Thread: AST Adjustments 6.2

Originally Posted by DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise

Even better would be to have two targets. One target for enemies and one for party/alliance, such that damage spells will always be cast on non-party target instead of all the back and forth.
You can almost accomplish this with focus target and out of game macros, but not quite. There’s still clunkiness around assigning target party member as focus target

i also use out of game macros, but have single heals set to go on target of target, no matter who tanks (tank swap etc) heal will go on the right person, mouse over is for silly dps who stand in stuff for spot heals <3

i highly recommend healers to try out 3rd party stuff for targetting convenience, u go from man "this shit sucks" to "holy shikes i can do all that?"

Honesty AST is the last bastion of interesting healer gameplay for me. If they simplify it much further I might just unsub. Give me more to do between heals, take some notes from new PvP, make healing interesting again instead of having every class appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I think they need to go away from the idea that cards = rng. Astrodyne feels terrible for a miniscule buff and often miss it when timing with lightspeed. If they want to do a tarot theme, they could instead have a fixed deck that you manipulate and stack, make a combo route of tarot readings, or have a tapping mechanic like mtg where you can set cards upside down for effects. I'm unsure how convoluted they can be with it since they still have to keep it inline with the amount of button presses with the rest of the healers being about 1-3 buttons for singular/aoe healing and buffing. It would be cool to see a gauge of 3 cards like Ewer, Arrow, Bole that change into Balance, Spear, and Spire based on a buff/timer you turn on. There's so much they could do to make it more thematically cohesive like sage, and I hope this 6.2 rework really is substantial now that they see the success of Sage.

Originally Posted by Levirre

I think they need to go away from the idea that cards = rng. Astrodyne feels terrible for a miniscule buff and often miss it when timing with lightspeed. If they want to do a tarot theme, they could instead have a fixed deck that you manipulate and stack, make a combo route of tarot readings, or have a tapping mechanic like mtg where you can set cards upside down for effects. I'm unsure how convoluted they can be with it since they still have to keep it inline with the amount of button presses with the rest of the healers being about 1-3 buttons for singular/aoe healing and buffing. It would be cool to see a gauge of 3 cards like Ewer, Arrow, Bole that change into Balance, Spear, and Spire based on a buff/timer you turn on. There's so much they could do to make it more thematically cohesive like sage, and I hope this 6.2 rework really is substantial now that they see the success of Sage.

Half disagree with this, for two reasons:

1) AST is the Gambler expy of the game, so removing RNG kind of ruins a core conceit of the job fantasy. Doubly so since the idea of randomness and probability pairs so well in a "theoretical physics" kind of way with time magic.

2) The game has already removed so much flavor in service of homogenizing jobs and scripting gameplay. Elemental typing, weapon damage typing, stances, pets, and now we are in the middle of removing debuffs, DoTs, crits, and any party damage buff that isn't 120s. I think a lot of players really don't know what they are asking for when they demand that jobs be less inefficient/randomized and more consistent--it has destroyed so much uniqueness and excitement in job design. Kaiten and the removal of SAM crits was already a huge blow, but I think removing all RNG from AST is a threshold beyond which the game would not be redeemable.

I personally hope they change the amount of oGCDs needed during burst. Not because I'm having trouble, but because I don't like the idea of having to use my utility skills(Lightspeed in this case) exclusively for DPS, instead of - you know - phases where I actually need to move while casting.

Also... I want the old cards back. This will never happen, but I'll keep saying I miss them, because I miss them >.<.

The only thing I remember being said was that they wanted to look into adjusting how busy AST and DRG were. In that case, I can only imagine that they'd want to consolidate or remove buttons, maybe choosing to change the cards a bit while elongating the cooldown so that we don't have to go through the card mini-game so often.

Ideally, I would prefer it if they'd just reconsider and change certain elements (I've listed my thoughts in the past, and I don't think it's fair for me to put everything through that again), but I doubt they'd bother wasting enough time to do that if there's a DPS to consider. So I expect a lot of trimming with no meaningful replacement, as is usual, and then a ridiculous buff to ASTs potencies come the .3 patch, as per tradition with Yoshi-P and his efforts to try and make AST played more while simultaneously trying not to understand why people don't really play it in the first place.

Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

snip

We really need to make some corrections here.
There's 3 major problems with astro: Its cards and time magic are gone robbing it of its flavour and playstyle, its one of the few jobs bloated to an excessive degree and losing its sects in favour of a nonexistant regen/barrier split when all healers have regens and barriers caused it more limitations.

1. Play is a shb thing and a stupid idea that they've kept around. Crown play likewise. These need to go. They did not exist back in HW/SB, draw/play was the same button. Likewise MA was also a single button.
HW cards were Draw, RR, Spread and Redraw. Nobody used Undraw or Undraw spread. Why Undraw has not been deleted is unknown to this day.
SB was Draw, RR, Spread, Redraw, MA and Sleeve draw. 6 buttons but this was also the time we got the brilliant W cross hotbar.

2. Once again, the support actions were FUN and had their niches in situations other than the raid environment. Yes some needed a buff, all had their uses however. The job identity has rng as described in earlier posts in this thread. Removing it takes away another chunk of the playstyle ast players new and old enjoy. The shb cards were a complete downgrade, it would have been far better to remove the balance and spire and put new effects in their place while keeping the dps buff as divination if removing rng from your damage buff is such a problem.

3. The astrodyne mechanic you have suggested is decent in theory, but the earthly star removal just to put it in there is very foolish as its one of Ast's best healing tools.

4. Your overall rework reduces further Ast's playstyle of a buffer when its already in the dumps. While no Ast would turn down more buttons to make its solo gameplay fun, removing the support for it would likely be unpopular.