Thank you for the Astro changes coming in dawntrail!

[Kissune]

Lol, it's really not when the gameplay is garbage. See summoner.

At the very least with EW summoner someone could make the argument that its popularity comes from the fact that it is the easiest caster and it has a unique playstyle when compared to red mage and black mage. Whether the playstyle is boring, easy, or lazy or not is another thing, but the other two casters play nothing like it, so it fulfilled a niche. New AST doesn't fulfill any niche anymore. It functions identically to the other healers. The differences won't be in playstyle at all. It'll just come down to a what the specific distribution of X generic healing skills are compared to the other three. Anyone saying that AST will 'play so unique!' and is 'totally different to white mage' bc you have to press an extra button before you can press the totally-not-aquaveil and totally-not-tetragrammaton buttons once a minute the either doesn't heal anything harder than a dungeon, is a troll, or is delusional.

Unfortunately I have to agree with Lotus Dye here. The greed of us raiders for DPS reinforcement has made the AST what it is now. Dad made sure that hardly anyone played an AST.

I think it's like Yoshida said. We should try it one way or another. But I can understand Leona's mood. I was also shocked when the devs made the cards DPS dispensers and killed the diversity. I was so frustrated...

We need to see the complete package. But I think there are many ways to combine the cards. Nobody here said a thought about it. Except for this Aetherflow thought, which I find out of place here.

Changes are always coming and you have to see where things are going. For my part, I think that your own damage output will now be higher again. Maybe as far as SCH level.

I never cared about if AST was 'optimal damage'. Even if it was balanced such that with perfect luck and perfect draws and perfect timing on the plays with my DPS players executing their rotations flawlessly and critting a lot AST ended up being the lowest dps output healer, I'd still play it. Bc to paraphrase MisshapenChair "my reward for playing a difficult and challenging class should not be doing the most damage, it should be not being bored to tears". As long as AST was viable, even if it wasn't optimal, I'd main it. And there were points where it was like that. I played the fuck out of nocturnal ast even if it was worse than diurnal. Bc I liked it. So saying 'oh it'll be better now bc you do more damage' does not mean anything to me. I never played this class for the damage, I played it for the playstyle and how it optimized what damage it had. Pressing one dps button over and over with a bunch of meaningless ogcd heals is boring and dull to me. Fishing for one specific dps or utility card and being frustrated when i draw something that isn't helpful wasn't fun either. That's why I liked dps cards, bc they could be optimized with skill expression and were always useful.

The reason people compare it to a worse aetherflow is bc of how it functions now. Aetherflow, you press a 60s CD button and get 3 stacks of aetherflow which you can spend on healing, mitigation, or a small amount of damage if you need neither and want to burn the excess stacks. But the options you have never change. AST you will press a 60s button and get 4 skills that will alternate but likely do very similar effects. So it's effectively the same 4 skills every time, except for lord/lady which alternate flat damage and flat healing. It's more restrictive bc you don't get an option to get rid of cards you don't need and you also don't have the choice to do, say, two heal cards instead of heal and mit like scholar can. There is no decision making involved, only using it or not using it. It has as much decision making as deciding to use essential dignity or not does, and all healers have that level of decision making which is very little. There's no higher skill to it than the most basic of healer gameplay which is 'when do you press your buttons and in which order'. RNG made it so you had to react to what you were given, now we can't even do that. We know what we will have each time we draw, which defeats the point of them being cards. I feel like a fraud of a fortune teller.

[Aravell]

I don't see AST becoming that much more popular, maybe some WHM players will swap over, but it's mostly going to be movement within people who already play the role.

What's more likely to happen is a reduction in the total amount of healers. AST was the final bastion for some of us tired healer mains, my main job SCH was already butchered in SB and AST was my bastion because it still required a modicum of thought and the pacing was engaging. Gutting the final bastion of middling complexity within the healer role will make many of us just give up on the role entirely.

That said, another important point has to be acknowledged. You will never attract a DPS player to become a healer player, doesn't matter how much dumbing down you do, they just will not become healer mains. SMN is a different case because it's a DPS job, an easy DPS job will always attract far more players than easy healers or easy tanks.

[glamazon]

Call it a kit problem or call it a game problem, either way these healing “cards” are going to wind up useless bloat bloat because we simply do not need more healing and this problem extends all the way up to ultimate

The game not doing enough damage may be a game problem but continuing to add bloated heals over alternatives when the damage isn’t being up is a kit problem

Now that I think about it this is true. So Why not have cards:
Dmg increase buff
dm decreasee debuff
Mitigation increase buff
Mitigation decrease debuff
incombat runspeed boost
stun
skill/spell haste card (for blm maybe healers too)
skill/spell slow debuff

This provides enough variety that works. also instead of four cards just make lord a dmg aoe and lady an aoe heal over time

[Kissune]

Now that I think about it this is true. So Why not have cards:
Dmg increase buff
dm decreasee debuff
Mitigation increase buff
Mitigation decrease debuff
incombat runspeed boost
stun
skill/spell haste card (for blm maybe healers too)
skill/spell slow debuff

This provides enough variety that works. also instead of four cards just make lord a dmg aoe and lady an aoe heal over time

