Square Enix Can't Figure How To Make AST Fun!

[HyoMinPark]

Stormblood AST was fun. But they decided to change it simply because of the “Balance fishing” issue and “useless cards like Spire/Ewer” issue. Versus trying to make other cards outside of Balance useful. They were kind of on to something with Spear being increased crit % since two SB jobs scaled and benefited from critical hit rate (BRD and MNK). If only they had done something similar with other substats to give maybe something like Arrow with its speed/haste boost worthwhile (instead of a nightmare for most jobs). Alternatively, changing Balance to Direct Hit % and giving some jobs D.Hit scaling was another option. But why invest time in trying to fix the substats? Why not just destroy a job and its identity entirely instead!

A lot of jobs suffered the post-Stormblood job identity massacre. Two of my favorites included: AST and BRD. I’d give anything to have Stormblood AST back again. I can’t hardly stand to play AST anymore, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. For all the complaints about “useless cards”, they’ve brought that back with the new card effects, and somehow made it worse. At least in Stormblood, if you pulled a “useless card” or a card you simply didn’t need, you could Royal Road or Minor Arcana it into something better. We don’t even have that option anymore. So I just use them on myself (because what’s the point), or throw them on random party members.

Some of the effects are interesting and have their uses. Like Ewer being a small regen. Perfect for a tank or maybe to toss on a DPS that ate a pretty orange circle. But Arrow being a healing potency increase?? When healers are already overpowered in their healing output and most content doesn’t call for heal buffs? Unnecessary. Spire and Bole have some single-target mitigation potential—but if they simply aren’t needed at the time, then there’s no way to turn them into something more immediately useful. Which means they just go to waste completely, and that really emphasizes the “uselessness” issue.