Astrologian & RNG: What happened?

[StickyQuote]

So, I generally don't post to the forums or even bother coming here at all. I feel like in the grand scheme of things, my feedback probably means little to nothing to both devs and players alike. Never cleared a Savage tier, never did much difficult unless you count an Extreme or two, but I figured I would politely leave my two cents on the state of this job, having lived through 5.0 and now 6.0:

As far as I can tell, Shadowbringers did quite a lot of negative things to the job that took till 5.3 to address it all. MP issues, lack of potencies--it took a lot of work to get it to its 5.3-to-5.5 state. One thing I noticed at the time was one of the main reasons different cards were removed. Consistency and lowering the amount of RNG on the kit.

I adapted to these changes begrudgingly, as did many others, but I could see why they were made.

For the changes in Endwalker, I genuinely can't tell who they were made for and why in regards to Astrologian. EW reintroduced levels of RNG 5.0 had burned away, we now have a seal system in which there are times we cannot physically draw all 3 cards needed to activate it in a way that Sleeve Draw used to remedy for 5.0 seals. To add to this, Arcana cards are back, which are a 50/50 chance at either damage--something every healer job probably would love to do more of push 2 buttons for--or healing every... 120 seconds was it? Haven't looked in a bit.

Everyone I talk to about the RNG of seals is telling me that I shouldn't be worrying about getting all 3 and how miniscule the all 3 boosts are to be fishing for them. If this was to replace Divination being the core of pushing for 3 seals, it's not engineered anywhere near as smoothly. The boosts feel arbitrary and selfish for the Astro, and I say this as a mostly solo lone player, so I can't imagine content trying to maximize this.

Well, I am worried about the RNG of the job. I thought that the changes of 5.0 were meant to nuke RNG about the kit, but now it's reintroduced in a worse format? Probably going to continue these thoughts in a 2nd post.

[StickyQuote]

For Astro in its current state, it feels like its twice as complex as the other healers for little to no unique payoff anymore. I feel like compared to the other healers I have twice as many buttons to press as them to do just as much. Our biggest new toy in Macrocosmos is an amazing heal, but it adds yet another manual-or-timed healing skill to keep track of. While I don't actively do content (yet), with several of our biggest heal both doing damage and healing, we should be fitting these between Malefic casts, and thus it starts to get very crowded on the oGCD side of things very quickly.

Multiple times as I got Sage to 90, I would think: 'Wow, you guys on Sage have it easy, healing all this damage for only a couple skills and getting to do damage while you do it.' Sage is so well designed it genuinely makes Astro look like it's complex for no good reason. I'd actually argue that this is the case for the other 2 healers too, but I don't play them as much to accurately say as much.

Give some of our MP recovery to White Mage at least, now we have waaaaay more than we need. There's a bunch of other little nitpicks, but as someone who has been quiet and lived through a good portion of Astro changes, I wanted to give my perspective as a player who mostly does everything on their own, how it feels in a vacuum outside of group content. I can't imagine this feels anywhere near as good to play in content though, if its this hectic before a large amount of mechanics from bosses.

I've been quite enjoying EW as a whole and I'm fairly certain that much like 5.0's Astro changes, plenty of tweaks are to come. Sorry to hear that some people would rip you a new one for things as simple as balance in a game.

That said, if I could make one suggestion, even if it would add a bit to our button bloat issue on Astro as is.. please, please, pleeeease reintroduce Sleeve Draw so we can more easily maximize our seals again. Nothing on the job feels worse than basically having less damage--no matter how small--for RNG's sake.

[GrimGale]

Doing an opener and drawing three identical seals in a row is the worst feeling, especially when you redraw and you still get a different card with the same seal.

[Archwizard]

Just gonna drop this here from another AST thread, since it appears to be relevant to much the same discussions:

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.

Looking back on this post, I'm also realizing that part of my suggestions may be a selfish desire to have AST's oGCDs be just a crumb less busy with regards to the card system since I basically suggested removing like 7 APM, since right now it feels like I'm double-weaving every GCD on top of my healing duties, and it's kind of overwhelming after a lengthy fight.

[Seraphor]

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.

This is exactly what I've suggested in the past, before EW's rework.
Something like:
1 Solar Seal: 3% damage up
1 Lunar Seal: 3% refresh
1 Celestial Seal: 3% recast reduction

2nd of the same Seal = +2% for 5% total
3rd of the same Seal = +1% for 6% total

So if you had one of each, you'd get a 3% increase in all three categories for a net gain of 9% spread out, but if you had 3 identical seals then you'd get 6% in ONE category.

At least this way the seals all feel like they do different things, and you may want to pay a tiny bit of attention to fishing for the seals you want, if for example you're running low on MP or you're trying to optimise your damage.

And again, reverting Minor Arcana as you say would work out better too. You give a slightly more potent buff to the other player, while forgoing your seal and your own personal buff.

Literally, they could have introduced these new Astrodyne and Divination effects like they did, but kept the actual draw and play system identical to Shadowbringers, and it would be 100% better.

