The 5.3 changes to AST bring a mixture of wanted QoL as well as changes that will completely break the job in high-level progression as well as casual play. Today I'm going to go into details on the changes and why the developers need to seriously reconsider the changes they are implementing onto AST. To start off, let's talk about AST MP sustain prior to 5.3 before moving onto the 5.3 changes.
Mana Requirements: Prior to 5.3 there was only one change needed to make AST a more fun experience for all player skill levels as well as some much needed QoL at a higher-end level. The change needed? Adding an additional perk to cards to where giving a card to another player gives the AST player MP back. This helps mitigate the MP sustain issue with the job as well as give more incentive to players to draw and apply new cards on Cooldown. This is literally the ONLY QoL change that this job needed. They could nerf it slightly since it's OP in the hard-core scene by lowering potencies or something if they wanted but other than that, nothing else needed to be changed.
5.3 Lightspeed change + Lowered MP cost skills: I get the idea behind this but this change was really not needed. Lightspeed was a really clutch raise skill if the stars aligned since you can get people up fast without swift, and it also won't completely destroy your MP as much as it would without it. Again though if applying cards gave you back MP then that would fix the MP issues then why are these changes here? It reduces the functionality of Lightspeed and made it strictly a DPS skill and to compensate it reduced MP cost of skills when the mana requirements have already been mitigated. These changes are not needed and only hurt AST in the grand scheme of things, by giving less utility to a unique healing ability.
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Mana Requirements: Prior to 5.3 there was only one change needed to make AST a more fun experience for all player skill levels as well as some much needed QoL at a higher-end level. The change needed? Adding an additional perk to cards to where giving a card to another player gives the AST player MP back. This helps mitigate the MP sustain issue with the job as well as give more incentive to players to draw and apply new cards on Cooldown. This is literally the ONLY QoL change that this job needed. They could nerf it slightly since it's OP in the hard-core scene by lowering potencies or something if they wanted but other than that, nothing else needed to be changed.
5.3 Lightspeed change + Lowered MP cost skills: I get the idea behind this but this change was really not needed. Lightspeed was a really clutch raise skill if the stars aligned since you can get people up fast without swift, and it also won't completely destroy your MP as much as it would without it. Again though if applying cards gave you back MP then that would fix the MP issues then why are these changes here? It reduces the functionality of Lightspeed and made it strictly a DPS skill and to compensate it reduced MP cost of skills when the mana requirements have already been mitigated. These changes are not needed and only hurt AST in the grand scheme of things, by giving less utility to a unique healing ability.
Continue reading...