning and calculated gameplay, to add a "randomly you'll do worse" mechanic.

If AST was actually the "gambler healer" and the entire toolkit including all oGCD heals, was based on cards and reflected that, it'd be different. You'd have to think on your feet and adapt to the hand you drew. That would be your playstyle and I'd be all for it. But it's just out of place on a class whose entire heal toolkit is based on precision.

**IceBlueNinja** · 10-14-2021 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I hate RNG. I respect that others like it and we're all entitled to our opinion, but it has no place for me in a scripted game on one of the most calculated healers, where your heal gameplay revolves around oGCD timing, heal range, planning, placement and understanding class burst windows. I don't enjoy that sometimes I just do slightly worse because RNG says so. When I redraw the same seal 3 times and have to throw out a 5% Divination, I'm not thinking "wow, this is fun, I love being screwed over!".

RNG isn't a choice. You get lucky or you don't. Lord and Lady for a skilled player is meaningless because you'll either blow Lord on cd, or Lady will be useless because you have the fight mapped out and it doesn't fit. There isn't an engaging toolkit here to pick from, just an extra button that might give you a tiny bit more dps, or be useless.

I don't get why it's "ok" to get randomly screwed sometimes? What does it add to the game? How does it reward effort? Would we be happy if BLM had a 5% chance to get a damage down debuff every time they used Xeno? Personally I think it's just attractive to bad players because they can pretend their bad performance is out of their control and delude themselves into thinking they're useful, or just don't really care how well they're doing, but I won't judge. I just think it's a waste of a great healer that normally rewards planning and calculated gameplay, to add a "randomly you'll do worse" mechanic.

If AST was actually the "gambler healer" and the entire toolkit including all oGCD heals, was based on cards and reflected that, it'd be different. You'd have to think on your feet and adapt to the hand you drew. That would be your playstyle and I'd be all for it. But it's just out of place on a class whose entire heal toolkit is based on precision.

With the healers only having a 1.5 shorter on dps spells now Idk how honestly ast cards is of any use still, honestly dps buffs are even better than ast buffs, dragoons/bards/dancers/monk/smn gives buffs similar to ast yet better to me even if their buffs has pretty much a significant cool down but I cant too relate since I do not know about melee dps cool down on their kits. Whms must be partying and celebrating how finally they be able to be the top healer in dps thing. I value your point on lady on lord but honestly the 2% more damage on crown/lady currently was barely worth it to me and more a crutch excuse as to use them if we do not get all the seals we need or keep drawing the same seal we have already. Now if they gave 10% damage increase than id respect that.

**Absurdity** · 10-15-2021 12:07 AM

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I hate RNG. I respect that others like it and we're all entitled to our opinion, but it has no place for me in a scripted game on one of the most calculated healers, where your heal gameplay revolves around oGCD timing, heal range, planning, placement and understanding class burst windows. I don't enjoy that sometimes I just do slightly worse because RNG says so. When I redraw the same seal 3 times and have to throw out a 5% Divination, I'm not thinking "wow, this is fun, I love being screwed over!".

RNG isn't a choice. You get lucky or you don't. Lord and Lady for a skilled player is meaningless because you'll either blow Lord on cd, or Lady will be useless because you have the fight mapped out and it doesn't fit. There isn't an engaging toolkit here to pick from, just an extra button that might give you a tiny bit more dps, or be useless.

I think RNG is fine if the dice roll happens frequently enough to somewhat balance itself out. RNG in WoW for example worked back when I played because there was so much of it going on at the same time, you would roll the dice with almost every cast/ability. And this is also why I think Direct Hit and Crit are fine the way they are, it's a dice roll with every ability.

What is not okay is a single coin flip every 30 seconds, especially in a game like XIV where dps reigns supreme.

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