5.0 AST: cards vs. personal dps

This new card system is absolutely chaotic in a way it makes me feel like it's the busiest healer in the world, yet those card buffs I threw out gives so little that I feel like I actually would've contribute more if I just dps during the time in dungeon.

15 seconds for a card buff duration makes it so that I have to constantly throwing cards out, but those buff are gone in a blink on an eye to the point I have to wonder why I do I even bother touching cards outside of divination? They should've standardize its duration to 30 seconds. The ease of use for the card system are actually going backwards. Now it's a pain just like the old low duration dots for DPS jobs to monitor.

Same can be said about Divination. What kind of a sorry arse buff duration is that? 15 seconds!? Are you kidding me. My Malefic IV spam is probably enough to cover the buffed portion already. It just feel like nothing at all.

Not to mention fishing seals is like a deja vu all over again when all I draw is TP/MP card. Oh I also lost about 50 seals outside of combat...

I also tried a dungeon run by prioritizing throwing lord/lady cards none stop at my DPS members which results in having less time to use Malefic IV or Gravity. It felt like the slowest dungeon run ever.

I've always prefer AST to focus on buffing before dpsing, but not with this feels-like-nothing buff. :mad:

That and there's no way to increase the duration. When you burned cards on the old system, you could either extend the duration or give up duration for AoE. You had choice; you had to make a decision that could be impactful for the team. Maybe you DON'T burn the Bole card and store it to put it on the tank during a tank buster, maybe you redrew to try to get that coveted Balance. Maybe your fellow healer was running low on mana? Use Ewer on them if you had it. Or maybe you redrew and gave the Spire to your BRD.

Now you just throw it on the team's top DPS every time it's off cooldown. It's brainless, boring gameplay for people who don't know how to heal and only want to press 2-3 buttons during the fight.

Don't quote me on this because I just did a very vague calculation but I think your cards roughly represent 700-800 dps gain if used optimally? It obviously varies depending on your party dps and rng of course but considering it's all stuff you should be weaving anyways you shouldn't be taking much of a hit in exchange for that gain.

Yea as AST it is now absolutely mandatory to weave your cards after each Malefic. If you arent doing that and/or you are not good at weaving, the cards will be worthless and a dps loss. Might aswell play WHM at that point.

I feel like since the changes I have to do more for a lesser outcome. I thought throwing out more cards will be fun but in reality it feels clunky since you have more buttons now instead of just pressing the same button again to apply the buff/card. I fumble with the cards quite a bit especially when stuff gets hectic, so I have no doubt that in the end it's quite a huge dps loss.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Don't quote me on this because I just did a very vague calculation but I think your cards roughly represent 700-800 dps gain if used optimally? It obviously varies depending on your party dps and rng of course but considering it's all stuff you should be weaving anyways you shouldn't be taking much of a hit in exchange for that gain.

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It'd interesting to have real/exact numbers on this.

I am afraid that perfectly using cards VS ignoring cards and DPSing instead might be atleast about the same dps wise and simplier to execute.

Card system is not a skill or 2 that might not work or need revision. Is a set of atleast 6-7 skills using a lot of hotbar space. If they are not worth it we might aswell remove them.

I don't play AST but I assume you need to stop DPSing to target a party member to apply the cards? Seems like it's almost impossible to do this without sacrificing your own DPS unless you do it during a GCD. Seems like bad design to me if the DPS boost just doesn't last long enough to make a difference anyway. I guess Divination should make up for it but that's only a 15 yard range which seems like it would be another PITA. I can barely reach some of my group in PUGs with SCH 15y spells.

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Originally Posted by Clicked

I don't play AST but I assume you need to stop DPSing to target a party member to apply the cards? Seems like it's almost impossible to do this without sacrificing your own DPS unless you do it during a GCD. Seems like bad design to me if the DPS boost just doesn't last long enough to make a difference anyway. I guess Divination should make up for it but that's only a 15 yard range which seems like it would be another PITA. I can barely reach some of my group in PUGs with SCH 15y spells.

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The idea is that you'll quickly do this while waiting for the GCD (2.5 seconds base) after finishing a Malefic cast (1.5 second base) - leaving you with a second between to Draw, Redraw, Play, or whatever. Combust refresh windows leave you 2.5 seconds base because it's instant cast, so there's also that.

The new Astrologian changes are so bland and clunky. It doesn't feel impactful at all to throw fifteen-second card buffs at your top DPS and Divination's animation doesn't have the same wow effect as AoE Balance had. Before there was so much choice as CrazyAce put it. There was Royal Road, Celestial Opposition, Time Dilation, and every single card offered something different that benefited different roles. It felt engaging and fun to see how you could make use of the different cards and abilities for the situation at hand. Now you're just fishing for one of each seal and then waiting out sometimes 80 seconds worth of time for Divination. When I picked up Astrologian I wanted to support my entire party, not just hard focus the top DPS the entire time.

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Originally Posted by Clicked

I don't play AST but I assume you need to stop DPSing to target a party member to apply the cards? Seems like it's almost impossible to do this without sacrificing your own DPS unless you do it during a GCD. Seems like bad design to me if the DPS boost just doesn't last long enough to make a difference anyway. I guess Divination should make up for it but that's only a 15 yard range which seems like it would be another PITA. I can barely reach some of my group in PUGs with SCH 15y spells.

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It is hard to do with mouse+kb, imagine a controller user or just a player that is not as fast as experienced ones. It gets worse once you get 3 seals because after that you have to turn every card into minor arcana, adding an extra button press. This is a bad planned design from SE, "Play" shouldn't even exist and cards should go directly to Draw.

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Originally Posted by BahamutxD

It is hard to do with mouse+kb, imagine a controller user or just a player that is not as fast as experienced ones. It gets worse once you get 3 seals because after that you have to turn every card into minor arcana, adding an extra button press. This is a bad planned design from SE, "Play" shouldn't even exist and cards should go directly to Draw.

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You can try making a mouse-over macro for Play and see if that helps with KB+M. You can hover over the player's name in your party list with your cursor and deploy the card, and you shouldn't have too many issues with it queuing up.

I play on controller and got used to targeting members in the past for single-target cards because controllers can soft target a party member (using the D-pad to manually scroll through the party list during a cast and highlighting the desired party member without pressing X to hard target them), deploy the card, and then go back to attacking the boss. After practice, it's not that clunky to do at all, in my opinion.

That said, I'm still not a fan of the cards or the seals. They're living up to the prior expectations I already had of boring gameplay with very little decision-making involved, and I usually have my seals for my next Divination well before the buff is even close to being off CD (even without Sleeve Draw in sub-70 stuff).

Play for me is a godsend.
I was using said Mousover Macros before 5.0 and it always sucked that I either had to hover over a partymember or include self in the macro (what i did) to just draw a card.
Then when I was unlucky, I applied the card to myself instead of the partymember i mo'd. So yeah, I would be very sad to lose the Play Skill.