Thread: AST Adjustments 6.2

I am not particularly unhappy with the current AST as I still feel like the Healers all feel unique and sometimes things can be exaggerated on how boring something is, its very subjective and dependent on the content you do. If there was one thing I'd ask for is making some superfluous buttons just a TAD more useful.

Now I never played Heavensward, Stormblood AST but there seem to have been some good ideas in there, particularly Royal Road, Time Dilation. I think most people who are not high on nostalgia can see why the 6 diff buffs AST used to have was a nightmare for balance and how the current buffs although more same-y are not as problematic.

My suggestion although probably not likely judging from previous changes would be to have a semi-return to SHB Minor Arcana with some Royal Road flavor. Being able to randomly draw a buff to your next card could help Minor Arcana not feel like an afterthought.

It's also possible to just make Lord of Crown's DPS positive and do anything else with Lady of Crowns (sometimes the free instant AOE heal can be nice).

I think if anything whoever is handling AST changes, I beg to just try and reinforce ASTs identity in the changes and not have it be purely the same as what we have been getting. This includes trying to incorporate Synastry better in the Kit, reworking Minor Arcana, and streamlining Draw/Play cards. Additionally, I have heard that Lightspeed could use some QoL so that too.

Lastly, I can see some kind of change to Astrodyne, I'm not sure what it would look like but I do sometimes find it annoying to try and figure out how to line up those buffs with Divination. Idk to what extent MAJOR adjustments means to the development team but in short:

Minor Arcana: QoL: make play and draw one button, and making the cards feel more useful- possibly by giving them the Royal Road, Time Dilation, or SHB Minor Arcana effects aka being able to extend the duration, potency, or add utility to a card.

Synastry: Make it more useful in times when it's not in the niche cases. I do myself use it dungeons but it could be better overall. This could be anything to bring it in line with other abilities. This one is open to creativity.

Astordyne: Make it and Divination line up a tad bit better and review the current buffs to see if it can be more useful as a core mechanic.

Lightspeed: I'm not 100% aware of this issue with other players but it seems the cooldown could be shorter or it could have charges.

Sleeve Draw: I know they specifically mentioned button bloat as an issue which I don't 100% agree on, it's moreso cohesion with buttons for me. AST is inherently busy and that's okay. I think Sleeve Draw can be reintroduced to solve a plethora of issues such as Minor Arcana and Astrodyne.

All I can ask is for some of these changes to be implemented or that at the least some of the ideation behind PvP AST can translate to PvE with the knowledge that everything done in PvP can't just be transferred over easily but even just a discussion on those ides is good.

Astrologian is my main class since i have started to play the game in 2019. Since ShB was already out i do not know the HW or SB AST.
This being said i do have some complains about the current card system.

I want to "play" with my card:
The current card system is just damage increase wich is nice but why not give it more flavor ?
We have a total of 6 cards (without minor aracana) there is plenty of possibilities for differents effects.
I see a lot of you guys praising SB cards with each card having differents effects and i would love to see that, the PvP version already done that and i enjoy more PvP AST on this aspect.
If we got this change i would love to see a keep system where you're hold you're card because for now it's not useful but it would be later and also a "specific draw" ability where you pick the card you want (don't know if this one is feasible xD)


Maybe a little damage buff but that cherry on top
AST is a busy healer and that's what i like about this job, we buff we heal and we deal damage but i really want to see a change in the card system.

Originally Posted by SieyaM

I would like to be hopeful but history doesn't indicate that they will make meaningful or positive changes to the job. Since the card system seems to be giving them so much trouble they may opt to remove it all together and just increase AST attack potencies to compensate, then add in even more oGCD heals because sure why not. I don't know why AST is the one getting major adjustments though. There are complaints sure, but of the healers AST isn't the one that has the most complaints. WHM seems to be the one that needs some kind of major adjustment.

If they remove cards from AST they may as well remove the job as a whole and rebrand it as Time Mage the healer.

AST's decline in popularity stems from SE's unwillingness to revert their homogenization of AST's cards. It has been very clear at least to me when I started in Shadowbringers AST mains do not give a single wit to how powerful we are. We just want fun (like the rest of the healers admittedly) and our damn cards back.

The PvP team made it work there. It's clear the PvE team can make it work here.

Originally Posted by SweetPete

All good suggestions. It’s just whenever SE says “Major Adjustments” it usually means they are most likely changing the job almost completely like they did with summoner. If it was just consolidating buttons I think Yoshi P would of most likely of just said that. I have a worry that whatever they are doing it’s going to completely change Ast from what we know now.

Have they ever done a rework of that level outside of a major expansion, though?

MCH and SMN changes/reworks were both X.0 patches. I think they did some fairly major AST ones in HW, but that was because it was new and initially...not so great.

EDIT:

Also, for the record, I think the reason AST has historically been less played is a bit more complex.

WHM starts as a level 1 CNJ. So anyone who wants to start the game as a healer probably has one. And until SGE, anyone who didn't like SCH tended to probably make one and level it. It also has a pretty well defined and loved aesthetic to Final Fantasy fans in general. When you look at healers' Classes/Jobs leveled, ALMOST all of them have CNJ at least to level 70 or 80, if not 90. Everyone's spent some time on it, and most every healer has one at maximum level, both the WHM mains and the others. In ARR, HW, and I believe SB, you had to level CNJ to 15 to unlock SCH as well, and it had useful cross-class skills, so everyone had at least some levels in it if they were a healer in general. So there are just a ton of them.

SCH is notorious for being "the hard one" (other than AST), but you also have a lot of DPS players that level SMN and get SCH for free. And prior to EW, SMN mains were already galaxy brains anyway. SCH has also always been powerful - CLUNKY, but powerful - in basically all expansions and iterations of FFXIV since it was introduced in ARR. So there are a lot of SCH mains and a lot of "Well, I have a SCH" DPSers when they get gang pressed into service as a healer.

SGE, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block, but is the first healer introduced since 3.0; three whole expansions (SB, ShB, and just now in EW). It's complexity is somewhat akin to SCH, but the flipside is it also starts at level 70. So for anyone that doesn't have a SMN at level 70+ and wants to get into healing relatively quickly, SGE is the choice since there's not much leveling involved (yes yes, 70 levels isn't hard to get, but we all know that IS a factor to a lot of people), and it also just has an aesthetic that a lot of people find cool. It's RELATIVELY easy to play, while still being a smidge up from WHM, and is the new toy of the healers. So there are a good number of them around.

You also have that "inertia" factor (less of a factor, but still a factor), that people can start as CNJ or ARC, but cannot start as AST, and not everyone, especially new players, wants to get 20 levels before continuing their quest when they get to HW. This is especially true of people that have been playing the game for a long time (ARR) that still like to fall back on their old mains.

Then you have AST. While some people love the aesthetic, many people don't care for it. If you're leveling your first character, it's a 20 level step backward where you have to put the story on hold to catch it up. For existing players with high level characters, it's far further from level cap than SGE if they're picking up healing for the first time or picking up a healing alt from their WHM/SCH mains. And its power comes with the caveat that it's probably the more complex of the healers to play at high levels.

I think when you combine all these factors, it's kind of obvious that AST would be the least played.

The flipside of that, though: ALMOST every time you see an AST in a PF/DF party, they're going to be at least competent. Because anyone who levels and plays AST probably does know quite a bit about healing (they didn't just pick up the Job like SGE new healers or SCH DPS mainers who realized their SMN came with a bonus Job) and that the person who leveled it basically went out of their way to do so. Again, ALMOST, as there are exceptions to every rule, but it does tend to be true pretty frequently.