4 Paired Threads: AST - How do you feel about it?

[ASkellington]

Hm...not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to clarify:

It sounds like you are (jaded?) strongly opposed to Neutral Sect not because it's a bad ability itself, but because you're upset about what AST used to be vs what it now is and are angry at the ability as almost sorta mocking that in some way?

For lack of a better way to put it, that is.

Neutral Sect isn't a good ability either. Not without changes. And honestly I'd rather not have those changes over two better versions of AST (a full regen/delayed healer with 0 shields or a hybrid stance dancer).

I quite literally called it remaining as a way for the devs to say "you still have Noct sect without having Noct sect, don't worry as we remove yet another piece of your lore and kit".

I see nothing good from an ability that helped ripped apart another piece of a class, and quite literally had no reason to exist if they just changed Diurnal and Nocturnal to where you could switch between them in combat.

[Shurrikhan]

So I'm not being antagonistic or saying you're wrong, I'm just curious why you find what I feel are some of the most interesting buttons AST has to be "uninteresting".

No, no, that's a fair question. Admittedly, my rationale is a little idiosyncratic.

To be clear, I don't give a damn how AST's analogs compare to other healers. The fact that a direct comparison is even possible already sours any merit they'd have by having a more "interesting" version of copy-pasta. If that "interest" comes from simply being more "functional" (e.g., less integral, more straightforward, more foolproof) or "powerful", I'd probably give negative damns.

That said, I can be a bit harsh to abilities that take up a space that I think would otherwise be, or previously was, taken up by more interesting alternatives. Which can be a bit hard to follow, as I'm then not critiquing the skill itself so much as the use of design space. That's largely the case with Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, and Exaltation.

Add to that some space-leaving for returned functionality to currently gutted abilities, rather than just judging them per their current forms, and I could see why my answer would seem contradictory. Current Celestial Opposition, for instance, is as dull as can be. And, of course, there are duller abilities, like Essential Dignity, that I just don't judge as harshly because I simply consider them, in turn, in regard to their available design space and needs they'd have to fulfill. We do need simple slack via responsive abilities at least somewhere in the kit, after all.

In more detail, though:

Let's start with Neutral Sect. Yes, it allows you to barrier heal, but because the effect is purely additive, it in no way feels like you are temporarily "swapping" roles. It just feels like the devs gave up on trying to make Synastry useful or integral and were tired of hearing AST veterans complain about losing Nocturnal Sect, and this two-for-one crapshoot was the result. Now, admittedly, with Kardia having so much more room to be fleshed out on Sage, I'm not fixated on AST uniquely holding down a 2-target burst sustain niche, but I feel like Synastry at least has more of interest fundamentally going for it as an action than "Now have shields too!" Neutral Sect. I don't doubt Neutral Sect, too, could be more interesting, but its taking that space means, also, that there's then little room to do anything more integral (not CD limited) with the Sects themselves.

That complaint largely repeats for Celestial Intersection, though I'd probably be more fine with it if it just wasn't such a basic damned CD, if it had more of a shared opportunity cost, or at least interacted with something else.

Horoscope, meanwhile, actually seems less interesting to me for being able to plop down a buff in advance to be used later; while that does fit with the Time Mage theme to some tiny, tiny degree, it really just means that there's that much less need to think ahead since you can just hit it on CD and make use of it later. It's basically just "hit on CD so long as I may have a decent chance to use Aspected Helios sometime in the next 30 whole seconds." Since there's very little content that'd fall between 'don't need Horoscope at all' and 'yeah, you'll definitely have opportunity to throw out at AH once per minute', it just doesn't feel like it's doing much, tactically speaking, beyond adding 1 APM in what little content wouldn't thereby cause overhealing.

I have no idea why you say that Exaltation uniquely allows it to be used on non-tanks. The healing is done at the end of the duration, so it's not going to serve as an emergency heal. For the purpose you've stated, your conclusion is backward. Taurochole, not Exaltation, is the better heal to use on non-tanks. It's more potency, and it's immediate, meaning that it can actually make synergetic use of that added eHP... and it's a shorter CD. Exaltation's only decent use case is on the tank. At which point... Exaltation's just Aquaveil but with a 500p delayed heal in place of 5% mitigation. Aquaveil's larger %mit at least synergizes with pumped HPS --if we could finally actually get a use case for really pumping HPS!!-- but Exaltation just feels disconnected and fully meh. At best it can claim that delayed healing is an AST thing (despite also being on SCH and GNB)?? Idk. It just feels utterly unimaginative to me. I'd sooner have it than not have it, but I'd rather have, say, Spread and old Bole than Exaltation.

