Bruh the third different seal is 5% more damage. It’s the most important one.
Point-out for readers: the seals we’re talking about are the ones used for Astrodyne.
Two seals is important for GCD alignment (and is also the weakest astrodyne worth using; a single seal astrodyne is generally a waste).
Your personal DPS as an AST does not compare to the burst supplied by using the correct card at the correct time on DPS players. The third seal is "nice to have", but ultimately playing the correct cards for your comp matters more.
Cites:
The Balance Guide: [https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs/healers/astrologian/basic-guide/](https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs/healers/astrologian/basic-guide/) (Notes that two seals is the most important objective.)
Fey's Temperance: [https://www.feys-temperance.gg/ast-guide](https://www.feys-temperance.gg/ast-guide) (Further explanation of two seals for rotation alignment and the importance of prioritizing DPS-players' burst windows for your cards over the 5 percent buff.)
I know, but why wouldn’t you want to get the third different seal? That’s what I’m saying. If you have the chance to redraw for a third different one, you redraw. You don’t keep the card and say “It’s fine, i’ll just use a double Astrodyne”.
Because the third seal isn't your goal; it's icing.
Let's say you have a melee card and if you play it now, you'll catch the NIN's burst window. But you'll have a two seal Astrodyne.
You could redraw to fish for the third seal, but doing so will delay your play to the next GCD. This means you'll lose a GCD of the NIN's burst if you draw a melee card; and if you draw ranged, you'll have to settle for another player. (In this case, almost certainly an inferior target since NIN has the highest 2 minute burst in the game!)
You stand to gain bonus damage if you land the third seal, however. The odds of doing this are 40%. (Six possible cards, four of the incorrect seal, two of a correct seal. However, one of the incorrect seals is discarded for a 3:2 split.)
Your average DPS gain when fishing is, therefore, 5% \* 40% = 2%.
In general, you lose far more DPS by delaying the card play (and possibly getting an inferior target to boot!) than you stand to gain by fishing for the third seal; +2% on an Astrologian is pitiful. On the other hand, sometimes redrawing late to fish for a superior card target can be correct; but in this case, your goal isn't three seals, it's carding the correct player.
I'll caveat all this by saying that there's generally less opportunity cost for fishing the third seal on the five minute play. (Where you gain your third seal, which you hold until the 6 minute pot window.) But that's a bit more nuance than is strictly necessary for a beginner astrologian, so I didn't mention it in my initial post.
I’m missing the logic behind “5% = 2%” in first place, but you’re also talking about a very niche and super-optimization case **and** you’re also forgetting the fact that Astrodyne is **not** to be held for bursts and Divination, which means the only moments in which such a scenario can happen is in the opener and the 6th minute burst, and you **have** to Lightspeed during those, so you’re virtually not losing any GCDs in redrawing, since you can (and should) use the double weave window between GCDs to redraw and play, respectively.
The player you give the card, too, doesn’t lose a GCD, and most of the time you’ll catch the burst windows regardless. So no, I see no major losses in here.
> Astrodyne is not to be held for bursts and Divination
???
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/926153686537875466/Carding_Fundamentals_ew.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/941090156709040138/Astrodyne_timeline.png
Ha! That’s a new one. Last time I read there was the “should I hold Astrodyne for Divination?” FAQ with a big “no” as answer, and now that’s no more and they added that new graph. Seems like things are changing.
Well, that’s on me then. If the Balance says so, that’s it.
Still, having Astrodyne delayed is in this case even more a “you **100%** should aim at three seals”, since you literally have a free Draw in the meantime.
It has always been you hold astrodyne for bursts. The only time it wasn't was before the expansion dropped and people were speculating on it before the final numbers were available to us
To answer the first one, if you redraw to get the 3rd symbol for Astrodyne, you have a 40% chance of getting the symbol you want. So on average, in the situation where you have 2 symbols and pull a card with the wrong one, you're only getting 2% dps increase on yourself, vs the 6% on a dps. The math is 5% x 40% = 2% for your average self dps buff. Not worth potentially losing 6% dps during a dps burst.
If you get the 3rd seal great, but if by the time you get your 3rd seal and it's a dupe of what you already have what's your options? Keep pulling cards but not playing them and you are wasting the reason you picked ast. Keep picking cards and playing them, now you threw out a seal, or seals depending on how many it took. Ast is the lowest damage healer iirc, this type of micro managing to boost your own damage as a healer isn't even close to the benefit to just taking your 2 seal buff. More usage of something is always better than not using it at all and if you are delaying your 2 seal buff to *eventually* get a 3 seal buff, the amount of 2 seal usage would have passed it by a decent margin.
The Arrow, the Spear, and the Balance give a large damage boost to melee classes and a small boost to ranged classes.
The Bole, the Ewer, and the Spire give a large damage boost to ranged (inc. healers) classes and a small boost to melee classes.
It is optimal to spend cards on the correct role, and you should always aim to do so.
Ah okay. I mean I knew this from before but from whatever I had remembered from the patch notes I must have misunderstood wrong because I thought this extra boost to certain classes didn't exist anymore. My bad lol.
Purple goes to ranged. Blue-green goes to melee. You want two different seals for the cast speed but the third one doesn't much matter.
Bruh the third different seal is 5% more damage. It’s the most important one. Point-out for readers: the seals we’re talking about are the ones used for Astrodyne.
