About Shuffle,Spread,Royal Road and Draw.

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

How about this: you can shuffle as much as you want, BUT shuffling doesn't reset the timer when you drew the first time.

This puts a limit on shuffles but prevents abuse and brings the risk of shuffling too much and losing the draw. They could shorten the card timers if needed.

Just a thought.

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Yes that would be awesome, but if that were to happen they would probably decrease the card time from 15s to 10s or maybe 5s to keep balance.
But still, an awesome idea.

Funny story... Did you know that Spear affects Draw cool down?

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Originally Posted by Karatecatgrl

Funny story... Did you know that Spear affects Draw cool down?

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If you had it held, use spear on yourself and then used draw it does. Otherwise, no.

Changes I will like to see:

Draw: 20s CD – 10s Buff

Shuffle: 40s CD
Note: You can’t draw the same card you put back on your deck.

Spread: 60s CD since you saved the card OR 30s CD since you used the card.
Note: The card saved can’t appear when you draw from you deck, since you are saving it.

Royal Road: 15s CD [NO CHANGES]

Break: 15s CD You break the card to get MP/HP/TP back or even attack. [NEW]

I hate when you draw the same card with Shuffle, I hate when you have a Royal Road buff and you draw a card you don’t want to use or consume to grant a buff since you have the buff you want or is the same buff. Another skill that don't cosnumes Royal Road and grants something like heal/damage should be a MUST for when you don't want that card.

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Spread: 60s CD since you saved the card OR 30s CD since you used the card.
Note: The card saved can’t appear when you draw from you deck, since you are saving it.

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This would be really, really bad. Put balance in your spread and you're punished by not being able to draw balance anymore. Everyone would just put spear in there when they log in and never use the ability again. But losing a fun ability to filter out spear is not the way you fix the spear problem. You fix it by making the card not suck.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

I've also been thinking about Royal Road a lot lately. It always bothers me when I draw a card that could be useful, but using it with the current Royal Road effect would make it feel "wasted." This mostly happens with the expanded effect. To give an example, let's say you draw Spire and decide to burn it for the expanded effect. You then draw Spire again. Using that Spire with the expanded effect may not be the best use of that card considering it may not even benefit half the party and at half potency it might not be enough for those it can benefit. I would love to be able to use that Spire on an individual without expending my Royal Road effect. Which leads me to wonder, would it be too much if Royal Road were changed into a triggered action instead of automatically applying to the next card used? It would add another button to push, but we would no longer have cards simply dropping to the floor. I can't imagine they intended for us to be right-clicking on cards to turn them off, but Royal Road is the reason people do that.

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I have very few complaints about AST, and I've reconciled with this being one of the cost-benefit trade-offs of Royal Road. Let's consider the alternative for a second.

Suppose using Royal Road the first time consumes your Drawn card and gives you a Royal Road buff. Then, while that buff is active, Royal Road becomes "Use current drawn card with the Royal Road buff effect." This would allow you to Draw and play a card unbuffed (so when you get Draw->Spire->Royal Road->Draw->Spire->Shuffle->Spire, you can throw the persistent Spire at a DD or tank without wasting your Royal Road). Sounds pretty convenient, right?

The problem there would then be that we can't use a held card with Royal Road, or if we could, we wouldn't be able to choose whether we want to use a drawn card or a held card. Something like
Draw->Arrow->Spread->Draw->Spire->Royal Road->Draw->Spire->Use held Arrow->Royal Road drawn Spire
would no longer be an option.

Yes, it would be nice to be able to opt to use a card unbuffed so as to preserve Royal Road, but giving us that option would take away some other equally good (or better) options.

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

How about this: you can shuffle as much as you want, BUT shuffling doesn't reset the timer when you drew the first time.

This puts a limit on shuffles but prevents abuse and brings the risk of shuffling too much and losing the draw. They could shorten the card timers if needed.

Just a thought.

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This is probably what needs to happen along with some card rebalancing if we ever want to use them somewhat strategically. I mean, even without an expiration would work just as well because you'd be actively punished by pushing your next Draw, but I like the risk/reward gameplay element you suggest.

I see no harm in being able to essentially choose a card with the RNG element being how many times a row you get screwed over with a Spire and AST definitely needs a tighter control over their buffs.

