Quote Originally Posted by Sparkthor View Post
One button astro was boring, and the "good" astro card system was fishing aoe balance. While I aggre new it feels dumb when you cannot get 3 symbols, it was way worse when you used to constantly get bole, arrow or spear (maybe spire and ewer, can't fully remember). A bit the same as noct sect which was less interssing than dia sect as extends regen duration is far more usefull than extends shields ones.

If instead of that was "good" in the past, turn to what could be good for the future ? Healer need some trim to their abilities and would probably gain to have some others dps/offensive supports tools as the game extends. But, having a 1/2 or 1/2/3 cycle would only be like a smokescreen, and systems alike the WHM lilies would be way more engaging. Also i think healers could get some tools for party burst phase.
Where do we start... At the start, I guess. So as I just posted (which you may have missed due to the timing), AST wasn't always 'one button'. Personal anecdote, when I was first maining AST in 3.4 my balance draw rate was so high I'd question if it was really 1/6 equal chance for each card. Guess I was one of the lucky ones. Anyway, this whole thing of 'you just fished for balance!', I've come to realise, is emblematic of the playerbase's attitude towards game design nowadays. It seems that things can't have 'a chance of having the best result' anymore, the playerbase at large seems to feel almost... not entitled? IDK how to word it, but basically whatever the 'best result' is, they feel like they deserve only that result, and therefore rather than the 'powerful moment' being just that, a moment that comes sometimes and goes just as quickly, they feel like that 'powerful moment' is the baseline the class operates at, and anything else is just 'you got screwed by the game, devs pls fix this garbage'. This isn't just a FF thing either, I think it's just that people have adjusted their mindset over time, as they got older, etc. But I'm not a psychiatrist and IDK how brains work, so back to the topic here.

Nocturnal Sect was, unironically, 'interesting' IMO. You might disagree, and you're welcome to. But with SB, Noct got a lot more different stuff from SCH, as it got a much stronger burst AOE healing tool with Earthly Star, and it's damage mitigation bubble worked differently from Soil, becoming the blueprint for how Kerachole on Sage now works. The fact it applied a buff to people, rather than forcing them to stand in a specific ground AOE, with the downside of having it be up less often, meant it played differently to SCH. The tuning was jank, yes, SCH having Deploy Adlo and 2x as much Soil meant it was scuffed performance wise. If only they had kept doing performance-adjustments to balance it...

Lastly, speed round. We are looking to the future, by looking at what people enjoyed in the past, what originally drew them to the class in the first place. Maybe not all of it can be used, but just discarding it all because 'that's in the past now' is pretty silly IMO. Trim abilities, yes definitely, but SE is very attached to keeping their very important skills like... Physick at level 90? Literally nobody with any sense is asking for healers to get a 123 combo, that is a physical class thing. The only non-phys class with a 123 is RDM, and it's on it's melee skills. People suggest stuff more like RDM's Verfire/Verstone Ready buffs, procs that can safely be held for a long time in case of large healing suddenly being needed. Healers DO have tools for burst phase, SCH has Chain and Energy Drain spam, AST has... whatever that 2min window is, SGE has Phlegmas pooled, WHM has Misery and Presence of Mind to Glare faster. Making the 2min window slightly more interesting does not solve the issue of the other 105 seconds of each 2min cycle being boring though