you say that but 80% of ASTs fished for AoE balance and nothing else. You were fishing for one thing and one thing only, Yoshida is giving it to you 100% of the time and you complain... wut
@@NightArcHero I mean I don't really fish for balance so no need to speak on behalf of me or all AST. I personally enjoyed using all the buffs (except spire, because when does anyone ever need TP regen?), and trying to shift the odds in my favor and make the most of the cards I draw is fun to manage, especially since they improved the RNG. These changes make it seem like playing AST will be significantly less engaging.
@@NightArcHero He's not though. A lot of people didn't fish, but even if you did, not only is the new buff weaker, but the AoE Variant is weaker AND has a hefty 3 min CD. @Green Smartie You give TP cards to melee dps during AoE rotations. Happens a lot, actually.
I dont think they ONLY increase dps however. I think they have the same effects as before just with the added bonus of a damage buff. It was meant to add purpose to every card rather than ASTs just trying to hit that balance. Many would treat Spire and Ewer as throwaway cards. Spire might be different since they've gotten rid of TP.
@@AsaelTheBeast Yeah I know, I was partially joking. I find it better to royal road it for the effect since I've yet to have a DPS or tank run out of TP at crucial moments.
I'll miss the old Astrologian. It was my favorite healer class in Stormblood. Also, I think the Neutral Sect should be renamed "Planetary Sect" maybe in more expansions we'll have the Planetary Sect -> Zodiacal Sect -> Galactic Sect -> Universal Sect -> Multiversal Sect
I will miss using bole on a tank and have him not take damage in dungeons. I will miss getting lucky with balances and having expanded balance buffs for a straight 100 seconds. I will miss trolling ninja's with arrow. I will miss holding an ace-heal up my sleeve. But most of all, I will miss Royal Road
Not loving what the cards are doing now. Though I like the aspect of the lunar/sun/celestial bit. Looks like they werent kidding when they said there would be a lot of changes to classes. Been a secondary astrologian main for a long time and I'm gonna have to spend some time relearning the class as a lot has changed for sure. Also that level 80 ability is amazing.
@@filiplabecki708 tbh, since arrow is good for auto attacks, i often used it on meeles before, or i did it wrong, dunno, i mostly used arrow/speer for meeles (if no bard around) and balance for casters. but since it gets reworked i dont have to worry too much if i did it wrong till now xD
@@firby7341 I'm talking about the new card and my complaint is purely thematical. Apparently, you should give the bard and arrow. Currently, though, I prefer to give black mages the arrow to, hopefully, allow the more fire 4s
they should have given you the option to combine cards into new ones or give astro a new gauge that looks like a gameboard where you have to place your cards
I simultaneously understand why people feel this way while also liking the changes personally, since card management was always a barrier to me being able to enjoy Astrologian.
@@BenkaiDebussy I mean I don't hate it or anything. Everyone agrees Divination's 180s CD is too long so it feels slow, also Celestial Opposition not being a stun kind of sucks. Overall it plays well; I still prefer the old way because it was really easy to me, but I don't hate the new way either, just needs some adjustments.
My Main is whitemage, but I always liked the Astrologian for the cards and being able to adept to any given situation. Several draws are good. But with all the new effects of every single card it's just puts a bumper into the enjoyment.
I think square doesnt know some of us played ast because we liked card rng... yeah it sucks when you dont get the exact card you want, but it is what created those "magic" moments. It was those moments when you are sapped for mana and you get saved by the clutch ewer, or you get a clutch balance to finish the phase push. You could already manipulate the cards so much with old sleeve draw, Lord/lady, RR and redraw, so youd at least be getting an 'average' draw most of the time, but a super good draw sometimes. Now you just get an average draw all the time, boring. I feel like the balance team was just tired of AST issues and decided to rip away what made it cool for the sake of making the job easier to tune. And whats with the removal of time dilation and celestial opposition being made completely generic? Those were such cool abilities, because you could stack everything up and then increase it all. You could celestial your lightspeed, your lucid, your card buffs, your heals, your collective unconscious, your earthly star, ANYTHING! Having all those buffs made huge was such a cool feeling, but nope, lets replace all that with an incredibly generic aoe heal (like ast doesnt have good ones already).