Shorter Version: I find them comparatively uninteresting because they replace, rather than synergize with, (A) Sect-switching and (B) deeper and more varied and integral use of Cards, each of which (and especially if together) I'd consider more interesting than these discrete skills that replaced them.

[ForsakenRoe]

skills and nocturnal sect

Neutral Sect's continued existence singlehandedly puts the lie to the 'pure/barrier split'. It should affect OGCDs as Nocturnal used to. It doesn't, because the job would be 'the best healer for everything full stop' even more so than it arguably is right now. WHM would be in the grave forever if it happened. I don't know if sect-swapping is the solution, it might be just too much APM for the devs to consider it, with the cards included still. If they were to add sectswapping I'd assume that another lobotomization for the cards is in the works.

Horoscope is like Plenary, more than some might realize. It's like OLD Plenary from SB, but worse in some regards, because at least that applied the buff automatically. This requires you to press a button, then use a healing GCD (and only healing GCDs work, pls let COpp/CU/Star healing trigger the empowering) within 10 SECONDS, then you can detonate it within 30s for... 400p. Or, worded differently, a 200p gain over it's base form. It's just a weird skill. You'll trigger it with Asp.Helios every time, because if you're burning a GCD to trigger it, you might as well choose the one with more total healing attached. Asp.Helios heals for a total of 1000 over it's duration, so by the time it's finished ticking up, that extra 400 is often going to end up as overheal. It'd be an interesting skill if either A: OGCD healing powered it up (so you'd want to line up Star's empowerment window with using Horoscope), or it was useable more often. I end up just throwing it out alongside CU for the 200p most of the time. Bland skill

Exaltation is interesting because of it's auto-heal effect. Celestial Intersection is the boring one. It was less boring when it could be a regen in Noct Sect but they got rid of that. It and Benison are just out of place, being barriers on a 'pure healer'. Combine it with Exaltation or Essential Dignity or do something with it

Oh and while we're on about it, Celestial Opposition is boring now that it's basically just 'Aspected Helios, but weaker, but OGCD'. At one point, the balance lined up such that it was literally 'OGCD A.Helios'. The skill was interesting when Noct Sect was a thing, because 'OGCD A.Helios' meant that AST could apply shields OGCD on a 60s CD, where SCH had to wait 2min to use Seraph for it. Stance dance gameplay would absolutely make AST interesting, choosing from moment to moment if the Diurnal or Nocturnal version of each skill would be more useful at that moment. But again, the APM and mental load required for that plus the cards would be too high, and the devs would counteract it by making the cards even more braindead (somehow). Maybe they'd remove all the melee/ranged split effects and the seals, and every card would be literally identical, idk

cards and APM

I stand with everyone saying that AST's APM should not be lowered, but instead just redistributed. The issue isn't that it takes higher APM than other healers. It's that all of it's APM is crammed into one tiny 15s window. Look back to Stormblood, we had to play a card every 30s, be that actually 'Play' or 'Royal Road', and that includes Redrawing it to try and get the fabled Balance. Because it was every 30s we did this, the APM complaints were not as high. There were some issues at the time of course, Sleeve Draw functioned as our 2min and should have been reworked to be less janky (sure love getting Spire in my Spread thanks Yoshi). But the general idea, of playing a card every 30s instead of pooling everything for the 2min window, feels like the obvious solution. Additionally, I'd like to see Minor Arcana be, ironically, a more major part of the rotation instead of just being a coinflip of 'OGCD Malefic' or 'OGCD Helios'. It feels bad when you get the heal and don't need it, it feels bad when you get the damage and you're struggling for your life in a HPS check. We always go on about how the most important aspect of healer tools is 'reliability', that they'll be there at the same time every time, that they'll have the same effect every time. And this 'tool' fails that.