[Xtro99]

So, I generally don't post to the forums or even bother coming here at all. I feel like in the grand scheme of things, my feedback probably means little to nothing to both devs and players alike. Never cleared a Savage tier, never did much difficult unless you count an Extreme or two, but I figured I would politely leave my two cents on the state of this job, having lived through 5.0 and now 6.0:

As far as I can tell, Shadowbringers did quite a lot of negative things to the job that took till 5.3 to address it all. MP issues, lack of potencies--it took a lot of work to get it to its 5.3-to-5.5 state. One thing I noticed at the time was one of the main reasons different cards were removed. Consistency and lowering the amount of RNG on the kit.

I adapted to these changes begrudgingly, as did many others, but I could see why they were made.

For the changes in Endwalker, I genuinely can't tell who they were made for and why in regards to Astrologian. EW reintroduced levels of RNG 5.0 had burned away, we now have a seal system in which there are times we cannot physically draw all 3 cards needed to activate it in a way that Sleeve Draw used to remedy for 5.0 seals. To add to this, Arcana cards are back, which are a 50/50 chance at either damage--something every healer job probably would love to do more of push 2 buttons for--or healing every... 120 seconds was it? Haven't looked in a bit.

Everyone I talk to about the RNG of seals is telling me that I shouldn't be worrying about getting all 3 and how miniscule the all 3 boosts are to be fishing for them. If this was to replace Divination being the core of pushing for 3 seals, it's not engineered anywhere near as smoothly. The boosts feel arbitrary and selfish for the Astro, and I say this as a mostly solo lone player, so I can't imagine content trying to maximize this.

Well, I am worried about the RNG of the job. I thought that the changes of 5.0 were meant to nuke RNG about the kit, but now it's reintroduced in a worse format? Probably going to continue these thoughts in a 2nd post.

The 3 stack dyne effect is so underwhelming, It's just not worth it. I'd spend more time shuffling through cards than actually buffing party members, so i just use whatever card pops out and use dyne as a backup lucid (which already feels like overkill since it's nearly impossible to run out of mana even without astrodyne)

I personally don't like the new minor arcana system, either the CD is too big or the effects are too weak, especially Lord and I'm usually just praying that i get Lady since the extra heal has its uses, lord feels like a big nothing burger. If I could spend the regular cards from my deck as minor arcana as we could in SHB, that'd be great and would feel less hindered by rng and just give draw 3 stacks.

All in all, I don't see AST as more complex, it just has button bloat issues.

[deusdormit]

I think cards need a overhaul, no astrodyne no minor arcana, (no Divination maybe?) What if went crazy removed those 7 related buttons and add only 3. Card 1, Card 2, Card 3, like a tarot spread and change each Card to be a unique aoe again. You can't Redraw or undraw it just draws randomly when you push it and you can hold onto it for as long as you like for burst or mitigation times and push it again to activate it. Also as far as old content they may start with only 1 then later 2 then later 3 grow with job leveling increasing options and complexity of decisions. You essentially gain 6 different possible tools with again ONLY 3 BUTTONS

[Rolder50]

Just gonna drop this here from another AST thread, since it appears to be relevant to much the same discussions

I predict that people would still complain about RNG, but it would just be "Wtf I can't guarantee the optimal spread of seals!" or "I keep getting Lunar seals when I have plenty of MP!" or things like that.

[ArcaneFox]

My suggestion:

Have Draw able the user to draw 3 cards with their own buttons. One slot for each Seal. The only choice needed is if it's a Melee or Ranged card.

Once all three cards are used, Draw turns into Divination or a seperate Divination becomes available to activate.

(This assumes Play and Redraw are removed, leaving this as a +1 to buttons added for AST)

Some people may notice this sounds like Ninja Mudras, and yes that's how I thought about it. But it resolves three seals

‐--------------
Then there comes the problem of being limited to Three Cards per Draw. I cannot in good faith say add Sleeve Draw once more and let it let you draw again and activate Divination again.

I am unsure really on how to resolve the three cards per 120s window.

Maybe have Astrodyne still as an ability to use three seals when Divination is on CD. And have Draw on 30 seconds CD? 60s?
---------------
The only challenge provided for the class in this case is playing cards on proper roles.

_____________________________

Now then you have to resolve Button Bloat.

Couple Simple Suggestions:
1. Minor Arcana > Crown Play 1 button
2. Change Celestial Intersection to be 8% Mitigation instead of Shield. And it upgrades into Exaltation 10% plus delayed heal. AST doesn't need to match WHM with Aquaviel and Benison.

Just a couple abilities I personally don't find useful:
1. Synastry (I literally have used this 4 times since I started in Stormblood)

2. Horoscope
Perhaps let it be a lower level weaker/simpler Macrocosmos that becomes Macrocosmos?
-or-
Change it altogether and make it an evolved and stronger Divination at lv90 (higher than 6% party buff. Perhaps 8% or 10%)

[I think with everything I suggest, that's 3 buttons less?]

EDIT: Fixing some Spelling and Adding one thing

[Zolvolt]

Redraw should guarantee a card of a different seal then what you drew