Ast card system change

Here's an idea that might satisfy both parties, why not just bring back the old cards? All the cards have their original buffs now except there's no balance. So you have to use the bole for defence buff, spear for crit, etc. The ewer now gives 30 sec mana buff so you can use it on yourself to help with mana regen and give the spire a new effect like it gives a mini regen to a play for 15 seconds or something OR its the old lady of crowns effect.

All of the old effects of ast cards would finally see more use this xpac because of how much more demanding healing is over just dealing dmg as healers. The old cards would be so amazing to use in this content. Think about how useful a bole would be for the tank in dungeons for instance.

Ok so each card you use drops a random seal so you can for example get an arrow with a sun seal vs a spear with a moon seal the next time. You can still use draw how it is now to help with getting the right seals.You can store one card for later usage with a certain seal but no shuffling or royal roading anything those are gone forever and that would help go against preloading stuff for raids too. Now when you get all three seals this way you unlock an aoe balance for 30 seconds!
I think this way we get to keep some of the new card changes, but keep the flavor and originality of the AST card system. What do you all think of this idea?

honestly, the new card system feels really clunky all together, get rid of it, bring the old cards back and with it player choice and decision making. Keep the sect buffs, trash divination nerf balance to somewhere closer to 6-8% bring the potency of celestial opposition up and you will have a fun and engaging class again that feels like your doing something. As it stands now, 15sec duration on huge cd for div and only a 8% buff is just... it's bad. It feels more impactful to just dps.

the cards are... it feels like a shot to the groin, i remember loving every minute of the class quest and seeing how different and useful the cards can be. its nigh on depressing to see the people on reddit making beautiful flashcards for each of the different ones so that people could learn them and have a very pretty tarot card set, and now literally every card says the same thing. class balance be damned there is little to no class left. just a glorified whitemage.

I switched to astro cause it was different and it felt engaging to play, making choices every moment that felt impactful, all of that is gone.

I am still unconvinced that you get more out of playing with the cards than just dpsing yourself. I can understand that it was too much of a buff too frequently, but the solution to the buff class buffing too much shouldent be to take away all the buffs. but honestly im not sure they really grasp how a buff class can be fun, i mean look at dancer and bard, dancer is the only one with a buff and its not party wide, and bard got all of the buffs taken away from what was... well lame (just a crit buff? cmon, its a bard not a whetstone) may as well change the class name back to archer.

sorry got offtopic there, basically, the cards as they are kill class identity, are unfun/klunky to use and feel about as impactful as throwing a kraft cheese square at someone.

the old cards were not, bring them back.

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Originally Posted by Lucky27

Here's an idea that might satisfy both parties, why not just bring back the old cards? All the cards have their original buffs now except there's no balance. So you have to use the bole for defence buff, spear for crit, etc. The ewer now gives 30 sec mana buff so you can use it on yourself to help with mana regen and give the spire a new effect like it gives a mini regen to a play for 15 seconds or something OR its the old lady of crowns effect.

All of the old effects of ast cards would finally see more use this xpac because of how much more demanding healing is over just dealing dmg as healers. The old cards would be so amazing to use in this content. Think about how useful a bole would be for the tank in dungeons for instance.

Ok so each card you use drops a random seal so you can for example get an arrow with a sun seal vs a spear with a moon seal the next time. You can still use draw how it is now to help with getting the right seals.You can store one card for later usage with a certain seal but no shuffling or royal roading anything those are gone forever and that would help go against preloading stuff for raids too. Now when you get all three seals this way you unlock an aoe balance for 30 seconds!
I think this way we get to keep some of the new card changes, but keep the flavor and originality of the AST card system. What do you all think of this idea?

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I am 100% ok with this. I was actually thinking the same thing the other day. Since Balance can be so "mandatory", why not make it only available once every Divination cd. This would bring the other cards back, make them useful again, and we would know that no matter what cards we pull, we will be able to do an aoe balance every few minutes. I really hope they fix the card system because it is a mess the way it is and literally spits on the previous job quest lore for the cards.

I think the problem was Yoshi is trying to reduce the amount of synergy certain jobs provide, ideally making most viable. If you give AST back all the utility in the cards it could suddenly become a must pick in future comps, even without Balance. Definitely AST needs some changes, the cards are lacklustre although other parts of their toolkit are kinda meh as well....

He definitely said they wanted to reduce synergy for jobs, but then they made dancer, and looks like it will be the new mandatory job.

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Originally Posted by Haxaan

He definitely said they wanted to reduce synergy for jobs, but then they made dancer, and looks like it will be the new mandatory job.

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This was a very deliberate choice they made, they wanted to highlight the synergy of dancer and explicitly said as much. The old card system is not coming back, and removing Balance alone will not resolve the problems it had. If you remove Balance but keep Arrow or Spear, they become the new "mandatory" card, because they are still a damage increase, just not as straightforward as Balance was.