EVERY decision you made with your cards, your celestial opposition, time dilation, sleeve draw mattered. Even bole, the card that is supposedly worthless, you could put on the tank for that extra shield you needed or minor arcana into a fast heal. Now all you lose is a number you never even get to see when you don't parse.
Good video, but as an AST main, I’m really lamenting the card changes. It’s too homogenized. I would’ve preferred if the spear and spire got changed to those, and then the balance could’ve just done all damage at a lower amount than those two.
Finally got to ast, started job quest, excited to play all kinds of stat changing stuff And then, i see only dps buff. I come here and find out ast was neutered Biggest and hardest blue ball i've ever experienced in my life
Honestly same...I literally sat through and grinded my way just to play AST because of the card complexity I heard and saw through Larry's video and through the guides. But now that I'm playing it and took notes on all the cards and who to put it on I'm a little disappointed that the complexity was butchered. I'm still going to play AST up until I go to DNC. Hopefully a patch after 5.3 (or in 5.3) its fixed so that I can enjoy the actual reason I grinded to get to AST in the first place
yep. no ewer if you or the other healer die and lucid is down, no largesse until lvl 80 and we can't extend time on ANYTHING. so no extended lucid or lighspeed. MP management will be tight especially in situations where the rest of the party is really bad or your co-healer doesn't heal. Scholars are gonna have to start healing now, otherwise the group will wipe once you've ran out of MP. I worry about 10 minute encounters. The only upside to this is that i won't be able to carry 3 nightmarishly bad players through dungeons anymore. Just gotta leave and take the 30 min penalty now.
@@risingdawn6393 happy i baught a bard boost after my alt character was lost due to me forgetting the password lol if not id only have healer classes id have no escape if this update crashes and burns
Lucid Dreaming is on a 60s recast timer now, so it's actually pretty hard to run out of MP. The cards all do something USEFUL at the sacrifice of doing something DIFFERENT, but the frustrating gameplay of fishing around your deck for the right card is still present since you need three colors for Divination. It feels different and yet exactly the same. I still hate it~
A heart beat without harmony Is moonlight without dark The heart seeketh equilibrium With Balance will your worry part So still this broken melody And therewith shoulder thee One last step only leaving An empty hearth down by the sea An empty hearth down by the sea RIP, Balance.
It gave damage reduction and a regen. Larry said a regen and a *shield.* Although the tooltip he linked still showed damage reduction and not a shield, so I'm not sure if Larry meant to say that and just didn't know the class.
Can't say I'm too excited about AST anymore. Fixing balance being the best card by turning everything into balance seems lame. Like the Seal mechanic tho. Horoscope feels loosely like "earthen star but it's on people now" skill. Both Celestial skills are rather underwhelming (Hoping that they just look underwhelming and maybe get tweaked / it plays better) Neutral sect is pretty nice though. Was hoping for a bit more. :/
What are you talking about? I main Astro and I have literally used every card on a party member for different situations. Think about this clearly. The cards WHERE SITUATIONAL/JOB RELATED. I don’t mind the change all to much because I’ll be switching my main class but, this is what made Astro unique and to put it plainly now it just made everything easier. Although for me it’s a good/bad thing because now I just want to see how my rotations are mainly going to change. This is me being honest. As well if I didn’t like a card you know what i’d do? Use the Redraw skill. You can literally play and abuse the system to a degree.
@Aesthetic Lowlife There's a bit more to it than that, though. What if you draw Spear when the BRD isn't around? What do you do if you draw something that you don't really need? Do you risk getting a Spire through redraw or do you just put that Spear on SAM? If you do get a Spire, what do you do with it? Sure, the end goal is AoE Balance, but bad RNG doesn't always *give you* AoE Balance, so you need to figure out what to do with the rest of it. It's not like Ewer is so useless that if you end up with it through redraw that you just undraw it, it can be put on someone anyways even if it doesn't end up being what you wanted or needed. (Edit) Not to mention that Ewer and Spire are vital for full party Balances because they give you that AoE buff when Royal Roaded. So even Spire and Ewer can be useful in that way too. On another note, why is the illusion of choice a bad thing...? Mass Effect is filled with dialogue options that all end up with the same result, yet if Bioware just went "Well, these options aren't different so we'll just remove them entirely" people would go "Where're all my choices?" Sure, they have the exact same number of choices in the end, but the illusion of choice is a great tool nonetheless, especially in videogame design.
