I have to rant about AST cards

[FlutterYuu]

So I'm leveling up AST, and I've been playing since ARR and I know this was a change that happened before Endwalker but why are AST cards all the same now? Like I'm dumb because I heard about all of this from YouTube Videos and Forums, but I just read the actions yesterday and they're all damage buffs.

Nothing about MP Regen, Healing Buff or DMG reduction like it used to. Like I thought for a second that all of this healer nerfs were over blown and it was just about a more engaging DPS rotation which I understand but honestly I don't care for a DPS rotation if the Jobs were more engaging.

Why have a card system? Why have a card system if none of the choices matter? It doesn't make sense. Like they honestly removed everything that made AST well AST.

I love FFXIV, and I am enjoying the game but I do hope the 7.0 changes to AST include a more engaging card system. The things they have been doing to healer jobs is insane to me and I hope they understand healers shouldn't be just be healing bots. AST, SCH, Sage, and WHM should all be different and should benefit the group in different ways other then just plain healing.

AST should buff the party with their cards again, with more than just damage buffs but also MP Regen and Healing and Tanking buffs like it used to. Give SCH back their DoTs, SCH debuffing the enemy would be so so so good and make them unique. Sage is... IDK I finally got my AST to 70 so I'm gonna do the Sage quest when I can so I can unlock it. WHM... well they're great cuz they're pure heal but give them a AOE DoT again and like another button to do damage or something, like bring back water, earth and air damage spells. I have no idea why Devs removed Aero 3.

But I do see the Devs making room for more jobs by removing similar kits from existing jobs. Like Canonically Geomancer is a AST that uses Water, Earth and Wind Spells and would be too similar to WHM if they had those spells. But RDM had those spells too. I don't know. I trust the Devs and I love the game but they need to make healers more unique from each other. I don't like the direction they're taking with them.

No i'm not quiting the game I still do enjoy playing the game and I look forward to every patch. I still like AST and I love WHM. I hate SCH but i've always hated SCH sooooooo yeah.

I love this game, no i'm not quiting. I was just surprised and upset to learn that my choices didn't matter. Yeah I'm late to the party. I know. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't make my voice known. Yoshi-P, you're doing amazing, but I do hope 7.0 makes AST more engaging like it used to be.

[ForsakenRoe]

When I remember how AST was, and look at what it's become, I just

[vetch]

Yup, same experience as me.

Luckily I ended up not liking its healing kit either so I can just not play it in serious content.

[Xelanar]

The one mistake they did back then, was mixing support and DPS increasing cards together.
Instead of separating them into their own subdeck of cards that work independently from each other, they chose to cut the support aspect entirely.

As someone who loves playing jobs focusing on active support and buffing, this really annoyed me back then, and it still does, every time I read about it. Old AST was the only job catering to my personal job preference. When they killed the card system, I already knew, I would never get anytihng comparable to a support job ever >.<.

[Sebazy]

Balance woes aside, old 3.2-3.4 era AST was enjoyable to me at least. You had busywork but it was spread out over time rather than all being dogpiled into that 2 minute burst window, not to mention that when you did get a string of the right cards at the right time, it felt super satisfying. I’ll always stand by my opinion that even niche cards like Bole had value at times (eg allowing the War to stay out of tank stance on the last pair of A12S adds) for a decent damage boost.

In it’s current incarnation, the whole card system just feels hollow and the burst window flat out sucks to do repeatedly for an evening mid mechanics.

[ForsakenRoe]

In it’s current incarnation, the whole card system just feels hollow and the burst window flat out sucks to do repeatedly for an evening mid mechanics.

Yeh, for me it's not just a case of 'do the burst window, each 2min window, for a pull', it's that every time there's a wipe, that means more time doing the burst window and hurting my fingers. It makes reclearing fights 'okay', but for extended durations, ie farming EXs or progression, potentially too strenuous for my boomer hands. I know that it's not 'optimal' to play cards as you draw them (ie, just throwing out one per 30s), but I'd rather do that and lose a bit of damage, compared to putting myself in physical discomfort. The APM of the previous incarnations was similar (playing a card/RRing it/redrawing), but it was better spread across a 2min cycle, now it's similar amounts of APM but it's all rammed into a condensed 15sec blast, each 2 minutes, which also has the side effect of making the 1:45 where you don't have burst window stuff to do, a lot more empty by comparison

[Supersnow845]

The 2 stacks on draw is just another example of square making a change with healers that they really don’t think all the way through and it just leads to unintended consequences that mess the job up in other places

AST has always been a victim of it but the job is just a hot mess in EW, it holds on entirely by virtue of the 2 minute meta powering up SCH and AST over WHM and SGE (which happens every expansion) but does anyone look at the current state of AST (not even accounting for its slide from glory) and think the decisions made on it were right or honestly made the job better

AST has just become a microcosm of everything wrong with healers (though to be fair they are all so bad I could make a preachy speech about how all of them are a microcosm of poor healer design)

-AST- making changes without considering the entire kit leads to problems outside of the direct influence of the change
-SCH- deleting damage skills from a DPS healer without altering the underlying healing kit leads to disjointed and messy healing skills
-WHM- GCD healing doesn’t work in this game
-SGE- making a healer with no Jank fit to the current style of healing has done little more than show how boring healing is

AST is probably just the egregious because a lot of its worst changes came about in EW (besides the great healer lobotomisation) while SCH and WHM improved slightly from ShB

[Aravell]

Old AST felt a lot better because you spent the entire time planning for future burst (Draw, Redraw, Spread, Royal Road, Minor Arcana), while current gameplay is just stocking cards and only playing them every 2 minutes, which makes the Malefic spam stick out even more because you're not planning anything.

I still think people complaining that only Balance was useful back then are wrong. A good AST could get some value out of any card, playing around a bad hand is what makes you a good AST (Except triple Spire Sleeve Draw, that was just impossible to fix).

[Zeastria]

Unpopular opinion but i actually like the current card system..but i also wished they improved it.
Kinda wish we had AOE cards - that stacks with our main cards..
since i dislike [Minor Arcana].. why not just remake that one into card deck nr 2.. with AOE cards..
- It would alow for more cards, more buffs, buff stacking

[Supersnow845]

Unpopular opinion but i actually like the current card system..but i also wished they improved it.
Kinda wish we had AOE cards - that stacks with our main cards..
since i dislike [Minor Arcana].. why not just remake that one into card deck nr 2.. with AOE cards..
- It would alow for more cards, more buffs, buff stacking

Well I mean we used to have AOE cards but you had to sacrifice another card to do it which was a good system and would have worked way better if balance wasn’t that good

Adding AOE cards that was basically just “draw 2” would just be more button bloat, if you could stack them then it’s more stuff to shove into AST’s overcrowded burst window and a massive damage buff to AST which is already hard to balance because of how buff heavy it is