Astro Card system is useless!

[PyurBlue]

Yeah, uh, maybe AoE balance was too strong comparatively to other cards, but they gave us Divination anyways to replace it. Why not just have ALL the new cards be AoE like PvP and toss Divination?

Still no RNG but then at least the cards wouldn't feel useless in the vast majority of encounters. They don't design bosses to focus damage on non-tank players, so unless your Tank is getting whacked (and how can they with all that THEY have, let alone all the non card free oGCDs we have) there's little for AST to do with its cards unless it's a really pedantic player.

Tanks are too strong without a doubt, but that's a tank problem in my eyes. If everyone is self sufficient, then playing healer/support is never going to feel meaningful. The fix needs to be more reasonable limitations on mitigation and self healing. Moving beyond the tank issue, I don't find the support cards completely useless and more time with AST has made me appreciate what was done in DT. I like having the option to hold Bole/Spire/etc to heal unexpected damage even if that's not always common. I also don't mind throwing them on the tank if draw is coming up again. At least they do something.

Minor Arcana is what I find least interesting now. I think that ability would be more fun if it augmented the other cards. Press once to increase card effect for reduced duration, press twice to set the card effect to be AoE, press a third time and the card goes back to normal. It would be similar to the old Royal Road but would get around the issue of some cards being used only to buff and never being played for their own effect.

[Connor]

Having done some of the normal raids on Astrologian:

The defensive cards are still functionally redundant lol. Unless you’re paired with a WHM you’re going to have mitigations coming out your ass between the tanks, dps and SCH/SGE.

Bole just feels like a complete waste of an OGCD slot even on dps that have taken damage.

Ewer is made entirely redundant by the fact every job has instant healing so it’s extremely rare for anyone to require HP regen (it just becomes overheal lol). I’d rather just use Celestial Opposition or flash Collective Unconscious if I was that desperate for regen lol, at least those are AoE

Arrow is just lol . Single target mantra is probably the most useless effect I could ever think of, and serves essentially no purpose at all except creating the illusion you have more cards than you actually do.

Lastly the shield on spire is so weak a gust of wind breaks it lol. I’ve yet to find any actual way to turn it into a benefit and not just something completely unnecessary lol; Celestial Intersection already exists.

Did they make the card system for like min Ilvl ultimates or something lol? Literally 8/10 of all cards have effects that are completely out of place in ffxiv’s encounter design

[Supersnow845]

Having done some of the normal raids on Astrologian:

The defensive cards are still functionally redundant lol. Unless you’re paired with a WHM you’re going to have mitigations coming out your ass between the tanks, dps and SCH/SGE.

Bole just feels like a complete waste of an OGCD slot even on dps that have taken damage.

Ewer is made entirely redundant by the fact every job has instant healing so it’s extremely rare for anyone to require HP regen (it just becomes overheal lol). I’d rather just use Celestial Opposition or flash Collective Unconscious if I was that desperate for regen lol, at least those are AoE

Arrow is just lol . Single target mantra is probably the most useless effect I could ever think of, and serves essentially no purpose at all except creating the illusion you have more cards than you actually do.

Lastly the shield on spire is so weak a gust of wind breaks it lol. I’ve yet to find any actual way to turn it into a benefit and not just something completely unnecessary lol; Celestial Intersection already exists.

Did they make the card system for like min Ilvl ultimates or something lol? Literally 8/10 of all cards have effects that are completely out of place in ffxiv’s encounter design

Arrow is ironically the best of those 4 cards because it can buff spreadlo and it’s not like the power couple of AST+SCH needs more buffs

[Gullis]

Benched ast once I got it to 100. Whm all the way now. I was already thinking about swapping , but giving whm a fun gap closer + destroying ast, made it the easiest decision of my life

[Valmaxian]

Benched ast once I got it to 100. Whm all the way now. I was already thinking about swapping , but giving whm a fun gap closer + destroying ast, made it the easiest decision of my life

Same, except Sage for me. AST is no longer my main after four expansions. What a freaking bummer.

[Iedarus]

This job got absolutely slaughtered to the surprise of no one. I feel bad for AST mains.

[Kissune]

The healing kit itself is fine. Sun Sign is a bit of a 'nothing' addition, but it's nice to have the flexibility of a mit that can be set up 45s in advance, I suppose. The a.helios 'upgrade'... whatever. Oracle is a nice addition, especially on trash packs but beyond that it's a poor replacement for the active and reflexive burst window that AST had not too long ago.

However the cards just... They're so worthless. Balance/Spear are the same as they ever were, and ewer is at least half decent as a set and forget regen, but the bole/arrow/spire are just... pathetic. In the past week I've spent playing nothing but this job, I have never felt like the mitigation cards have made a difference, whether they're thrown on a tank or used as spot mit. The person either dies by a massive overkill anyways, or lives regardless of the mit. And the arrow... Why would I care if I heal someone 10% more for the cost of an extra weave, when ED is usually enough to do the trick? Is it just for buffing spreadlo, something I'm sure scholars have no issues doing by themselves? Why would I use bole or spire when exaltation/CI are much more flexible and on demand? Am I just throwing it on the stack?

What warrants this level of low-power single target utility? Will it be savage? Ultimates? If not those, then perhaps criterion, where I'm forced to solo heal? Why do I need to do the hardest content just to feel like my classes CORE MECHANIC is finally available? SGE/WHM/SCH make good use of their class gimmicks at all levels, why am I just only using the dps cards and nothing else? I play new AST like I played old AST, but less interesting and less fun. And... I'm sure some people want to call me a bad healer for it, but half of my job is already done for me by the time I get there anyways, between my tank and the copious amount of free healing my coheals can put out.

