Yikes Astro has issues

[HyoMinPark]

Used to remember them when they had value. Now the colour visual cue is the only thing needed really.

Same. I’ll always miss those days. Now they cling to relevance only by the stupid seal—which also are now clinging to relevance via Astrodyne. I don’t think I’ll ever not be a salty former AST….

And indeed. But sometimes people think of things/look at things a bit differently, so always nice to have a different “option” to look at them.

[Payadopa]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

[HyoMinPark]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

I think you misunderstand. AST RNG has always had some way of managing/mitigating it. In HW, it was Redraw and Royal Road to boost effects of a card in your Spread—take those crappy cards you don’t need and turn them into something better. In SB, they added Minor Arcana so that all those Spires you got that you didn’t need an AOE Royal Road for could be put to something better (a free oGCD heal for the tank or a damage card). ShB gave us 3 Redraw charges to (hopefully) give us the final seal we needed for a 3-seal Diviniation; and, if all else failed, the revamped Lord/Lady at least let you play the card as a single-target buff. With the addition of a second stack of ED, RNG Lady being a single-target heal became less valuable compared to SB, where you didn’t have 2 stacks of, quite frankly, the best healer oGCD in the game.

Astrodyne doesn’t have any RNG mitigation—Clarifying Draw doesn’t even ensure you can draw a different seal to try and get a 2-seal Astrodyne, and you can only use it once. You get what you get, sorry you’re stuck with a crappy (MP) buff (that you don’t even need anyways because ASTs are a well of bottomless mana unless things are getting REALLY REALLY REEEEEEALLY bad), suck it up buttercup lol. Aside from them putting Astrodyne in the game to just keep the dumb seal mechanic relevant in the first place, it’s a horribly designed skill.

Unfortunately, with the buff aspect of it being so incredibly negligible that you can almost ignore it won’t help the developers make it more meaningful. Instead the arguments surrounding it will just shift to “well it’s not even that much of a loss if you don’t get 3 seals so why does it matter if it feels like absolute crap to use”. When you have an ability that feels like crap to use or has zero impact when you do use it, it’s bad design. While Astrodyne isn’t nearly as pointless as the SB lily system, I personally put it around that level in terms of design brilliance.

[RinaShinomiya]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

Nobody wants 3 seal after 3 draws but drawing the same seal you already have in your hand with Redraw is just dumb. I wouldnt mind if redraw could give one of the seals i already have i just dont wanna redraw in a Bole from a Balance.

[Rilifane]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

On the contrary: it's not about making AST boring but rewarding and interesting to play.
Lord/ Lady are two buttons for a boring mini nuke or party heal you'll likely never need because AST is a nuclear heal bomb without it.
Astrodyne's buffs are so negligible that it's not even noticable if you ignore it because AST is the healer that worries least about MP unless they need to chainress multiple times in a fight and the gigabrain skill to deal with RNG is "reroll and be stuck with whatever you got" while the dps gain at 2 or even the elusive 3 seals is still so low you lose more dps by clipping your dot by tick a few times.
I found ShB AST with old Sleeve Draw more interesting and rewarding to play because I had more ways to manipulate RNG and had the choice to Lord/ Lady a card I didn't need for seals or that would destroy my seal setup and possibly align it with the burst of a dps. And ShB AST wasn't the pinnacle of healer design either.
You don't have any halfway decent way to make use of what you got, it's just "press and deal with whatever you got without options, enjoy". ShB already stripped down the options to use cards by a lot and it still had more options than EW AST. That's saying something.

[Liam_Harper]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

Because if you have very little influence over something, you can pretty much ignore it. Astrodyne can just be treated as mana + a small self buff. Once or twice a fight it procs a slightly bigger self-buff that has no noticeable impact whatsoever. What you find "interesting" is the visual slot machine flavor even though it doesn't do anything.

When you have 3 redraw and need to align your seals, the player actually has to interact with the mechanic of their class. By using your toolkit and paying attention to how your class works you're rewarded. You can't just ignore that it exists.

Sometimes I feel players like Astrodyne and MA because it removes the accountability from their hands. It doesn't matter if they screw up, get lucky, get unlucky, get 1 seal, get 3 seals, roll extra Lady's, it's not their fault, it's RNG's fault and it's of such little consequence anyway it won't impact their performance that much. Then they can wrap themselves in delusion and feel like they're playing well by healing with a Lady instead of their numerous other oGCD's, or landing a 3 seal.

But I've grumbled about AST cards enough and I honestly don't feel the developers are capable of making an interactive, balanced and rewarding system. At this stage I'd just settle for rolling Draw/Play and MA/Crown play into single buttons.

[Payadopa]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[TheWise]

Why are some people so hell bent on making AST as boring as the other healers? If you don't like RNG there are three other healers that don't have it? I don't want to use Draw 3 times and be guaranteed all 3 seals. I actually like that aspect since it keeps things more interesting. I'm also happy Lord and Lady are back even though I really don't like it's 2 buttons.

RNG is not the issue...its juggling symbols, playing yugioh like a mad man (2-3x the speed of shb ast), healing/dpsing, dealing with mechanics, and CLIPPING LIKE A MAD MAN because sometimes just doing offglobals is the better option

[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.