Endwalker AST has too many buttons, and other issues

[Kanehana]

Same. I've been rearranging my buttons as of late and at the very least I think the Minor Arcana and Crown Play card would work fine as one combined button. I don't mind redraw if I'm fishing for a different seal, and undraw seems to be useful for controller players, though (or so I've heard in the past).

[HyoMinPark]

Last thing some classes need are less buttons. They've dumbed some of them down enough.

Consolidating Draw and Crown Play would not be dumbing the job down. It would remove needless button bloat that really doesn’t need to be a thing. There’s zero reason for Crown Play to even be an ability, since Minor Arcana in SB functioned as >press MA to generate Lord/Lady >press MA again to deploy Lord/Lady. Why they decided Crown Play was needed is beyond me.

But I’ve taken issue with the card system since ShB changes. Astrodyne is just terrible design with the new Redraw and I hate it so much. Personally, I never saw the need for AST to really have a single target buff on itself.

[Vesah]

I loved my AST, now I am so conflicted on my AST OR SGE as my Main job for EW

[Miziliti]

I'm so glad seals no longer effect divination. Then, there is Astrodyne... forcing seals to exist. 99.9% of the time I only get 2 seals effect. Rarely get the 3rd effect like old divination was. Redraw is so bad I stop bother with it. Astrodyne that require 3 seals to use while I can only use 2 cards in the opener, why? If sleeve draw stays, we can start with Astrodyne in the opener. Then again, Astrodyne is so unnecessary to the point I can do content without and will noticed zero benefit with it.

Minor Arcana... Why can't I draw my card out of combat? When I need heal, I get Lord. When I need dps, I get Lady. Crown play is also very unnecessary.

Exaltation... 8s too short for damage reduction. 60s too long for such garbo effect. 500 potency too low to be meaningful.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm so glad seals no longer effect divination. Then, there is Astrodyne... forcing seals to exist. 99.9% of the time I only get 2 seals effect. Rarely get the 3rd effect like old divination was. Redraw is so bad I stop bother with it. Astrodyne that require 3 seals to use while I can only use 2 cards in the opener, why? If sleeve draw stays, we can start with Astrodyne in the opener. Then again, Astrodyne is so unnecessary to the point I can do content without and will noticed zero benefit with it.

Astrodyne sucking aside, to get your three cards, you’d essentially Draw pre-pull, and then pray that you get a group who can wait 30 seconds for your second charge to come off cooldown again. In EXs, Savages, or Ultimates (or any half-optimized group), ideally you can get something close to this. That said, I personally don’t miss Sleeve Draw. In the current situation with AST gaining so many pointless buttons, Sleeve would just be another button adding to the current issue of bloat.

But it doesn’t solve the issue of the seals themselves being crap, Redraw being crap, and Astrodyne being crap. Astrodyne exists to keep the seal mechanic relevant; but the seals themselves exist to keep the 4 of the cards relevant. Without them, you could just reduce the system to 2 cards: one for ranged and one for melee. Heck, you could even reduce it to just one card and make it a flat 5% single-target buff. It’s a terrible system.

[Bsrking5]

They obviously don’t want players on controller to play AST only WHM.

Oh, no one told me. Guess i should stop even thou i never had any issues.

[Saefinn]

They obviously don’t want players on controller to play AST only WHM.

As a controller player, I manage just fine. But I use the Expanded Crossbars option, which I highly recommend to any controller player because it doubles your reach without extra effort. It takes a little getting used to at first, but it's a godsend.

But I do agree that it could with with a trim. Draw & Minor Arcana should get swapped out for their respective "Play" buttons. Also, make it so when you've used Redraw it becomes Undraw. So if you really do want to roll again and not use the card you've got, the aforementioned change won't get in the way and this would save on Undraw taking up extra space, especially as you can only use Redraw once per Draw.

With my current setup, this would be ideal because I could move Astrodyne and Divination into those places. and stick Macrocosmos where I've currently got Divination and it'll make sure use of the space I've got.

Endwalker AST has too many buttons, and it is unnecessary. The Draw action should change to the drawn card so that it can be played, like in Heavensward, to avoid having a second Play button. Likewise with Major Arcana, the action should change to the drawn card. The extra two Play buttons makes hotbar layout awkward.