Add some more potency to other healing tools to compensate, then remove the current form of Minor Arcana, and make it more interesting. I want to see it use the full deck of Sixty, with something akin to the Darkmoon Decks. You'd only need 6 effects, one for each suit. Then you can make those effects have a base potency slightly above Malefic (to make you actually use the cards), and a bonus based on the Face Value of the card to preserve the RNG aspects of the class. For example if Malefic 6 does 270p, have the Minor Arcana's effect total to 275, plus (Y x the Face Value), so there's some RNG involved in the class still, but not enough for it to have an impact on whether you clear or not. I don't know if the engine can handle potency values that are not a multiple of 5, but if it can, you can have Y be something as low as like, 2, so the difference between drawing a 1 and a 9 (or Lady) would be 16 total potency

Personally I used to play AST quite exclusively, back in HW, with the occasional SCH run. Now I play WHM, not because I like WHM more than AST, but because AST's APM required for it's 2min window is too much strain for my old wrists. To avoid this I play the old way, playing a card every 30s instead of pooling them for the 2min window. This is hilariously suboptimal in the current 2min meta, but I do not particularly care about what is 'optimal' when playing in the 'optimal manner' puts physical strain on the body. If SE reworked the cards such that the 2min window wasn't the be all end all, and made it so that cards were more spread out over each 2min block akin to older incarnations, I'd probably go back to AST more

[Renathras]

No, no, that's a fair question.

Thank you for the reply, appreciate it.

Not trying to cut it short, it does seem you and ASkellington's dislike of some abilities seems to be far less on the abilities themselves being good or bad and more...let's call it frustration?...with what AST was/could be to you. I think you kind of say that here as well. So that makes sense to me. Sort of a "I don't hate you for anything you did personally, I just resent you due to what I associate with you" kind of a thing?

Taurochole heals up front, meaning if a person is at or near full health, the heal isn't as useful. Exaltation reduces damage taken and then heals on the back end. And due specifically to AST's kit, if the target is low health initially, you can weave an Essential Dignity into an Exaltation and first top the person off, then have them survive the hit, then heal on the back end. If you want to go ham, you can also give them an Intersection to top off their health if Dignity didn't and give them a bit more protection for the attack.

I dunno, I guess I take them in the context of the whole kits and Exaltation feels more generally useful to me, though it depends a lot on the specific situation going on.

.

But again, not challenging your views, just trying to understand them. I can't imagine them ever giving AST "in combat sect swapping", even if they did return Noct (old AST never had it, either), since then it would just stomp all over other healer Jobs (even more than it already does). So I don't really see Neutral being due to that, and Neutral was added before sects were removed, so I don't think it was due to players complaining about that.

[Shurrikhan]

Not trying to cut it short, it does seem you and ASkellington's dislike of some abilities seems to be far less on the abilities themselves being good or bad and more...let's call it frustration?...with what AST was/could be to you. I think you kind of say that here as well. So that makes sense to me. Sort of a "I don't hate you for anything you did personally, I just resent you due to what I associate with you" kind of a thing?

Kind of. But that wouldn't be the case if their presence didn't also stymy/preclude a return to or revitalization of the things I preferred over them.

E.g.
Maybe someone else stole my shit and you're just standing with your stuff blocking my only way to follow, but given that you uniquely prevent my trying to get my shit, I'm going to be annoyed that you're blocking the path for an extended time if/when you didn't to even if you did not personally steal my shit. Or, say, we lost a uniquely vital worker because we refused to give her benefits despite working her over 40 hours per week, and now we're saddled with a clueless intern who we're told will work just as well but has turned out to be mostly incapable of effort or learning, and any push to hire her back is met with "But we have Timmy now!"

That's about how I feel about Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, Exaltation, etc., replacing and precluding a more fleshed out Card system and Sect-swapping.

[Marxam]

What would I like changed? Almost everything?

Either bring back Noct Sect and make AST a stance dancer in combat (link half the cards if you want), or make it a regen/delayed healer. (remove Neutral Sect while your at it for either)
Update Synastry or remove it. It doesn't belong in the current era of this game.
Remove Undraw we have no need of it.
Bring back Time Dilation for HoTs/DoTs and compiles (Exalt/ES/Macrocosmos) ONLY no buffs.
Add in a Reverse of Time Dilation for a potential burst option (if going regen/delayed healer AST)
For the love of Nymeia give me another attack. AST is painful to do anything solo.
Allow us to sacrifice our unneeded cards to the graveyard (or w/e the hells the YGO term is) for a Lord/Lady so we can pick which one.

And of course: GIVE US BACK OUR TWELVESDAMNED CARDS.

I'd go more in depth, but honestly that would look like a mock up page for a class skill kit.

