Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

[Connor]

No the bigger thing especially seeing how even before the cards Astro is a job filled with too many abilities doing too little or doing the same thing 3-4 times would be to massively buff the 4 non-damage cards (and the two lords), and then remove other abilities and rebalance the cards based on the 120s-ish CD they now have. For improved usability keep them slightly weaker but make the draw a 30s CD (and rebalance the damage cards). Draws still alternate of course.

We have too many buttons that ultimately do the same thing in too many similar ways. Cards are cool, they're thematic, but they currently have to exist on top of the kit, instead of being the kit.

I’d argue cards were the ‘kit’ up until around Shadowbringers. Between things like Time Dilation, Celestial Opposition, Royal Road, Sleeve Draw, Minor Arcana, its toolkit was largely built around supporting the party with cards. Hell, when they released it they gave it lower potency on all GCD healing compared to White Mages and Scholars because the cards were intended to be central mechanic distinguishing it from the others (it was very much not well received lol). It’s only in recent expansions that the cards have become almost entirely a ‘side-piece’ to the healing (or current expansion where they’re cannibalised by it and mostly turned into standard healing cool-down clones instead of [something interesting]).

Maybe it’s because I use controller but personally I don’t think Astrologian has ‘too many’ abilities at all. Though maybe that’s because I still remember Heavensward where every spell upgrade was an entirely separate action lol (I.E Bio I and Bio II were two separate buttons). I can definitely agree that the amount of ‘ability clones’ is too high, but I wouldn’t say ‘the overall amount of abilities’ is also too high. In my view.