@Aesthetic Lowlife Logical thinking is rarely involved in liking something. Occasionally, you may play with some friend and maybe you just want to mess with them so you throw an Ewer on a NIN just to see their reaction. It's not gameplay viable, it doesn't make any sense, but it may be funny to you. It's not logical, but it may be something you hold dear.
@@wohdinhel every card gave some form of damage boost (either directly or indirectly, as in even an ogcd Lady could free up an extra Malefic, etc) . There are plenty of raw damage buffs already in ffxiv - Trick Attack, Dragon Sight, Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Brotherhood, Contagion. ASTs cards brought more variety to the game.
@@WhnNinjasAttack it wasn't an illusion, you had to know which class benefits the most from the different cards of the ones in your party, and if the one you've drawn is worth saving for later, burning for royal road, or redrawing to try to get something better suited for the situation you're in. It was infinitely better than what they're going to be in shadowbringers.
RidersCompany01 that’s not the point, if they wanted to change the cards to be more useful then they could at least provide some variety to it’s buffs rather than gut it entirely. Changes would have been super appreciated to some of the cards effects but this isn’t a good change. The fun was the variety and making the best of the hand fate dealt you, but now the decks been replaced with nothing but heavily watered down balances and slightly better watered down balances.
@@yabbles617 But then comes the point on how they can put variety without underpower one buff over the other, and ultimately using the better buff, It is true that it lost a lot of variety, but everyone alwasy hoped for the same card comboes, in hope of getting the best of the cards, but it will always end in the same buff combo
RidersCompany01 while you have a point that balancing that shit is difficult, there are better solutions than just making everything the same and I sure would have appreciated if they at least made an attempt.
So they gave WHM nothing, removed dots and all damaging abilties from SCH and basically removed AST cards. Good job se on removing any complexity these jobs may have had and making them all similar.
AST was going to be my main healer. The card changes for me are horrific. Just utterly senseless to homogenize this classes main appeal. Flexibility is gone, decision making on the fly is gone. Now it's just all DMG.
AST is my main healer and I'm so sad about the cards all just giving the same buff. One of my favorite things about it right now is figuring out which class wants which buff more. At least it's more streamlined?
@ShiNy ArMor We have very long cast times, during which we can't move at all; that makes us very vulnerable to AoEs, unless we want to interrupt. If we do interrupt, we at the very least lose a substantial chunk of damage, and at worst we lose our stacks and have to start our rotation over from the beginning. Our most damaging spell is also only unlocked once we've spent 30 seconds with our stacks active; if we lose those stacks before those 30 seconds pass, we have to start over. Basically, in addition to giving us a DPS-up due to being able to cast spells more quickly, Arrow gives us a _lot_ of breathing room in terms of avoiding or participating in mechanics and maintaining our rotations. (It also just feels very nice to be able to cast more quickly, especially coupled with ley lines.)
They cud just nerf the old card effects a tad and keep them on and change the spire to a direct hit buff. Killing the variety of the cards in this class isnt cool it was one of the main appeals. I understand square wants to streamline and with things like the tanks its understandable but this is just gutting a kits complexity
I'm not sure bout just damage buff cards... I wouldn't mind if it was something like Arrow and spear still buffed crit and speed and maybe buffed damage if the right card os used on ranged or melee.