I also want to point out that even maintaining 100% Balance uptime on a single DPS (which would be virtually impossible) for the duration of a fight would result in a 150-170 raid DPS gain at best with a top-tier DPS, which is good but certainly not OP.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Suppose using Royal Road the first time consumes your Drawn card and gives you a Royal Road buff. Then, while that buff is active, Royal Road becomes "Use current drawn card with the Royal Road buff effect." This would allow you to Draw and play a card unbuffed (so when you get Draw->Spire->Royal Road->Draw->Spire->Shuffle->Spire, you can throw the persistent Spire at a DD or tank without wasting your Royal Road). Sounds pretty convenient, right?

The problem there would then be that we can't use a held card with Royal Road, or if we could, we wouldn't be able to choose whether we want to use a drawn card or a held card. Something like
Draw->Arrow->Spread->Draw->Spire->Royal Road->Draw->Spire->Use held Arrow->Royal Road drawn Spire would no longer be an option.

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Actually, in that example, it would be possible to use Royal Road with the drawn Spire card assuming they design it in a way that allows for that to happen. I should note that it has been a while since I made that post and since then my play style has changed with me refraining from grabbing the expanded Royal Road buff prior to having a card setup to use with it, but that aside, I'll explain what I had in mind. Royal Road would be changed into a triggered ability and when used you would receive a short buff with an affect such as "the next card used received the effect of Royal Road" or something along those lines. This would allow you to use your Royal Road effect with either the drawn card, the Spread card, or simply held for later.

Where the issue lies is replacing that Royal Road effect with a new one. Off the top of my head it's possible they could come up with a way, though it would be a tad complicated. When using Royal Road with a card you would not get the buff and instead the icon for Royal Road would change to represent that buff. When activated the action icon goes back to being a "blank" Royal Road and you receive the buff which would have a 10 or 15 second window to be used with a card or it disappears. Perhaps if you trigger Royal Road a second time instead of using a card during that short time frame the card would be applied to Royal Road and the buff you had would disappear. It would have to be brought down to a 5 second recast, or less, to allow time to replace the Royal Road effect before the held card expires.

Basically it would be changed to do one of two things. It can be used to absorb a drawn card to generate a Royal Road effect, then after which it can be used a second time to receive the actual Royal Road buff, but it would have to have a short duration to prevent "stacking" with one buff active while Royal Road holds a second effect, though I think it actually would be pretty cool if we were allowed to do that as long as it's appropriately balanced to avoid abuse.

I didn't think I would ramble on this much about Royal Road. I'm not expecting SE to change how it works and wouldn't say it's a necessary thing to do, but it is fun to think about how Astrologian could play differently or in a more interesting way.

If they would just fix where shuffle did not allow drawing the same card twice that would fix alot of the problems with the deck system.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

If they would just fix where shuffle did not allow drawing the same card twice that would fix alot of the problems with the deck system.

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But... not even that, all they did was that Royal Road "Fix"
ugh seriously

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Originally Posted by Muahbec

But... not even that, all they did was that Royal Road "Fix"
ugh seriously

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I got Spear 5 times in a row today, first time playing since 3.1, then I got 2 Spire in a row, seemed for a bit like they did the opposite! I think that should have been fixed because it's so frustrating. You get Arrow, Balance, Bole, all cards that can mostly be used on anyone and generally at any time (with exceptions of course like dungeon ending etc). Ewer and Spire are both so situational, I don't know how many times they come up and no one needs MP or TP, or at least to the point that it's worth not Royal Roading it. Then Spear, which is fine if you can use it properly, but it's also usually a waste without knowing who has a cooldown they could use. I just wish the cards were more like the first 3, Balance, Arrow, Bole. Basically ones that can be beneficial at all times vs being so situation based like Spire. Shuffle really shouldn't allow the same card, because it's the only thing making most combos useful. I mean draw Spire, no use for it so RR it. Then draw Ewer, shuffle it and get Ewer again. To me that's a waste of a whole minute there, because had I got Balance first for example, I'd have just used it on someone. But instead I wait 30 secs, get Spire, RR it, wait 30 secs, get Ewer shuffle it, get Ewer again, wait whatever it is 10-15 secs without using it for it to fall off, then wait another 30 secs for Draw to come back up, to then hope that 1) The instance isn't over, and 2) The card will still actually be beneficial now.

