EW AST Redraw needs improvement

[Liam_Harper]

Astrodyne leaves much to be desidered, but I definitely wouldn't describe the previous card system (including Minor Arcana) 'fun'. Boring and a chore, maybe.

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward. Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG. It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

[rewd]

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward. Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG. It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

Old card system felt bad to me because it was tacked on and just overall boring. 8 different cards with the same effect (just with different %) felt terribly boring. Drawing and playing them just to unlock... another boring DPS buff was even worse. Getting 3 seals also wasn't exactly engaging or interesting.

In a vacuum, I love the new system. Using cards to buff, heal and deal damage is great. Playing them to get effects that can make us deal more damage and heal more is awesome. In practice, Astrodyne feels and is irrelevant and RNG is too intrusive. This means however that the system can and should be improved and I think there is a good foundation here to build something truly fun. I'd rather see improvements of what we have, rather than go back to the snoozefest we had in ShB.

[MintnHoney]

At least matching and digging for the right seals meant something and gave a decent reward.

[+1 or +2%] isn't something I would call a "decent reward."

Minor Arcana also fitted into this and served a purpose in Seal management and Sleeve Draw helped mitigate RNG.

Yes, but this wasn't exactly "exciting" or even that good. It was only as you said:

It functioned.

Astrodyne is far more boring to me because the seals don't mean anything. You just settle for 2 seals. Sometimes you get 3 but it's only 100 potency worth so who cares. Minor Arcana is just a 250 potency proc every 2 minutes on average. It's definitely a chore, you do it for mana and squeezing an extra percent dps but it feels bad.

The thing about whether or not the 100 potency is worth it, is that, frankly, since you're bringing up DPS, and/or if you're thinking about parses (which is usually the bottom line, and even if you don't mean it to be, it will always get there), it is always worth it (particularly because this is 100 potency that is a consequence of just playing the job). That's the problem quite a few people have with Astrodyne: that they can't guarantee that 5% damage/healing buff, and so it makes them unhappy.

But otherwise, I believe the intention for Astrodyne is to allow AST to have a little more agency to handle high-stress situations, particularly with healing, since it provides an all-in-one (potentially) system.
Will that be necessary in edge-case gameplay? No, but neither is the healer role in general, and, although it's still the beginning of the expansion, I can't even begin to tell you the amount of times Astrodyne has proven to be useful in raids, dungeons, etc..

Regarding Minor Arcana, I'd say the issue with it is that the effects are too small for a 1 minute cooldown, especially because it's a 50/50 crapshoot. I don't believe increasing their efficacy to be the right call, but I would say increasing the frequency of the draws would make it feel better. I also think that keeping them separate from the regular cards is the right call, as it leaves room for further improvements (i.e.: implementing another card from the Suit of Crowns, or another Suit entirely).

I don't think the ShB system was particularly "fun" either, but it's still miles above the rubbish we have now.

I disagree. They had designed themselves into a very boring dead-end, removing the the player's agency to manipulate their kit, ability to prioritize specific needs, and created a rather braindead experience in exchange for forced consistency across the playerbase.

In comparison, the current iteration at least has systems in place which allows AST some personal versatility (you can hold on to Astrodyne and Minor Arcana for when you feel they'd be more useful) and seems to have provided room for potential growth, but the current issue with it is that it needs to be tweaked and adjusted.

Honestly, the common factor between the two systems, which seems to be causing issues, is the seals. In SHB they were made very inconsequential after they buffed Divination and tweaked Sleevedraw, and in Endwalker they remained inconsequential to Divination to allow further consistency for buffing the party's damage output, but they wanted to keep the concept, so they've decided to keep the inconsistency to AST, who has the lowest personal DPS, in an effort to reduce DPS variance but potentially provide support for the healing aspect as well as some strength when doing solo content.
The best thing about moving the seals to Astrodyne is that they now have room to tweak and adjust various parameters about the seals and Astrodyne itself, whether it be potencies, how the seals are obtained (e.g., rather than from cards, the AST could have a chance to obtain seals from performing specific actions; for example, mitigation/damage reduction/shielding could provide a chance to obtain the Moon Seal, Regen ticks which actually heal could have a chance to grant Earth, and dealing damage could have a chance to provide Sun), giving it a cooldown, altering the buffs provided, etc..

[RinaShinomiya]

Cards are still boring and a chore except now we get punished less for not interacting with the system.
What a tremendous improvement i can hardly contain my sarcasm.

[Basherr]

Cards are still boring and a chore except now we get punished less for not interacting with the system.
What a tremendous improvement i can hardly contain my sarcasm.

I really want to like playing my Ast, but as you say, cards feel boring and a chore. With the current opener, playing 3 cards in 2 minute windows
to line up with Divination. You could almost just scrap them entirely and add 2% extra damage onto Divination.

It's a shame the idea of cards buffing allies is interesting, but not the way they have executed it.

[AnotherPerson]

The current AST makes me feel like I'm embodying the powers of the stars, which is great for identity and immersion. Earthly Star having a huge range fits inline with Endwalker's theme imo, and feels great to use now I know that everyone isn't able to just slightly walk out of my Star's range. If they do, then I know they're doing that on purpose and thus don't need to adjust to them.

I think AST and Astrodyne is moving to the right direction. It works well as a Lv 50 skill. Astrodyne just needs to be a bit more impactful at higher levels and needs more cohesion with Minor Arcana. Perhaps make Minor Arcana just blend both Lady of Crowns/Lord of Crowns to do both things under Astrodyne. Under Lady of Crowns, Lord of Crowns becomes an additional effect that does damage scaled based on Astrodyne's seals. Under Lord of Crowns, Lady of Crowns's healing becomes an additional effect that is scaled based on Astrodyne's seals. That, or open up the last Heaven's Gate under the effects of Astrodyne. The seals will determine how effective the Heaven's Gate is, or something along those lines.

As for Redraw, I think if Minor Arcana granted a different seal like the Shadow Bringer's 5.3 Sleeve Draw iteration, except you get a seal when you use Minor Arcana rather on Crown play. Then, the problem of bad RNG would be solved & largely mitigated so just having 1 redraw per Draw would be okay.

[GrimGale]

I'd love if Astrodyne's reward was like a strong Star-themed DPS and Healing spell that you can use instead of Fall Malefic for that 15s window, rather than a 5% buff.

[Sylvant]

Absolutely, whilst it's fair to say that the old cards divide opinion, the whole old mechanic of aligning a bunch of buffs, regens and such and extending the lot was super rewarding.

This. While I personally prefer old cards, the other major factor for why I picked up AST in HW was that sense of buff/regen/card manipulation. Made me feel like I always had to think about what I was doing and plan ahead. To some extent, I think the current "delayed healing" abilities fill the hole left by the loss of the time magic skills.


On a side note, I think Astrodyne is as much of a problem as Redraw. The whole "seal" gimmick hasn't really worked out in my perspective, at least, from what they've experimented with. I wish they'd either;
a) Rework Astrodyne to give different benefits based on seal order (kind of like MNK) and give Redraw more use. Would give AST some decision making outside of just throwing their cards at anything that breathes and praying to RNGesus.
b) Remove the seal system entirely and bring back Royal Road and Spread (keeping the current cards because "everything has to be balance"). Maybe make any spread card ignore role type and give a smaller % buff.

Either way, I think the current card system feels chunky, funky, and clunky in design.