Yikes Astro has issues

[HyoMinPark]

I'm not a big fan of the seals in general but I think it's better than what we had in ShB. If it were up to me I'd bring back the old SB system. All this fishing business didn't affect me, but here we are.

Fan of the pre-ShB AST cards aside, there was still a measure of “fishing” involved—but really only at the super high levels of play where AOE Balance was God and others were just subpar. I can recognize that, at the very least. HOWEVER. I still preferred the card flavor over what we got in ShB, and I’ll never be able to deny that. Even if it’s just me being an AST boomer or whatever kids these days would call someone like me.

That said, I liked the busy aspect of ShB AST cards only because there was just this immense satisfaction of pulling off that ridiculous opener with OG ShB Sleeve Draw, and it just felt good. I personally didn’t have much comment on the Sleeve Draw changes in ShB—I took it either way at the end of the day; but I respect the loss of busy-ness/finger gymnastics others missed from it.

And as far as Astrodyne is concerned, to me it feels more like SE is throwing us a bone to keep a semblance of what AST used to be. Still a bit on the shallow side but, again, better than ShB's version.

I do have to agree with this. I think they were trying to return “buff flavor” to the job, but also kind of ignored what the original buff flavor was that AST offered. It wasn’t about buffing ourselves, but the party when it came to various card effects: AOE Balance, Enhanced or Extended Spear on a BRD/MNK, Enhanced Arrow on a BLM, using that Bole on a tank in a dungeon pull so you had more DPS uptime, holding that Ewer for yourself in case you died because this EX party doesn’t have a physical ranged (so no Refresh) and the BLM is being stingy and won’t Mana Shift you, etc.. That was the buff flavor ASTs like. Not this pointless Astrodyne garbage.

As much disdain as I had for the ShB card system as an AST boomer, I’d rather it over Astrodyne. Even if Divination wasn’t my favorite raid buff.

With that being said, AST's MP generation needs to severely nerfed, I'm sorry. lol
What even is the point of an MP bar if I never go below 90% unless I go out of my wait to spam heals or raise.

I would like to see the return of actual mana management. Not to the extent of where you are begging for people to please don’t die because you can’t spare the mana to Raise (ShB AST was like this at times before they added some mana regen to it—I just think they went super overboard there). But we definitely don’t need this bottomless pool of mana where you can ignore the MP bar or throw it off in a corner somewhere because it doesn’t matter. As long as AST isn’t MP negative, that’s all I care about.

All things considered the current AST is as good as it's gonna get with SE's narrow mindset. I don't want to say I'm super happy about the changes but I'm glad they gave it at least some flavour back, if that makes sense.

I just wish Astrodyne’s flavor was meaningful. That the buffs you get from it have virtually no impact just makes it pointless skill bloat on top of other pointless skill bloat the job already has. Make Astrodyne more meaningful and give some sort of RNGesus mitigation, and I’m down for the way it functions. Even if it will just be a shadow of the buff flavor AST once had.

[Liam_Harper]

All things considered the current AST is as good as it's gonna get with SE's narrow mindset. I don't want to say I'm super happy about the changes but I'm glad they gave it at least some flavour back, if that makes sense.

I think that's the stage many players are at. Fairly certain the Devs can't do any better, not really happy with the changes ...but hey, it has a vague flavor that reminds them of something they used to enjoy, so they'll settle for it. We've given up hope.

[Payadopa]

At this stage I'd just settle for rolling Draw/Play and MA/Crown play into single buttons.

Man, that would be amazing. One can always dream.

[Avenheit]

Minor Arcana and Crown Play should be the same damn button.

[Archwizard]

I feel like AST's top priority problem is just the sheer volume of buttons it has, many of which don't feel impactful to use because they're just extra knobs for controlling the randomness of its card system... which just gets progressively busier each expansion.

So, a couple thoughts:

• Rework the Astrodyne effects. Each seal should have one specific effect attached to it (for instance, Haste on Celestial seals, Refresh on Lunar seals, Potency Up on Solar seals).
  For each additional copy of a single seal that you stack, the potency of that one effect given by Astrodyne grows, but with a diminishing return (so 3 of the same seal is only, say, 1.75x as effective rather than 3x). If you have all 3 unique seals, you get the spread of all 3 effects as now; if you have duplicate seals, you get a slightly stronger version of each effect you doubled- or tripled-down on to compensate.
  While still retaining the element of randomness and encouraging a spread for best effect, this should provide consolation so that bad RNG strings are no longer a punishment for the player.

• Rework Minor Arcana. Go back to the old system where it transmuted your active Major Arcana into a Crowns card, but have it provide a consistent effect regardless of what card you transmute, or at least have a trait where it does. Something where you don't want to necessarily game Minor Arcana over using Draw effectively, but can use it to safely dump a card you don't want without having to think further on it.
  For instance, when you activate Minor Arcana, the cooldown of Draw is reduced by a few seconds, in addition to changing the card and gaining its own effects.
  • Rework Lady of Crowns specifically, or remove it.
    Lord of Crowns is a semi-effective dump card since cards are always being drawn in a combat situation to enhance ongoing damage; if you get Lord during a pull, you dump it immediately without a second thought because oGCD damage is always valuable, even coming from the hands of an Astrologian. The current Lady of Crowns is, instead, ideally held for a scenario where healing is valuable... but its healing potency is so minor and niche so that it won't turn the tide even if you can use it without overhealing, and even in a scenario where all healing is "necessary", it's unreliable to obtain in the first place.
    Lady of Crowns' effect should instead be of equal value to Lord's -- which in this case is to say, consistent even if functionally inconsequential.
    If this cannot be done without making it the same effect as Lord or creating something players would try to game... then simply scrap Lady. Minor Arcana was made to mitigate the RNG of a 6 Major Arcana system; retaining two outcomes within that mitigation element is already extremely counterproductive. (And then Minor Arcana suddenly has a consistent effect.)
    And heck, if Minor Arcana only had one outcome, you could even save an oGCD and just have Minor Arcana activate its effects directly instead of using Play again.
  • Whether Lord of Crowns retains the current/original "direct damage" iteration or returns to Shadowbringers' "consolation buff" iteration is... largely irrelevant here and a matter of design preference. I have no objection to the current one staying as-is; personally, I even think having an alternative option that doesn't just tread the same ground as the Major Arcana is an idea with its own potential, even for niche scenarios.
    I will say if it does go back to the ShB iteration however, absolutely scrap Lady. Just have one card that gives a flat damage buff regardless of what job you use it on, slightly weaker than if you'd used a specialized Major Arcana but stronger than if you'd used one on the wrong role (so, 4-5%). If you don't have a ranged DPS in your party, choose whether to Minor Arcana away your ranged cards for a better buff on melee.

• Remove Crown Play and Undraw... and possibly Redraw. With the changes to both Astrodyne and Minor Arcana above, you wouldn't necessarily need Redraw.
  Not to mention repeatedly Redrawing just never feels good -- it wastes multiple oGCDs and feels like "RNG just screwed me over... twice." At least when you were discarding via Minor Arcana, you had a fallback.