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Cards should just be AOE with an effect other than damage. They can add 2-3% crit buff AOE without breaking the game, or making AST too strong.
Having to think about seals, but also ignore Astrodyne seals, because you need individual cards based on burst windows for specifically DPS, is just a disaster.
Having to hold Lightspeed, just to hit the amount of buttons required is awful.
AOE Cards buffing crit or dh would mean youre only using 1 at a time, and can focus more on healing and dpsing, and use Lightspeed and Astrodyne when its more advantageous for damage, healing or MP regen, as opposed to… never thinking about it.
Astro was my healer of choice back in Shadowbringers, but with the changes to the card system and how busy the burst phase is now, I've been using Sage a lot more. It's a shame and I really hope they fix it because their new abilities are amazing for the reasons you said in the video.
I liked the ShB card system of dealing with RNG, where Minor Arcana was a tool to navigate it by recycling bad RNG into useful potency. Simply having to deal with Minor now in addition to Draw, potentially Redraw, and Play, makes me feel needlessly busy. Pressing Glare over and over again and sometimes weaving Tetra or Benison is something I find preferable over constant weaving between every single Fall Malefic just to put all my skills on cooldown efficiently. It's so overwhelming I'll sometimes even ignore ABC just to get something like Minor Arcana out of my way.
I don't think Minor Arcana being in its current state is even that bad, I think both cards feel very satisfying to pull in most scenarios, it's only when you have parse brain that it feels bad. I think parsers are a great tool for self improvement, but they lead to people getting stuck up on things that…don't matter at all. Pulling a Lady instead of a Lord isn't going to prevent you from clearing anything, and in fact might save you if you make a mistake in managing your resources or someone takes an extra hit from a mechanic. If you enjoy hunting down 99s on fights with BiS, optimized groups, good for you! But I don't think that the ability needs to be changed for those people.
And, unlike other difficult/annoying to optimize skills (like old Anatman for example), there isn't any wacky super obscure optimization tech that you can employ to improve it, so it isn't like it's encouraging an unhealthy or unfun gameplay experience.
That said, the button bloat with the skill is wild, needing 2 separate actions seems really silly.
It feels like they took the triple weaving insanity away from SMN and gave it to AST. I'm about halfway through all the jobs to 90 and AST so far has been the most unfun of them all. Having to just mash your keys to get cards out without drifting all your CDs into oblivion is so stressful.
Crown draw and crown play should be a recast of the same button. It taking up 2 keybinds for no reason is frustrating
Astro has a really powerful healing toolkit, but the cards are in need of an overhaul again. I also cannot comfortably bind every key with this job, which makes me not want to deal with it.
This was my main healer in heavensward and stormblood. I stopped playing it in shadowbringers due to card changes, specifically the removal of royal road. Endwalker ast cards are even worse than shadowbringers. They really killed this job.
What stresses me out when playing astro is when i drift the 2nd divination because suddenly everyone loves red aoe, while i'm counting taxes, all the neighbors suddenly knocking at the front door, and playing my monopoly cards at the same time, it's so busy, it's insane and ast's dps is at the bottom
Astro has way too many buttons at the moment, especially for a healer, and I can't bind them all comfortably. Cards alone take up 6 buttons (Draw, Play, Minor, Crown Play, Redraw, and Astrodyne)
I think its time for Draw charges to be offloaded to the job gauge, and Draw/Play merged into one button. Minor arcana should also be cut down to one button, and personally I'd prefer if we could convert our current card like ShB minor arcana, but keep the damage/heal effects.
Decoupling Divination from the seals was a mistake. If the proposition was we don't want to make the seals feel so important that it'll be a massive DPS loss if there's an error in the seals, then how do you make the reward for setting them up worthwhile?
Astro is the job that feels the most HELPFUL. Not only do you heal but you’re constantly buffing the party’s damage output. It’s my favorite pure healer.
The job also has some of the most satisfying proactive healing abilities in the game, such as Earthly Star, Exaltation, and Macrocosmos.
I like what they did to the card playing mechanic. It’s more RNG yeah, but it’s easier and less impactful on your party now that it’s not tied to Divination. That’s great Imo. Plus playing your cards for your team instead of yourself is fine with me, if I wanted to be selfish I’d play samurai lol.
My only complaint is that Gravity 2 looks lame compared to Gravity.
I don't mind how busy it is, if the cards were actually random with completely different effects like most of the pkayerbase begs for, it would be just as busy, if not more than it is now. I do think the card sustem needs tweaks though, it doesn't need to take so many buttons for what it does, but I like the MP regen, and macrocosmos is insane. Not being able to get all seals consistently hurts my soul but that's the issue with true RNG as a class mechanic and why they only tied it to our own buff. AST is never gonna make everyone happy because RNG sounds good in theory but not being consistent on an already busy job is always gonna be a nightnare to most but if they make it consistent then people will be mad and say the complexity and job fantasy was removed.
Honestly the thing that bugs me the most about 90 AST is the sound effect for the new Gravity. OG gravity had one of the most satisfying battle sounds IMO and the upgraded version looks cooler but has no punch to it anymore. 💔
AST was my most played healer in ShB and now so far least played…. I'm not really sure was it necessary to change cards again. For me it use to feel good when you got all three astrosigns for Devination.
I love how AST feels this expansion. I don't really care about RNG mitigation, because seals are just an afterthought for me – i like getting the mana and casting speed up. I love the way minor arcana works now. That being said it's very clearly feeling a lot weaker to play than the other healers, and I hope they tweak the numbers.
Yeah I agree with this video! Astrologian is in a really good spot healing wise but the care system is honestly not good. ShB Astrologian card system was honestly so much better in my opinion. It felt less busy and it was smoother
as of launch, it feels as though the pure healers need just a bit more polish to feel as tightly tuned as the barriers. whm's holy cast time and dps-negative lilies make it difficult to maximize in most scenarios, while ast's frenetic rotation feels bloated and stressful.
Astro’s healing toolkit feels incredible. The cards and seals however feel clunky. For one, only getting one redraw per card feels bad. Getting only one shot to get a better card makes it feel bad when it dosent hit. And the fact that the “optimal” way to play Astro is to not really care about your seals feels sloppy. Before you worked hard to get the best spread for the best results and it felt incredible. Now. You press Astrodyne every 3 cards and don’t really care about the seals that much cause it’s just Lucid dreaming 2.0
With the removal to sleeve draw and changes to Minor Arcana removing our RNG mitigation means we only have the one redraw charge to do anything about bad RNG. And again, when minor arcana hits and you draw that Lord/Lady you need it feels great but when you just popped a CD to top people up then draw a Lady. You better hope you need it in the next 60s.
Light speed went from being the tool used for mobility to now being something we have to use to get everything out in time for burst windows.
I really hope SE takes a look at the cards cause right now it feels like AST players have to do a lot of work only to get first in rDPS at the very top end of the player base.