The irony is that you asked for 4.0 AST. It literally solved everything (other than potency and card balancing). Just some examples of what 4.0 AST did right:

-Minor Arcana replaced Undraw because it was a 1 sec recast, active when Draw was used, gave access to lady/lord by "discarding" a card you didn't want.
-Royal Road put Draw on a 1 min timer. You had to RR a card first (assuming you didn't MA) then the next draw you would use the effect (assuming you got the card you want)

A compromise to the cards would have been to just limit it to three effects, melee/ranged for a total of 6 cards. Increase Crit, direct hit, defense. This would allow them to still keep RR in the game while making sure all card usage was beneficial. Imo they should remove the dmg increase and simply have it affect sub stats so AST dmg doesn't have to be balanced around the fact it can aoe dmg up as a healer.

It was also a missed opportunity for AST and SCH to be dual stance healers, with the former having the sects and the latter having faeries. They can even give Neutral Sect a buff that allows you to change to a different sect during battle, if you chose to. It would avoid the toxicity that is double shield helaers in DF. Nothing is more annoying that putting up shields as SGE to proc addersting but then a SCH overwrites it. WHM should have been the "pure" healer and SGE the "shield" healer while AST and SCH can simply complement them both or each other.

[IceBlueNinja]

The irony is that you asked for 4.0 AST. It literally solved everything (other than potency and card balancing). Just some examples of what 4.0 AST did right:

-Minor Arcana replaced Undraw because it was a 1 sec recast, active when Draw was used, gave access to lady/lord by "discarding" a card you didn't want.
-Royal Road put Draw on a 1 min timer. You had to RR a card first (assuming you didn't MA) then the next draw you would use the effect (assuming you got the card you want)

A compromise to the cards would have been to just limit it to three effects, melee/ranged for a total of 6 cards. Increase Crit, direct hit, defense. This would allow them to still keep RR in the game while making sure all card usage was beneficial. Imo they should remove the dmg increase and simply have it affect sub stats so AST dmg doesn't have to be balanced around the fact it can aoe dmg up as a healer.

It was also a missed opportunity for AST and SCH to be dual stance healers, with the former having the sects and the latter having faeries. They can even give Neutral Sect a buff that allows you to change to a different sect during battle, if you chose to. It would avoid the toxicity that is double shield helaers in DF. Nothing is more annoying that putting up shields as SGE to proc addersting but then a SCH overwrites it. WHM should have been the "pure" healer and SGE the "shield" healer while AST and SCH can simply complement them both or each other.

God it turns me off when I get another sge/sch as more co healer when am sge specially double sage, I hate doing a big crit E diag and the other sage presses that icky pepsis button u.u That is one thing for sure that I love with ast having two stances, but honestly when its whm/ast lol ast are still going dirunal with whm so (I always go noct when is a whm) cause Idk why we need 10k regens at once vs some slight migitation. Honestly I do secretly wish that normal raids/alliance raids just make sure that its 1 shield healer and 1 pure healer unless for some strange reason say some how slight low change its a 6 pure healer/shield healer party cause god its annoying seeing one party alliance with 2 pures and the other with 2 shields, least pure healers can stack though.

[Connor]

the other sage presses that icky pepsis button u.u That is one thing for sure that I love with ast having two stances, but honestly when its whm/ast lol ast are still going dirunal with whm so (I always go noct when is a whm) cause Idk why we need 10k regens at once vs some slight migitation. Honestly I do secretly wish that normal raids/alliance raids just make sure that its 1 shield healer and 1 pure healer unless for some strange reason say some how slight low change its a 6 pure healer/shield healer party cause god its annoying seeing one party alliance with 2 pures and the other with 2 shields, least pure healers can stack though.

I don’t think Pepsis works with shields that were formed by another party member, only the user’s. Otherwise as you say Sages really could troll each other the entire fight lol. I hope it doesn’t work like that

Totally agree with the rest, its probably confirmation bias but in my experiences there’s a significant amount of shield healers compared to pure healers in normal content. It’s always goddamn Sages lol, and they always spam Eukrasian Prognosis like The Final Days is about to drop a second time. As a Scholar I just don’t even bother trying to shield anymore with a Sage in the party; it’s almost guaranteed to be overwritten. So basically despite being a shield healer, every fight I do I end up having to pure heal the entire time. Great dichotomy SE, nice job lol. I feel more like a shield healer playing Astrologian at this point lol. Neutral Sect and Celestial Intersection stack with all other shields, so it’s less hassle with constantly having them overwritten. At least there’s still Seraph, I guess (lol).