Shut up with this annoying sentence, everything is simplified now I am glad I joined Ff14 with the release of shadowbringers, everything is less complicated
When I saw the seal system I though we would get incentives to not be seen as bad AST for using other card than balance (Spear is actually great, Arrow is also very good on certain jobs and Bole even when is the one you dont want that often you still could use it to save raids when your tank has 3-4 vuln stacks. Ewer save your cohealer's ass or even yours and TP well.... we dont talk about that one lol). I got really hyped when I saw that seal system but then this card system is literally making all the memes come true. Everything is balance now and your finishing move is a balance within a balance... I know people don't like RNG and just want the pretty animations which is sad but it's what most people want... sadly this change came to stay forever. All we can do is let the cards rest in peace
I never 'only' ever used Balance. I looked at who was in my party. If i had a ninja, i either gave him Balance or Arrow (whichever happend to be up) Dragoon? Balance or Spear Bard? Spear, Blaance, or Arrow. blm? Balance or Spear. With these chanes? Only thing that'll even matter is if their mele or ranged... Nothing else.. the car i chose wont even mean a darn thing because their 'all' the same. The ONLY thing different is the sign. May as well jsut give us 2 cards and a random sign. No point in having 6 cards when its really only 2 different effects with 3 different signs.
@@ShadowRhapsody81 You never only ever used Balance...but you used it on every class you listed? Isn't that kind of the point of the changes? They saw that Balance was treated as the card that ruled them all, so now every card can do it. I get the changes suck and can sympathize to a point, but the players kind of indirectly forced the changes to come about in the first place.
@@belias360 it was a card you 'could' use on every class cause it was a pure damage bonus, didnt matter if it was a crit-based class or even a tank. That doesnt mean i used it every single time it came up on every class. There were times i'd give a bard or even a tank Balance, so i could then use the Crit-chance one on the Ninja. or, i'd give the mage the Crit-chance one, cause critting Fire V's are fun!, rather than just a Balance.. the 'good' Astro's learned how to use all of the cards well. The bad ones just spammed Balance over and over and complained they didnt get it enough. Now with the Shadowbringers changes. Those of us that LIKED the options.. are having the class we loved turned into a 1-trick pony with weaker heals than a whm.
@@ShadowRhapsody81 wowowow, Don't give Arrow to the NIN, you give it to a caster, Arrow only hurts melee's, but is amazing for any caster (Except summoner who doesn't need it) it's particularly good on BLM.
i am astrologian main . Arrow : attack casting speed up spear : Crit rate up Bole : damage reduce spire : tp regen Ewer : mp regen Now all become balance : damage up No stun for astrologian , Lightspeed only increase 5 seconds ( with Celestial Opposition , you can get 10 more seconds) my favourite moves : Lightspeed > celestial opposition > spam gravity
Man they really handed Leveva and the AST gang a big L with this, this was the only healer class I was fully invested in now I think I’ll just melee unless things get overhauled to make me wanna come back
Imagine playing, and loving a class that gave your 5 choices on what to do, and 2 choices of 'how' to do with those 5 choices, and then 'who' you wanted to give the ultimate choice to (ie: 15 or so different ways to do a thing. This includes either using the cards or turning them into 'effects' added to the cards, then deciding who to give your chosen buff to). And having it tuned into a class with only 2 choices and nothing else. Thats pretty much how many of us feel.
But my Ewer. I wonder how mana will feel to healers now, especially if they are getting rid of mana shift and new Astro's Ewer. I do like the idea that Astro will truly be a class that can offer both shields and regen on the fly.
RIP Ast .. it was fun while it lasted.. now it's just a simple all cards are the same build up 3 seals to buff one move.. why!!:!?!? the complexity is what I loved about the job.. FUUUUU!
Now that I've played new AST, I do like the increased focus on damage buffs especially since balance is all people wanted from me anyway. I'll miss that amazing feeling of lining up and throwing on aoe balance at the perfect time. And I'll kinda miss the ewer, spear, and bole. But let's be honest, they were very situational - borderline useless if your party was missing particular jobs. I know not everyone is going to like the changes, but the pre-emptive whining in these comments is just hilarious to me.
Ok everyone's up in arms over the card changes but I'll add: The change to Gravity is kinda... eh. Even with faster casting and no falloff, due to the lower potency it takes 5 enemies to outdo the damage of old Gravity. If using Lightspeed on the old Gravity, it takes *10 enemies* to catch up to old Gravity, 11 to surpass. Much harsher than the change to White Mage's Holy.
