Astrologian Card Suggestions

I love AST.

I love its style, i love how it works and i just love how it looks.

Just suggesting some changes i think might be helpful.

Naturally you may shoot me down saying "that wouldn't help" or "missing the point" and that would be fine. One thing i have loved to see from AST being in a weaker position is all the comments and general discussion between people caused by it and some of the awesome community ideas. (trolling aside ofcourse)

Focusing on Card changes just because with weaker healing potencies AST should be the KING of buffs. At the moment its more like a prince but hey.. i always wanted to be a prince.

Card Changes:

Bole -
Bole already reduces damage taken but i think it would be an effective mix if we added a mantra style effect to it also which increases healing potency received by 10%. (5 expanded/15 enhanced)

Why? Bole is not so great. It is not useless but having it as a card healing CD for your entire group would just make it so much more awesome.

Balance and Arrow do not need changing in my opinion, i love them both.

Spire -
One of the cards i cancel. TP refresh is fine you know every 100 years, but it needs a crit identity so we can use it at any time.
Add 10% crit and it will work like a charm.

Why? The TP refresh should be a bonus effect not the main one, and you should always be using this on your dragoons, ninjas, bards and monks.

Spear -
Why give us a card to help with cooldowns that do not help with cooldowns?!

Spear is an annoying card, what it does sounds good, but then it does nothing. What i love about balance and arrow is people notice them in effect and act accordingly, they do not with spear, why? Because it pretty much does nothing.
So: First action has 20% reduced recast time and either Diurnal extra 5 second duration or Nocturnal 10% extra potency. Note: Spear will be used up by the first action.

Also a 30 second duration base.

Why? It will still require coordination to use, but it will have an actual job.

Ewer -
i dislike this card now. I think of it as the "personal" card when AST is supposed to be a team player.

So: Mp reduction and MP refresh plus if not cast on yourself every time anyone effected by Ewer casts a spell that uses MP, you gain 1% of your MP back up to 10% (15% if Royal Roaded) The 10%//15% cap is every 30 seconds.

Why? Ewer should be cast on your other healer or caster to help them, the help to yourself should be aside to that.


Primary and Secondary Cards:
There are 6 cards at the moment and that is a ton of RNG. It would be so great if we had just a tiny bit more control over that RNG so i thought this might be fun.

AST can pick 3 Primary Cards and 3 Secondary Cards. (can be sorted out of combat)

The card effects do not change however there usage with Royal road does. e.g: all cards can be burned to activate RR, but only Primary cards will trigger the effects.

Also allow primary cards and secondary ones to stack.

Add in another Spread. So we will have Spread (primary) and Spread (Secondary)

Why? Cancelling a card because it is 100% useless is the most frustrating part of this class. With this an AST can choose what cards are effected by RR and which aren't, and can change to suit each battle beforehand. This would also allow card mixing so we can double buff people if we play our cards right, so to speak. By also giving us more choice, each AST can be an individual and have their own flair.

So, if this was the case, what cards would you choose for Primary and Secondary?

How about this:
Bole = Def buff - Good for tanks and over damage reduction if saved and used as an AoE.
Balance = Attack buff - Good for dps
Arrow = Speed buff - Good for everyone
Spire = Healing Potency buff - Good for both healers
Ewer = TP and MP restore - Works for everyone since it's one or the other except might be OP on DRK, might.
Spear = Critical Hit buff - Good for dps and healers

I can honestly say if I pulled any of these cards in any situation they would be useful. The faster you can get off your buff the faster you can get back to healing or dpsing.

Also save RR to hotbar so we can chose when to use it rather than on status bar and used with next card.

I like your ideas. Spear currently has no applicable uses, so any change to it will be welcome. I think the real issue with bole is that if your tank will benefit from a measly 10%, you're probably losing anyway. Arrow has some issues with people running out of tp, so I feel like that could be addressed.

Double to duration to 30 sec (60 sec with extended buff) or double the potency and keep the same duration.

I have no feedback on your particular suggestions, but I do agree that certain combinations of cards should not be punitive.

For example, if I have expanded royal road up, then bole, spire, and ewer may not work how I want. Perhaps I want a full strength effect on a certain player. I can click the royal road buff off, but then I've wasted a draw (and time). If expanded applied the full effect to the primary target and the reduced effect to others, this would then be always helpful, or at least neutral in the worst case.

if they can make every card useful in every situation then it would be a good system. No one wants to draw a useless card given a situation, and forced to royal road it or store it, or even shuffle it. To me its redundant. sac a card to gain twice its duration is pointless (think basically a shuffle but 1&1/2 to 2 cards worth of buffs at the cost of 2 cards) , same goes with 150% potency, the fact you actually lose 50% potency worth in 2 cards. Its not meaningful nor does it make sense to have a skill to gain equal or less benefit. never have a seen a class with such useless abilities, like shuffle. pray to RNG that you dont get the same card. every skill in the game has some sort of attack, heal, defensive buff, offensive buff or even extension of duration etc. i dont know what happened here....

note: even if they buff the card potency, a useless card is still useless.

With exception to bole and spear all the other cards are powerful enough to not warrant any changes. If they would allow spear to shorten cooldown s already used then it would also be fine.minus some range adjustments the cards are fine.