Thread: AST Adjustments 6.2

Yep that s true. Its like Liam said it. We have a lot of great ideas here in the thread! If its like my idea or from taurus + plus the massiv feedback. I am glade thats a lot of people love the idea to combain utility and dps push. There is no "THATS OP!!!elf!!!" And SE listens sometimes to the player feedback. But this is not shown much.

At least I am happy that we have a good time talk about the Job I like/play since 2015. It's true that the astro feels like an endless construction site. But there were good moments and now I see what the devs want. I hope you take your time and get away from the melee and ranged cards

Originally Posted by QooEr

this was, again, not even fixed by square enix. it was fixed by fflogs introducing rdps and thus killing padding almost entirely.

if fflogs had stayed the same we would still have asts padding players by giving them crappy 6% balances all run long.

Forgive me; maybe my wires are crossing in a weird way, but I'm pretty sure that's quite literally all we can do now, at least with the cards. That or 3%.
To be honest, I don't think fflogs really fixed anything (specifically for AST), nor would it have fixed anything if the cards never changed, simply because the game is entirely focused upon DPS. The crowd who fished, would continue to fish, and efficiency is always chased.

Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Forgive me; maybe my wires are crossing in a weird way, but I'm pretty sure that's quite literally all we can do now, at least with the cards. That or 3%.
To be honest, I don't think fflogs really fixed anything (specifically for AST), nor would it have fixed anything if the cards never changed, simply because the game is entirely focused upon DPS. The crowd who fished, would continue to fish, and efficiency is always chased.

im a bit confused myself about what youre trying to tell me, so im just going to list how the conversation went (and is going)
1 person A said they ruined ast because of players complaining
2 person B refutes by saying that player feedback didnt ruin ast
3 person C says "actually, it was DPS player feedback that they listened to because DPS players wanted to pad their logs more". to me this makes the implication that since we dont do balance feeding to pad parses anymore, the issue of log padding is somewhat fixed.
4 i tell person D that log padding was only fixed because of a change in fflogs itself, and not because of any change they made to ast. if fflogs had stayed the same asts would be using "crappy 6% balances" (aka the cards we have now) to pad a single player nonstop.
5 your reply

yes we would still had been balance fishing if we had rdps back in stormblood because given a choice between support or dps in a game where dps is all that ultimately matters, the decision is obvious.
that said i dont agree with what they did to cards, theres better and more creative ways to decouple support from offense and to give more reliability to RNG cards.

i hope this clears it up

Thanks to the homogenization of the skillsets, you can't really scrap any ability that the other twinjob has as well (ie all the bubbles, intersection/benison etc) so basically the only buttons they can drop are job identity ones sadly...

That aside, I think the PvP versions of the jobs are versions how the devs would envision how the job flavour would be if they had less restrictions.
In ASTs case it seems to be centered around fast casting and support/buff oriented.


Tons of text incoming

----------------------------
I'd scrap
- play (merged into draw)
- crown play (minor arcana draw now plays the minor arcana version of the current card again)
- undraw (that's what minor arcana will be for again)
- redraw (removes endless drawing and fishing for the "statistically best" cards - this job has rng as identity)
- astrodyne (that one skill why button bloat became so apparent and "replaced" again with divination)

New buttons:
- double cast (new core mechanic derived from the pvp identity)
- sleeve draw (the infamous skill now will let you select 1 card of your choice)


Core mechanic reworks:

Double Cast:

adds double cast as a job core system --> casts a slightly alternate version of the previous casted spell as ability for 0 mp cost
Up to 2 charges and the effect changes as soon as you cast any of the other eligable spells that would trigger double cast

--> benefic (instant, cleanses one debuff, deletes all your mp why are you double casting this? - )
--> benefic II (instant, restores critical HP)
--> asp benefic (triggers the nocturnal version of it instead of regen)
--> helios (instant)
--> asp helios (triggers the nocturnal version instead)
--> malefic (instant, reduces recast time of the next double cast)
--> gravity (instant, 10s generic slow debuff on all enemies)
--> macrocosmos (triggers the current healing effect of microcosmos without spending it, halves recast time)


Card Draw System:

Cards gain their unique flavour back with now all of them being aoe centered around the target. This will reduce target switching when the party isn't too spread out.
Redraw gets removed in favour of the minor arcana system to keep button bloat low.
Played cards grant a seal for divination - Unwanted cards can be turned into minor arcana. Draw will not repeat cards until all 6 cards were played at least once or if divination was used. If all cards were drawn without using divination, the pool resets and shuffles again.

Balance: Increases determination - flat damage up buffs would probably be too powerful otherwise. In flavour of the duality of the DET stat
Bole: Decreases damage recieved - adds a defensive option and good minor arcana option if not needed at that given time

Arrow: Increases movement speed - we all got a taste through SCH how good this is can be, I think spell/skillspeed buffs would mess rotations
Spear: Increases critical hit rate - many will probably would want to get this one but it's less impactful as you cannot get dupes within 2mins

Ewer: Refreshes HP and MP - I think only MP would be basically useless so it'll be a good additional healing option of things go south
Spire: Increases direct hit rate - this would round up the last of the 3 dps increasing cards


Minor Arcana system:

This is mostly used to turn the current drawn card into the opposite card of the pairing, albeit weaker version of that said card, in favour to the situation you're currently facing:
- The old pairings apply (balance/bole, arrow/spear, ewer/spire)
- You'll have a support or damage up version if RNG was not in favour of your current needs.
- Played minor arcana will not grant an arcana seal for divination!


Sleeve Draw:

Turns 6 spells into their respective cards that can be played by pressing the card you want to have on demand.
Kind of like the PvP three Mudra skill that lets you choose 1 card you immediately want to play. This will guarantee you at least 1 party damage buff every 120s for openers or on demand utility.


Divination and the Seal System:

--> every 2 minutes triggers the effects of up to 3 seals (this will add the flavour of the oracle side of this job instead of generic damage up which you'll be guaranteed to get thanks to sleeve draw). Does not require 3 seals so can be used with sleeve draw in openers for a solar seal divination. Resets the draw card pool so if you want to use up your draw pool, you can delay this ability if you still haven't played your desired card.
Ideally you'd want to play at least 3 cards with 3 different seals as same seals will not stack (think of as the bard's new codas).

- solar seal (balance/bole) - grants damage up
- lunar seal (arrow/spear) - grants cast time down (gcd remains unaffected)
- celestial seal (ewer/spire) - grants defense up


Synastry:

that one button everyone forgets will now grant a buff like "dance partner" that will also trigger any played card around that player as well. This will ensure you'll be able to cover distant targets as well since cards are aoe around the target now


Overall you'll have 3 buttons less to worry about (2 if you slotted in undraw before) and bring back some of the old AST identity with just enough tools to fight RNG.