Additionally, the ground target area for Earthly Star is way too big. Even if the star effects this area, the placement target should be small, the size of the star itself, similar in size to Ninja's Shukuchi. The affected area can be easily seen by the star particles once the star is placed down. The massive ground target makes it difficult to accurately position the star, and is hard on the eyes / looks messy when placing.

I disagree that Earthly Star size is too big. The amount of times I've sworn under my breath when you plan your Earthly Star and people move outside of it...this deals with that problem.

[RinaShinomiya]

Last thing some classes need are less buttons. They've dumbed some of them down enough.

This isn't a case of of dumbing the job down. There are at least 6 buttons that don't need to exist in AST's toolkit because they aren't doing anything other than bloat the hotbar.
- Why does Benefic I need to be a separate button, nobody is gonna use it when Benefic II is available. I'm sorry but Freecure and Ehanced Benefic traits are really bad.
- Crown Play and Play are unnecessary and the cool stuff you can do with Play suffers from macro queuing system (or lack there of).
- Why does Undraw still exist, its literally less than useless since 5.0.
- Post-SGE its really hard to justify Aspected Spells and the Dot existing as separate buttons, like AST is the easiest Job to apply this QoL Sage introduced. Add a "Aspection" button that turns Benefic II into Aspected Benefic, Helios into Aspected Helios, Malefic into Aspected Malefic (Combust).

There 6 button removed and only 1 added and the class plays exactly as it does now. And i didn't even mention Redraw or Astrodyne which honestly just makes the Job twice more busy than it has to for virtually no benefit.
Feel free to add more buttons via this free'd up space. How about we add AoE Dots again? Aspected Gravity lets go! So much room for new stuff!
And thanks to this fat trimming controller players don't have to deal with 34 abilities when 32 is the most they can comfortably use via the XHB and WXHB.

[CrimsonGunner]

This isn't a case of of dumbing the job down. There are at least 6 buttons that don't need to exist in AST's toolkit because they aren't doing anything other than bloat the hotbar.
- Why does Benefic I need to be a separate button, nobody is gonna use it when Benefic II is available. I'm sorry but Freecure and Ehanced Benefic traits are really bad.
- Crown Play and Play are unnecessary and the cool stuff you can do with Play suffers from macro queuing system (or lack there of).
- Why does Undraw still exist, its literally less than useless since 5.0.
- Post-SGE its really hard to justify Aspected Spells and the Dot existing as separate buttons, like AST is the easiest Job to apply this QoL Sage introduced. Add a "Aspection" button that turns Benefic II into Aspected Benefic, Helios into Aspected Helios, Malefic into Aspected Malefic (Combust).

There 6 button removed and only 1 added and the class plays exactly as it does now. And i didn't even mention Redraw or Astrodyne which honestly just makes the Job twice more busy than it has to for virtually no benefit.
Feel free to add more buttons via this free'd up space. How about we add AoE Dots again? Aspected Gravity lets go! So much room for new stuff!
And thanks to this fat trimming controller players don't have to deal with 34 abilities when 32 is the most they can comfortably use via the XHB and WXHB.

to add to the options of button removal, i would throw astrodyn to the mix and simply make it a trait that automatically activate instead due to how redraw and the current seal system is right now.

[Basherr]

Astrodyne sucking aside, to get your three cards, you’d essentially Draw pre-pull, and then pray that you get a group who can wait 30 seconds for your second charge to come off cooldown again. In EXs, Savages, or Ultimates (or any half-optimized group), ideally you can get something close to this. That said, I personally don’t miss Sleeve Draw. In the current situation with AST gaining so many pointless buttons, Sleeve would just be another button adding to the current issue of bloat.

But it doesn’t solve the issue of the seals themselves being crap, Redraw being crap, and Astrodyne being crap. Astrodyne exists to keep the seal mechanic relevant; but the seals themselves exist to keep the 4 of the cards relevant. Without them, you could just reduce the system to 2 cards: one for ranged and one for melee. Heck, you could even reduce it to just one card and make it a flat 5% single-target buff. It’s a terrible system.

That's my issue currently, I want to like Astrologian but the card's don't feel in any way rewarding to use.