Quote Originally Posted by Liam_Harper View Post
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..