Variety cards in a vacuum doesn't mean anything. You need cards that do something, and you need cards that aren't dead if you don't need them or a chance to not show up if you do. If AST is designed around some of its mitigation and healing toolkit being locked away behind RNG, then it presents a paradox issue where either the cards end up being useless bc you can either survive the hit without a mit/heal card thus rendering the cards unneeded, or you can't survive it which means that AST becomes the only healer in the game that has to sacrifice a solid percentage of their pulls due to bad luck. Neither of which is fun and engaging. People who want an RNG system with dps cards and mit/healing cards in the draw pool seriously don't seem to understand what that inevitably leads to, and what it means for the rest of the toolkit by design. The only way to solve it is to provide enough RNG mitigation that it becomes basically impossible to not have the card that you want, and at that point why have RNG? I still maintain that all the people demanding varied cards led to this bc they couldn't recognize that fights being designed the way they were would invalidate the entire system, and square enix did, and now nobody wins. DPS only cards might have been 'boring' for some but fuck at least they always did something. A weak dps gain is still a gain, but a mitcheck is a yes or no.

[rawker]

SCH: I will throw an offer to AST to get the crit rate up back as a card. I don't need it as an oGCD ability. I often forget it exists... that's how disjointed it is with our kit.

[Rithy255]

A job becoming more popular is good, actually.

yeah. no. Popularity isn't a good indicator of well designed. Unless you're willing to explain how Warrior or Summoner are "well designed" I will stand by this.

Usually popularity/play rate is more of a indicator of how easy the job is to play in savage, or how "meta" it is, Summoner is the best pick in Prog because it has rez and is a physical range job mobility wise, Warrior does way too much damage for how it has the shortest invul, best defensive, great utility.

Where do the old astro players go? other healers are likely less appealing because they play astro in the first place, so in the end you end up with less people wanting to play healer but the 4 healers being slightly more balanced in play rates.

I'll lastly end off, It's fine to have jobs that are less played then others, aslong as they have a strong playerbase who enjoys the job, Theirs other more entry level jobs if a more complicated one isn't for them.

[Rozeee]

I'll lastly end off, It's fine to have jobs that are less played then others, aslong as they have a strong playerbase who enjoys the job, Theirs other more entry level jobs if a more complicated one isn't for them.

Depressingly, I don't think this is their design philosophy. Ironic that they realized this with relic weapon, but not the jobs itself.

[glamazon]

And A CARD TO GIVE BACK MANA WHEN A HEALER OR MAGICAL DPS IS BACK FROM REZ AND HAS NO MANA TO EVEN HEAL TO SAVE THEMSELVES.

[glamazon]

Variety cards in a vacuum doesn't mean anything. You need cards that do something, and you need cards that aren't dead if you don't need them or a chance to not show up if you do. If AST is designed around some of its mitigation and healing toolkit being locked away behind RNG, then it presents a paradox issue where either the cards end up being useless bc you can either survive the hit without a mit/heal card thus rendering the cards unneeded, or you can't survive it which means that AST becomes the only healer in the game that has to sacrifice a solid percentage of their pulls due to bad luck. Neither of which is fun and engaging. People who want an RNG system with dps cards and mit/healing cards in the draw pool seriously don't seem to understand what that inevitably leads to, and what it means for the rest of the toolkit by design. The only way to solve it is to provide enough RNG mitigation that it becomes basically impossible to not have the card that you want, and at that point why have RNG? I still maintain that all the people demanding varied cards led to this bc they couldn't recognize that fights being designed the way they were would invalidate the entire system, and square enix did, and now nobody wins. DPS only cards might have been 'boring' for some but fuck at least they always did something. A weak dps gain is still a gain, but a mitcheck is a yes or no.

But how are any of those cards useless? runspd in combat? that's always useful. a debuff to the enemy damge? how is that not usefull? yes i will say tanks already have so much mitigation but not all tanks use their mitigation and even when they do dark knight its barely enough. mit decrease to enemy? That's good! a stun to interrupt casting? how is that bad? ok yes maybe you wont have the stun when u need it but this is part of the rng maybe you wont get exactly what you need maybe you will but it wwill always be useful somehow. Except for heals beacuse we already have the tools for that.

[glamazon]

Variety cards in a vacuum doesn't mean anything. You need cards that do something, and you need cards that aren't dead if you don't need them or a chance to not show up if you do. If AST is designed around some of its mitigation and healing toolkit being locked away behind RNG, then it presents a paradox issue where either the cards end up being useless bc you can either survive the hit without a mit/heal card thus rendering the cards unneeded, or you can't survive it which means that AST becomes the only healer in the game that has to sacrifice a solid percentage of their pulls due to bad luck. Neither of which is fun and engaging. People who want an RNG system with dps cards and mit/healing cards in the draw pool seriously don't seem to understand what that inevitably leads to, and what it means for the rest of the toolkit by design. The only way to solve it is to provide enough RNG mitigation that it becomes basically impossible to not have the card that you want, and at that point why have RNG? I still maintain that all the people demanding varied cards led to this bc they couldn't recognize that fights being designed the way they were would invalidate the entire system, and square enix did, and now nobody wins. DPS only cards might have been 'boring' for some but fuck at least they always did something. A weak dps gain is still a gain, but a mitcheck is a yes or no.

I see your point. WHy not have the increased number of cards none of which are dmg increased then and have the ast able to select which cards he or she wants depending on the situation. So you get a draw of five cards out of ten and you can select which of the five you want to use. the others go back in teh deck. If you shuffle because you don't like any of the cards. All go back and you get a new hand of five. I wish they brought back card time extension like if you sacrifice a draw you can extend the last card you played to double the length.