Solution to Astrologian problem

[Supersnow845]

Well, we currently have no RNG, do you feel like you're just a White Mage with some card flavor?

I mean, beyond all the general issues, like all healers just spamming a single nuke and having 0 reason to heal outside of oGCD use, of course. That has to be solved at a game level, by dealing actual and constant damage to both the tank and the raid, all the time, so that no oGCD-array can cover that, before long they're all on CD and you got to GCD heal.

Importantly, if you are going to answer "Yes, with randomized cards I'd feel different from WHM, but not without that!", then consider this: Would they then make it a 50/50 coin flip to gain a charge for the Blood Lily on using either Lily heal (essentially adding randomness to the core mechanic of WHM!) would you again feel the same as White Mage, because they now got randomness, too? As in, would the pure downgrade from having to beg your job mechanic to actually work be enough to sort regen healers into two categories, "Works as advertised" vs "Sometimes works as advertised, sometimes you just draw a dud"?

Except AST didn’t “didnt work” when you drew the wrong card because its entire minigame was around mitigation and playing around the RNG you got, if you were relying on drawing something in particular for a particular mechanic then you were playing AST wrong, what set AST’s gameplay apart was the fact that you were playing something on the side alongside your healing. Current AST just gives you extra charges of useless single target heals you barely use anyway and calls them “cards” despite there being zero minigame around playing them

Modern AST doesn’t “always work as advertised” it just makes the cards to completely pointless and useless with zero feedback on “playing” them well that it just feels like you are playing a generic filler regen healer which is what WHM has felt like for years

[Sylvain]

Except AST didn’t “didnt work” when you drew the wrong card because its entire minigame was around mitigation and playing around the RNG you got, if you were relying on drawing something in particular for a particular mechanic then you were playing AST wrong,

I mean.. sure but on the other hand, can we really say that "every draw but this one is useless" makes for an intertaining gameplay?

I agree that relying on something random for a specific mechanic would mean playing AST wrong. But because if I can't rely on a random utility then when it occurs its just useless because I learned to deal without it.

Lady vs King is a good example of the Lady being systematically useless because you'd simply learn to deal with a mechanic without it. It was also too weak to replace a gcd heal if you were doing one most of the time.
So in any scenario the heal from the lady would be wasted.

So if planning around a random event is wrong, but because the event is random I don't use it, the system might as well simply not exist because it serves no purpose. Wether I would draw a lady had 0 impact on performances.

If playing AST was about dealing with whatever random option the cards would offer you, than old AST was imo a failure because it didn't achieve that. You didn't deal with whatever the card would offer you, you would just do your best to mitigate the RNG to reach your goal which was to get more dps cards. Which resulted in 6 copy carbon cards for two expansions.

And while it was fun to throw a bunch of cards every 2 mins and you'd never really knew who would get the cards (and boy was it an exciting moment every 2 minutes when some players would litterally be purring hoping to get a card because I'd draw 3melee in a row or 2 range or whatever)

From all the flaw the new card system may have, this isn't one. No matter how useless you believe the cards to be, you can plan around them and use them.
Sure they are no longer proper cards per say. They're not random, they're just cycling buff/heal on a 1min cd. But I don't see that as worse than a system with 6 random buff from which 5 will be ignored.

The card system has never achieved what you portrayed as correctly playing AST, "dealing with the RNG". In SB we never dealt with it, we just waited to get what we wanted. And then we just threw whatever was available in ShB/EW because they were all the same anyway and the gain from having 3 seals over 2 was just.. "there" I guess.

So again, not saying the new system is amazing or anything but I really don't see the old one as especially better. I don't see fishing for an AoE balance more intertaining than fishing for 3 seals over no rng. Unless you're very into fishes.