6 cards that give a total of 2 effects...coulda just made it 2 cards, one obviously for melee, 1 obviously for ranged...plus lord and lady...idk there's just something stupid about this change and keeping all the same cards *Shrugs*
W.O.W player here. I would warn about tooo many huge changes... Or you will have people like me waiting on the Classic W.o.W to come out... Good thing is. They are taking opinions before the launch. And hopefully you guys get what you want. Because reading these comments show that a lot of Astro mains are not liking this change too much.
They killed astro. They’ll change it down the road in a patch. They’ll notice how much players dislike this change. As a main astro, the card changes are boring, dumbed down, and unnecessary. People need to learn the job and the cards if they are going to play the job-the developers should not dumb it down for people who don’t want to learn the cards.
Srsly, they could have just removed all cards except of 2 with that changes... And if the Astro still needs as much mana as he does in stormblood we're gonna miss the mana card a lot. Don't know, just feels wrong...
@@LunarSky07 ah that's the English name of that card xD It's also an indirect nerf to casters, as dmg% was never best for casters. Especially black mages needed cast speed more. I think it was arrow? Self dps of Astro is better with castspeed too.
----- the new cards system as in 1:30 would be much easier to learn if they atleast keep them in the same category as they were for royal road ----- (speaking of solar, lunar and celestial)
What is there to learn? 1. pull card 2. Check the sign, have you used it yet? yes/no 2.a if yes, cycle. 2.b If no, what class? ranged or mele? 3. Cast card on friend of appropriate clsss ranged/mele. 4. return to step 1. Thats it... thats the entirety of the thought process/skill required for Astor now with these changes. Sofar as their cards are concerned. we dont even need 6 cards, just 2 with a 50/50 chance on if its mele or dps that comes up.. and a 33% chance on which sign comes up above that card. the change they made has made me loose all interest in playing an Astro. And it was the 1 and only healer i liked playing in FFXIV.
@@Chris-iv8sb Yea.. Astro was the only healer in FFXIV i liked to play.. BECAUSE of the variety of cards and how complex it was to play well rather than just spamming Balance on everyone. Now?... i guess i'll never play Healer anymore.. We'll have to wait and see how Geomancer does when it comes out.. maybe it'll give me a healer to play again.
Oof astrologian looks very boring and quite generic now. The whole point of astrologian was its RNG and how each card do something different and you can adapt to any situation with it but now? What is the point of it. It's just a complicated way to reach a damage buff and that's it.
@@empyreal84 it's a balance thing. Now that all the cards give damage the dev's are able to more accurately manage AST's rdps contribution and buff or nerf it as needed
God they really really really ruined cards. I thought it would be each role has two cards. Tanks having a DPS up one and a damage reduction one, healers having a heel potency one and damaged one and finally DPS having a crit or damage up one. All of them being just damage and little RNG makes me sad.
Brendan J Honestly that change would be a million times better than this. The seal system looks fine but essentially reducing AST buff types from 6 to 2 is just sad.
When I heard all cards will have offensive properties, I kind of hoped they would retain some of their identity to some degree with unique offensive properties. Oh well
Really not liking the new cards, I don't see any reason to remove their unique effects. In fact I was actually expecting to get a new effect for spire since TP was removed.
@@TheOneGreat I mean, it's been explained already. Nothing is shittier than being unable to do aoe damage in the old content where they used to have packs of trash thrown at you in the 24-man raids, MSQ roulette, trials and dungeons. Just like when they gave PLD Total Eclipse as a new skill sub-level 50 for Stormblood.
They wanted to get rid of rng cards, but ended up making the card system boring. I understand it's for balance (heh!), but the fantasy of astro was the variety of card effects. In fact this will make Astro queues hell. Imagine going into pf and now everyone needs to tailor class composition to you. Not everyone is going to go 2 melee 2 ranged :/
WHile I agree the changes are terrible. Your group will always have a Tank for the Melee buff, and a Healer (I.E. You) for the Ranged buff. Though the former is a better argument than the latter. Still feels bad man.