Please bring back the old card system SE, Nerf balance ,I don't care. You too out my favorite thing about AST , the Card system and made it into gold fish with every card giving a 6% buff damage. I left AST for good

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Originally Posted by Elamys

This was a very deliberate choice they made, they wanted to highlight the synergy of dancer and explicitly said as much. The old card system is not coming back, and removing Balance alone will not resolve the problems it had. If you remove Balance but keep Arrow or Spear, they become the new "mandatory" card, because they are still a damage increase, just not as straightforward as Balance was.

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The Expansion just came out, we have 2 years for them to adjust things. The old system is definitely not coming back because that would take to long to reformat the job, but they can adjust how the new card system works. Clearly Dancer is supposed to be highlighted, but that can change over the course of time. No one said to remove balance all together, just make it only available with divination. It's just a thought, no need to be a debbie downer about it.

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Originally Posted by Haxaan

The Expansion just came out, we have 2 years for them to adjust things. The old system is definitely not coming back because that would take to long to reformat the job, but they can adjust how the new card system works. Clearly Dancer is supposed to be highlighted, but that can change over the course of time. No one said to remove balance all together, just make it only available with divination. It's just a thought, no need to be a debbie downer about it.

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I'm not trying to be a debbie downer, but I think we all need to be realistic in our expectations. I personally think the card system now has a lot of potential, but I also think most ASTs are focusing too much on how it used to play instead of looking forward and working with the new design structure and SE's stated design goals when they propose changes. I like the system, I think it needs a few changes to work better and really open up its potential and I anticipate us getting them, and I think we can all agree on the fact that:

1.) Divination and seals aren't going away, and if they are, it won't be until the next expansion.
2.) We're not going to get damage buffs of 10%+ because they don't want AST to feel mandatory and that amount of a buff is too much for AST to bring. Dancer is the new synergy.
3.) They're not just going to "put the old system back in." This is not how game development works.
4.) We're not getting back Time Dilation, and probably not getting back the buff extension on CO.

I strongly believe that any changes to this system are going to come to Divination itself, not to the cards. We're not losing Divination or seals, and yet most proposals I see for "reworks" are just the old system with Divination taped on. Think about it. If you bring back, say, Bole as it was, but with seals, do you really want to find yourself in a position where you're searching specifically for Bole because you need the seal from it for Divination but you also want it for the upcoming tankbuster? Redrawing over and over specifically for Ewer to give to your cohealer you just raised? At least right now you have 2 options for every seal. I strongly believe that we can have either separate effects on each card or we can have Divination, not both.*

*I will note here that my preferred change to Divination is one where the effects, not just numbers, of Divination change based on your spread of seals, so I'm not necessarily against big changes to it.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

I'm not trying to be a debbie downer, but I think we all need to be realistic in our expectations. I personally think the card system now has a lot of potential, but I also think most ASTs are focusing too much on how it used to play instead of looking forward and working with the new design structure and SE's stated design goals when they propose changes. I like the system, I think it needs a few changes to work better and really open up its potential and I anticipate us getting them, and I think we can all agree on the fact that:

1.) Divination and seals aren't going away, and if they are, it won't be until the next expansion.
2.) We're not going to get damage buffs of 10%+ because they don't want AST to feel mandatory and that amount of a buff is too much for AST to bring. Dancer is the new synergy.
3.) They're not just going to "put the old system back in." This is not how game development works.
4.) We're not getting back Time Dilation, and probably not getting back the buff extension on CO.

I strongly believe that any changes to this system are going to come to Divination itself, not to the cards. We're not losing Divination or seals, and yet most proposals I see for "reworks" are just the old system with Divination taped on. Think about it. If you bring back, say, Bole as it was, but with seals, do you really want to find yourself in a position where you're searching specifically for Bole because you need the seal from it for Divination but you also want it for the upcoming tankbuster? Redrawing over and over specifically for Ewer to give to your cohealer you just raised? At least right now you have 2 options for every seal. I strongly believe that we can have either separate effects on each card or we can have Divination, not both.*

*I will note here that my preferred change to Divination is one where the effects, not just numbers, of Divination change based on your spread of seals, so I'm not necessarily against big changes to it.

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I totally understand where you're coming from. I also understand that Divination is one of the new gimmicks for AST right now. So is Horoscope. I do not believe that Time Dilation is coming back, no matter how bad it pains me, but I do believe that CO can be reverted to its old mechanic. We have seen over the years that they have reverted abilities and even brought old ones back before if they felt that they should be brought back. Don't count your chickens before they've hatched. It is to early in the game to know for sure what they plan to do. They won't be doing anything until after the raids drop because they want to see how well things play together and then they will adjust from their. If the jobs are to clunky they will fix them, or at least keep putting band-aids on them until the next expac.

That's why I say probably in CO, I could see them bringing that part back, it's pretty much totally useless as is. But I think they're also wanting to avoid a situation where CO ONLY gets used with Divination. (I personally don't see the problem here considering making it a heal was very uninspired at best.)

Old AST definitely had issues with the cards, but it mostly came about because WHM was so weak, AST brought so much, and SCH was so strong. Of course we can't tell now, but I wonder if simply making WHM better and leaving AST as is would have been enough to shake up the meta.