Like I get that Scholar and Sage couldn’t stack shields because it’d break the game, but the current situation isn’t much better lol. Not sure how Astrologian’s being able to shield stack doesn’t break the game lol, Neutral Sect has the same cool-down as Deployment doesn’t it? It just takes away some of the small fun that’s left on Scholar. All the divide has done is made every healer suffer (in different amounts lol)

Lastly I want to give a shout out to my main man Sleeve Draw. I loved being able to produce a bunch of cards for ‘burst support’ in addition to the consistent support from standard Draw. It was a huge pain because of APM (I think?) but I miss having additional draw options. Though, it wouldn’t be very useful now considering it’s all the same lol. Maybe they could have it draw like a ‘more powerful buff’ on a 120 cd. Or throw out a card that affects all party members. I want to throw cards at people more Yoshi

[IceBlueNinja]

I don’t think Pepsis works with shields that were formed by another party member, only the user’s. Otherwise as you say Sages really could troll each other the entire fight lol. I hope it doesn’t work like that

Totally agree with the rest, its probably confirmation bias but in my experiences there’s a significant amount of shield healers compared to pure healers in normal content. It’s always goddamn Sages lol, and they always spam Eukrasian Prognosis like The Final Days is about to drop a second time. As a Scholar I just don’t even bother trying to shield anymore with a Sage in the party; it’s almost guaranteed to be overwritten. So basically despite being a shield healer, every fight I do I end up having to pure heal the entire time. Great dichotomy SE, nice job lol. I feel more like a shield healer playing Astrologian at this point lol. Neutral Sect and Celestial Intersection stack with all other shields, so it’s less hassle with constantly having them overwritten. At least there’s still Seraph, I guess (lol).

Like I get that Scholar and Sage couldn’t stack shields because it’d break the game, but the current situation isn’t much better lol. Not sure how Astrologian’s being able to shield stack doesn’t break the game lol, Neutral Sect has the same cool-down as Deployment doesn’t it? It just takes away some of the small fun that’s left on Scholar. All the divide has done is made every healer suffer (in different amounts lol)

Lastly I want to give a shout out to my main man Sleeve Draw. I loved being able to produce a bunch of cards for ‘burst support’ in addition to the consistent support from standard Draw. It was a huge pain because of APM (I think?) but I miss having additional draw options. Though, it wouldn’t be very useful now considering it’s all the same lol. Maybe they could have it draw like a ‘more powerful buff’ on a 120 cd. Or throw out a card that affects all party members. I want to throw cards at people more Yoshi

Stormblood ast=best ast forever

[ForsakenRoe]

Like I get that Scholar and Sage couldn’t stack shields because it’d break the game, but the current situation isn’t much better lol. Not sure how Astrologian’s being able to shield stack doesn’t break the game lol, Neutral Sect has the same cool-down as Deployment doesn’t it? It just takes away some of the small fun that’s left on Scholar. All the divide has done is made every healer suffer (in different amounts lol)

Lastly I want to give a shout out to my main man Sleeve Draw. I loved being able to produce a bunch of cards for ‘burst support’ in addition to the consistent support from standard Draw. It was a huge pain because of APM (I think?) but I miss having additional draw options. Though, it wouldn’t be very useful now considering it’s all the same lol. Maybe they could have it draw like a ‘more powerful buff’ on a 120 cd. Or throw out a card that affects all party members. I want to throw cards at people more Yoshi

I'm not entirely sure it would break the game, to be honest. Having two stacking shields on demand would trivialize mitigation checks, yes, but it comes at the cost of throughput from easily accessible, zero CD Regen effects, and the pure throughput of something like Cure3. If those things that you're losing out on, are not enough to cause issues by being missing (or, the SCH/SGE combo can handle 'pure healing checks' just fine with their own kits), then that's not 'shields stacking would be OP', thats 'the devs did not design the fights to actually test the pure healing output enough'. It's part of the evidence of why the split is a failure in it's current state. SCH SGE can heal everything still, WHM AST can't do jack in raids until they vastly overgear it to make up for the missing mitigations.

I also miss Sleeve Draw. I'd bring it back in an AST rework too, as a button to 'force the RNG to favor you' in regards to the strength of the card effects. After all, if it's named after the idea of having an 'ace up your sleeve', I think that it'd be fairly fitting for it's effect to be 'sneakily swap out your weaker 'dud' card for the cheaty Ace you sleeved earlier' right? This does require that cards have an actual hierarchy to them (ie, you are able to draw any of 54 cards from the deck of 60, not just Lord/Lady of Crowns), but that's for SE to work on with their 'sorry we had to delay the rework' rework