I see how this may have been useful at the start, but for seasoned mains this just hurts. Dancer is great and I think they shifted the buff aspect towards dancer. I think if they had kept the old system, added extra redraws and changed some of the cards instead we'd be golden. I'm sure the new content calls for huge heal checks. However, I really think the problem is people don't do healing to heal, but maybe for queue times? I've met a lot of great healers who started from not knowing anything. Balancing issues are hard. I just don't understand why they had to change the whole mechanic. I know many people didn't like the gamble; but that's the exciting part. Thought that's why sleeve draw was given to us. I'm still giving astrologian a chance; it is my main; but I may focus on the new class because it seems to do what I enjoyed about astro the most!!
The changes outside of the card changes are amazing though! You can get both sects effects without changing it yourself on so many abilities. Gravity no longer has damage drop off which is insane.
Are you kidding me? How is losing 100 pot a tick on CU "amazing"? How is losing the buff enhancement of C.Opp and the stun "amazing"? Neutral sect is just largesse with a shield and that costs you gcds that could otherwise go to damage but you have no choice now because your oGCD healing options were neutered and the alternatives givem are garbage. Meanwhile, whm gets a free medica every 30 secs and its all paid off for with a 900 potency aoe to make up for those glares you wasted healing
The thing I liked about AST was that you were always busy doing something, either using OGCD skills or thinking how to manage cards, including the worse ones or some that only fit certain jobs. While it was certainly rewarding to draw a balance, I felt all the others except spire had enough worth to make it fun using or burning them. It was like a minigame you could play to distract yourself from watching health bars 100% of the time or spamming the same single attack all the time. I always saw WHM as a very basic job for beginner healers (or people that really like the oldschool mmorpg healer archetype) after which you could move on to SCH and finally AST for more of a challenge. Succeeding in managing all the different cards and effects well made me feel that I was making more of a difference than playing the other healers and that made it rewarding to play. At its HW release it had many problems and things that felt wrong but I thought the current 4.5 AST was in a pretty good spot. Since SCH seems like torture to play in dungeons now and WHM just getting more of the same (which is not a bad thing, just not for me) I have no plans to play healer in ShB even though it was my most played role before. At least dancer looks fun...
Balancing AST around what the hardcore raiders did ruined any fun I had with AST. I pretty much didn't touch this job again until I wanted to level everything to 80. Even after many 80 duties I can say that it's just so boring and lacks any real identity anymore. There's no real reason to even have the card system. Just make it a buff button if we really want to dumb things down. The pretty AOE heals would be the only reason to play AST for me. Hopefully, Endwalker makes things a bit more interesting again.
This is what I got out of it. Which frankly is a welcome kind of change. I love playing AST and WHM, but current AST to me is boring after a while because I pick cards, put them on party members, and then forget about them. Meanwhile I go through the rest of my kit which is boring.
Really sad about this. I started playing recently because I thought AST was so cool. This seems like a huge nerf of the cards and versatility. I'm really sad...
I just got Astro to 60 and now I hear easy commends from BLMs for giving boosted Arrows on them are gone. Like cmon, only thing that needed to go regarding cards was the Spire due to tp infusion into mp. Spire could have been implemented as low level aoe spell due to its symbol and function when "Royal roaded" or just "push this and next card is aoed in full effect" -button.
Honestly, I've been playing/maining this class since HW and since they're not going to give us a new healer class, I'm fine with them just totally revamping the existing ones. Whatever gives me something new to play. Also, very informative. Thank you for making these, Larry!
I'll miss the variety in the cards, it's just basically two cards you're playing with. I like that rng is reduced, but still would have preferred each card having its own flavor.
Well, it looks like I won't be playing it anymore with these changes that completely gutted its style and depth. And AST was my healer pick amongst my friends when we made a party. I suppose I should thank them for finding a way to dedicate more time to my DPS picks. I hope the "this is all subject to change" applies here when they see the feedback given here.