Yeah. It's hard to tell what the hell the devs are really thinking right now. I'm still confused why instead of bringing WHM in line with SCH and AST they brought the other two down to WHM. Seems a bit backward. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for WHM mains because they finally have a place in the sun after 4 years, but it just feels like these changes are like one step forward two steps back. Watch, we end up getting Time dilation and old CO back in 6.0 with new spell names. They've been doing that to WHM for two expac now.

I'm mostly novice level when it comes to AST, but I really enjoyed it before 5.0. The cards felt diverse and interesting, unique buffs and situations for them that you had to marry on the fly, based on your party. Hella fun. More diverse and interesting than almost the same buff six times.

I really don't want to memorize which give what lunar/solar/whatever and which are ranged or melee focused, the symbols/colors of those symbols don't have rhyme or reason to that end to help out at all. While some looked a bit vague before, many, like mana/tp/damage/defense, were representative *enough* to be ok.

Give back old cards. Nerf or change balance, Make spire give Direct Hit.

Keep everything else mostly the same. This would honestly fix the job for me. Buffs would all not be as strong anyways, because no more RR, and I'm FINE with that.

Maybe something like:
Card that gives Dmg buff to Melee/Tank. If on Melee give dmg buff, if on Tank some dmg rdc.
Card that gives Dmg buff to range/healer. If on Range give dmg buff, if on Healer some heal potency.

This could help with some of the issues people are saying they are having at 80 healing as well as still provide the dmg that all the cards give, with the option of more dps or more healing/mitigation.

I don't think we're going to be seeing any changes to the card system anytime soon. If there are any changes, it will be to Divination. That's the gimmick now. They are not going to revert the system back to what it was and also give us Divination on top of it. Your expectations will also be better placed on the improvement of Divination rather than the old system coming back. It is unfortunate if AST mains have not been able to adjust, or just outright hate the changes so much that they dropped the job. I truly mean that.

I'm not opposed to changes to the cards, but my idea of the mechanic probably wont have much favor either. What I propose is that on top of the 3/6% general buffs the cards give, they also buff the AST as an additional effect. Some of these buffs could be increased mana regen, haste, increased movement speed, make next GCD instant, draw or lightspeed CD timer reset, ensure next GCD is a crit (restorative or offensive), def^, mdef^, I probably could go on and on with this list. This could then tie into Synastry so that who ever you share the aetherial bond with also receives your buff.

Hopefully something like that would give back AST some of the flavor that has been lost with the card effects. I try to think of those cards from the PoV of an Anime trope where an imposing character will change the tide of the fight and give that little smirk when he/she draws just the right card from their deck giving them just the powerup they needed for the given situation.

My big issue is that I would just like some kind of unique utility added to the cards. I like the focus on single target buffs, and I like the seal system. Mechanically, I'm okay with the new system if not enjoy it more, my issue is that I can literally remove the card from the Arcana Gauge, and it actually improves it:

https://i.imgur.com/UgZGbFw.png

It's actually better without the cards. :O Why? This is literally what I see with the new system. I'm not a big lore guy, but I loved the character of each card and the emotional response they elicit. But this is all I see now. The fact that this is much easier to read without the unnecessary clutter of colors, symbols, and names, hurts. :(

Heck, I'd be happy if they keep the system how it is, but simply add additional utility onto it. Each card would give their melee/range damage, and then an extra effect like mitigation, mana regen, movement speed, surecast/arm's length, north star, etc. You can still just go for damage in raids, but it at least opens up nice opportunities and brings that fun card identity/flavor back. Plus, it'll give me more of a reason to hold onto a card now. Like, if I happen to draw a Bole, I might want to hold it for tank buster coming up or if someone is going to/takes avoidable damage, as long as I don't elapse the 30 seconds (Draw/Play act like a 30 second spread now).

I do feel like something should be done with Sleeve Draw as well. Feels pretty clunky as it stands, though no clue on what you'd do.

I don't have a lot of time to play nowadays so I'm slowly working my way up in levels but I'm... divided on the cards. On one hand I like the fact that every card is legitimately useful, on the other hand the fact that they are all the same is meh. Perhaps giving each card a small rider effect to it would work. the primary benefit remains the damage increase as is now but add a small unique buff for each one. Honestly my biggest annoyance with the new card system is the seals. I hate systems that have only a single use for a resource like that (Also hate BRD Soul gauge for this same reason). I would like there to be some other skill that utilizes the seals, especially since its such a long cd as is. Celestial Opposition is trash tho, yes its instant and has no mp cost but its weaker than aspected helios on a big cd. Compare to WHM Assize which is much stronger, does dmg, has a small MP recovery, and is on less than half as long a cd. It needs something to fix it because its very underwhelming.

Hey great replies everyone! Im glad were talking about this as clearly people are not happy with some of these changes. Lets keep thrse discussions going as some of your proposals to card changes are really great! SE needs to see this