At the end of the day, yeah, AST brings more single target tools to the table, weak though they may be. But when fights are going to be designed such that the weakest possible combination of mitigation and healing kits can clear it, why am I saddled with this level of bloat and overload? EW/ShB's card system was in some respects simple, and the cards were not as distinct from eachother but fuck, at least I had a reason to play each of them that wasn't padding apm.

It's... just sad. I like the healing kit of AST, but it feels like half of my favourite job has been completely removed, and its shell is a glorified extra stack of the tools I already have, a mini version of the kit I loved for so long, and that's it. I don't think I'll be playing this job more, as I can't imagine the savage/ultimate checks will warrant the level of single target bloat AST has, when WHMs will be able to clear it just fine with less. And even if that's not the case... I'd still call it a failed rework if the job only feels complete when pushed to its highest limits.

I am a long time AST main, did basically all content on it. I made sure to wait and level it to 100, and then do the extremes and normal raids on it before I gave my opinions on it. I've been active on the forums in the past, specifically focusing on healer design and especially astrologian design.

My ultimate thought is that... Yeah. These cards just... do not feel good to use. I tried to maintain a system agnostic view of it as I played, as I knew if I compared it to the older systems that I did like I'd always find it wanting. But after doing all the content currently available, I ended up frustrated and not wanting to play the job further.

[Alice_Rivers]

I am loving DT AST, going from two cards to six was huge, I may not always use all of them but I do use all of them and they're oh so very useful. Need more healing but don't want to (or can't) use Synastry? There's a card for that. Shield without spending a token? Got that too. Regen without spending a GCD? You bet. Then there's my absolute favourite: Mitigation, that has been a godsend way too many times. This version has had me leaning away from my WHM main status to play more AST. Do I miss Astrodyne? A little bit. But I'd rather have this level of flexibility all of these options to do more things, especially at lower levels. I'll take this over RNG of a mere two cards any day.

Reading some of the posts here I can't help but think you guys want to hate current AST.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Reading some of the posts here I can't help but think you guys want to hate current AST.

Those 'new' cards are literally "Exaltation/Asp Benefic/Intersection but Card VFX & worse". Those aren't really big to write home about when they could just give more charges to Exaltation & Intersection specifically while actually making the other 4 cards more interesting. Oooor sure give us all these 'different cards' but also drop us a Royal Road. That'll suddenly make the system far more appealing.

Glad you enjoyed DT AST though. Not for some of us, myself included. They claimed about requiring more time to 'rework AST' back in 6.3 after mentioning it months prior to that & wanting to push it back to 7.0. Well, look what they have cooked in the span of 2'ish years: more mit/heal we totally don't need lmao. Is this really the best that they're willing to do for AST?

[Kissune]

I am loving DT AST, going from two cards to six was huge, I may not always use all of them but I do use all of them and they're oh so very useful. Need more healing but don't want to (or can't) use Synastry? There's a card for that. Shield without spending a token? Got that too. Regen without spending a GCD? You bet. Then there's my absolute favourite: Mitigation, that has been a godsend way too many times. This version has had me leaning away from my WHM main status to play more AST. Do I miss Astrodyne? A little bit. But I'd rather have this level of flexibility all of these options to do more things, especially at lower levels. I'll take this over RNG of a mere two cards any day.

Reading some of the posts here I can't help but think you guys want to hate current AST.

I take offence to this. Because I did try. I wanted to *like* current AST, I really did, I gave it the fairest shot I could coming from older iterations, but ultimately it just feels bad to use. You say 'going from 2 cards to 6', but the way I see it we went from 2 cards to 1, as rarely, if ever, do I find that these new cards contribute in any way beyond the damaging ones. I find them to be too weak at absolute best. I ran extremes with AST for a while, and I remember distinctly remarking to my static that the cards feel useless when things are going right, and useless when things are going wrong. When I have to panic heal to recover, a 10% healing amp on one person or a 400 potency shield isn't going to make an appreciable difference especially when every weave counts, and believe me, I've healed ultimates. Throwing a 10% mit on the tank doesn't make a difference for a buster or any auto attacks when they are already capable of solo mitigating and healing themselves anyways. At least in Endwalker/Shadowbringers, my cards always felt good to play, even if the effects were simple and not all that varied. Now I'm stuck with the choice of either constantly overwriting them, or just... throwing them out to pad my APM. The Ewer is the only one I'd say that I actually notice the effect of, but it's basically just a way to put kardia on two tanks at once every 2 minutes.

At least in StB/HW, cards that weren't useful could be burned to make more useful cards better, or stored for a time later where they're useful. You have a 55s window to utilize the cards you're given, and if you don't or can't, they just feel bad. This isn't like letting celestial intersection or whatever sit at full charges for a bit, cards are supposed to be the core mechanic of the class. There's zero incentive to interact with it ever, and that's disappointing. Unique card effects mean nothing when they're so weak and so easily outmatched by basically everything else in your kit that there's no reason to use them.

The illusion of flexibility and power that has been put into these cards just makes me disappointed bc people will just see it at a surface level and not engage more than that. And it makes me sad, because I'm sure this is the iteration of AST that will stick, and that means that the class that made me fall in love with this game is gone for good. In its place is a shadow of itself.

Personally, I think that the Bole/Spire need their effects doubled, and Arrow needs a new effect for me to even consider picking it up. Bc right now I barely care to use any of them, to the point where I actually got frustrated enough to swap off the job midway through raid night because I was just so mad at how useless the cards felt. AST's general healing kit is the same old, and it's a fond familiarity, but these cards feel more like a tacked on afterthought than a core mechanic with any thought to it. I feel like I'm playing the only healer without a class identity at the moment, despite all the flavour baked in to its regular healing toolkit.