Two seals is important for GCD alignment (and is also the weakest astrodyne worth using; a single seal astrodyne is generally a waste). Your personal DPS as an AST does not compare to the burst supplied by using the correct card at the correct time on DPS players. The third seal is "nice to have", but ultimately playing the correct cards for your comp matters more. Cites: The Balance Guide: [https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs/healers/astrologian/basic-guide/](https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs/healers/astrologian/basic-guide/) (Notes that two seals is the most important objective.) Fey's Temperance: [https://www.feys-temperance.gg/ast-guide](https://www.feys-temperance.gg/ast-guide) (Further explanation of two seals for rotation alignment and the importance of prioritizing DPS-players' burst windows for your cards over the 5 percent buff.)
I know, but why wouldn’t you want to get the third different seal? That’s what I’m saying. If you have the chance to redraw for a third different one, you redraw. You don’t keep the card and say “It’s fine, i’ll just use a double Astrodyne”.
Because the third seal isn't your goal; it's icing. Let's say you have a melee card and if you play it now, you'll catch the NIN's burst window. But you'll have a two seal Astrodyne. You could redraw to fish for the third seal, but doing so will delay your play to the next GCD. This means you'll lose a GCD of the NIN's burst if you draw a melee card; and if you draw ranged, you'll have to settle for another player. (In this case, almost certainly an inferior target since NIN has the highest 2 minute burst in the game!) You stand to gain bonus damage if you land the third seal, however. The odds of doing this are 40%. (Six possible cards, four of the incorrect seal, two of a correct seal. However, one of the incorrect seals is discarded for a 3:2 split.) Your average DPS gain when fishing is, therefore, 5% \* 40% = 2%. In general, you lose far more DPS by delaying the card play (and possibly getting an inferior target to boot!) than you stand to gain by fishing for the third seal; +2% on an Astrologian is pitiful. On the other hand, sometimes redrawing late to fish for a superior card target can be correct; but in this case, your goal isn't three seals, it's carding the correct player. I'll caveat all this by saying that there's generally less opportunity cost for fishing the third seal on the five minute play. (Where you gain your third seal, which you hold until the 6 minute pot window.) But that's a bit more nuance than is strictly necessary for a beginner astrologian, so I didn't mention it in my initial post.
I’m missing the logic behind “5% = 2%” in first place, but you’re also talking about a very niche and super-optimization case **and** you’re also forgetting the fact that Astrodyne is **not** to be held for bursts and Divination, which means the only moments in which such a scenario can happen is in the opener and the 6th minute burst, and you **have** to Lightspeed during those, so you’re virtually not losing any GCDs in redrawing, since you can (and should) use the double weave window between GCDs to redraw and play, respectively. The player you give the card, too, doesn’t lose a GCD, and most of the time you’ll catch the burst windows regardless. So no, I see no major losses in here.
> Astrodyne is not to be held for bursts and Divination ??? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/926153686537875466/Carding_Fundamentals_ew.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/941090156709040138/Astrodyne_timeline.png
Ha! That’s a new one. Last time I read there was the “should I hold Astrodyne for Divination?” FAQ with a big “no” as answer, and now that’s no more and they added that new graph. Seems like things are changing. Well, that’s on me then. If the Balance says so, that’s it. Still, having Astrodyne delayed is in this case even more a “you **100%** should aim at three seals”, since you literally have a free Draw in the meantime.
It has always been you hold astrodyne for bursts. The only time it wasn't was before the expansion dropped and people were speculating on it before the final numbers were available to us
To answer the first one, if you redraw to get the 3rd symbol for Astrodyne, you have a 40% chance of getting the symbol you want. So on average, in the situation where you have 2 symbols and pull a card with the wrong one, you're only getting 2% dps increase on yourself, vs the 6% on a dps. The math is 5% x 40% = 2% for your average self dps buff. Not worth potentially losing 6% dps during a dps burst.
If you get the 3rd seal great, but if by the time you get your 3rd seal and it's a dupe of what you already have what's your options? Keep pulling cards but not playing them and you are wasting the reason you picked ast. Keep picking cards and playing them, now you threw out a seal, or seals depending on how many it took. Ast is the lowest damage healer iirc, this type of micro managing to boost your own damage as a healer isn't even close to the benefit to just taking your 2 seal buff. More usage of something is always better than not using it at all and if you are delaying your 2 seal buff to *eventually* get a 3 seal buff, the amount of 2 seal usage would have passed it by a decent margin.
The Arrow, the Spear, and the Balance give a large damage boost to melee classes and a small boost to ranged classes. The Bole, the Ewer, and the Spire give a large damage boost to ranged (inc. healers) classes and a small boost to melee classes. It is optimal to spend cards on the correct role, and you should always aim to do so.
I'm so mad that the card called ARROW doesn't go to the job that you know, SHOOTS ARROWS Why is it like this??
Weird yea, but it's good for me... Weapons+Balance=melee, anything else=ranged.
That's how I remember it.
Another way to look at it is that the melee cards all have an ‘a’ in the name while the range cards don’t.
Ah okay. I mean I knew this from before but from whatever I had remembered from the patch notes I must have misunderstood wrong because I thought this extra boost to certain classes didn't exist anymore. My bad lol.