I think the class works though and any changes are more nice to have, but I just think there's too large of a gap between what the cards do. If people actually needed TP or MP often, then it makes sense, or if you could hold 2 or 3 cards. Almost every time I've used Spire or Ewer on someone, it's never been some life saving move, more just helping them out.

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Originally Posted by 416to305

That's really the issue, Draw, RR it wait 30 seconds, get Spire, Shuffle it, get Spire again, wait 15 secs or whatever for it to go away, then 30 secs to Draw again.

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Just so you know: You can click off the current card, rather than waiting the 15 seconds for it to go away, effectively reducing your current CD to 30 seconds instead of 45 ( 15 to remove + 30 of actual CD ).

Personally, I will admit the randomness sometimes sucks. The consensus is that gameplay should trump the lore, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Flavor is absolutely the reason I play AST. I am a badass wielder of Sharlayan Astrology. The cards aren't random.

They're fate. =D

Do you really only play AST because of the card mechanics?

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Originally Posted by Venjamin

Just so you know: You can click off the current card, rather than waiting the 15 seconds for it to go away, effectively reducing your current CD to 30 seconds instead of 45 ( 15 to remove + 30 of actual CD ).

Personally, I will admit the randomness sometimes sucks. The consensus is that gameplay should trump the lore, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Flavor is absolutely the reason I play AST. I am a badass wielder of Sharlayan Astrology. The cards aren't random.

They're fate. =D

Do you really only play AST because of the card mechanics?

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I play on PS4 so don't think I can do that as clicking it with the hotbar would use it. You mean click it with the mouse? That would use it too no? At least on my system clicking something on my hotbar with the mouse uses it, unless you mean clicking it off from your status area where it shows buffs. Can't remember if appears there or not, but not a huge deal. I don't play AST for the cards, I play it for Collective Unconscious haha. Not really, but sort of. Got my AST to 56 and didn't really like it so kept playing WHM. Was in Alex one time and used to think I was so cool popping Assize after everyone stacks on A1, but then one time an AST popped CU and I was like WHAT IS THAT! It looks so bad ass! So tried AST again, and it just happened to be after 3.07 where they made all the great improvements. So have been playing it ever since. I find the cards are just fun as filler, as many times even if you DPS, WHM still gets a bit boring now. Or rather I'm just used to all the abilities, so changed it up. I just disagree with Shuffle pulling the same card. My logic is it's a level 45 ability you get, the same as any other class gets a great ability there (I mean WHM gets Holy!) so to USE that ability and get the same card, basically means you wasted the ability. You don't pop Collective Unconscious, or Assize and only have it work sometimes. I feel like it's pretty similar, Shuffle has one use, and that's to get another card. There's no reason someone would ever want to use it for the same card. So to get the same one to me feels like a waste of a cool down.

PS SE PLEASE FIX THESE STUPID FORUMS. 1000 limit is so ridiculous having to post, edit and then post the rest. Like honestly it's 2015, I think this is the only forum I've ever seen that has a character limit on it, and I use a LOT of forums.

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Originally Posted by 416to305

I play on PS4 so don't think I can do that as clicking it with the hotbar would use it. You mean click it with the mouse? That would use it too no? At least on my system clicking something on my hotbar with the mouse uses it, unless you mean clicking it off from your status area where it shows buffs.

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Press the touchpad until you reach your buff bar, then use the dpad to select the drawn card buff, and press X. The card will drop without being used and the CD on draw will restart.

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Originally Posted by SkyBane001

Press the touchpad until you reach your buff bar, then use the dpad to select the drawn card buff, and press X. The card will drop without being used and the CD on draw will restart.

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Yikes, that's ugly. I forget that PS4 is a thing sometimes. My mistake.

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Originally Posted by Venjamin

Yikes, that's ugly. I forget that PS4 is a thing sometimes. My mistake.

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It's uglier to type out than in practice. Each side of the touch pad when pressed like a button will cycle through your UI elements in opposite directions. So if you use it to cycle to your buff bar, then cycle through the buffs with the dpad. Hitting X on any of those buffs will cancel them.

This assumes you have the touchpad mouse turned off, of course (I do, as it can really screw with your ability usage having it pop up if you accidently nudge the pad)

Awesome thanks, yeah I didn't realize I could use the d-pad to select an actual buff from the bar, good to know thanks!