Ast rework

Well it seems like even buffing the potencies, right now the Ast would surely wont save himself from his basically new design with shadowbringers’ rework. So what are your thoughts on a possibile rework?

I am not good with balancing but i ll give it a try:

I would not buff healing potencies

Diurnal sect and nocturnal sect are no longer stances but buffs

Casting asp benefic, asp Helios and using abilities with stances influences will grant u both regen and shield (surely they ll need a rebalance in this case)

Horoscope- revamped- cooldown 40 sec - activating it will change your gauge to diurnal or nocturnal (RNG) granting u a diurnal or nocturnal buff for 40 secs
Diurnal buff- buff your regen potencies by 5% while buffing your melee cards by 3%
Nocturnal buff- buff your shields potencies by 5% while buffing your ranged dps cards by 3%

Divination - cooldown reduced from 180 to 120 sec (maybe buff also the duration of divination effect by 5 secs)

Minor arcana- new trait- reduces by 5 secs divination recast everytime u turn a card into minor arcana

Celestial opposition- new trait- grants u 2000 mp

Neutral sect- name changed into “crepuscolarity” (so cool)- grants u 30 secs of both stances buffs (removing the 20% healing buff)

Well I believe that devs decided to remove the cards effect just because the game was about to get a new design cutting off most of the synergies, well I understand this but at the same time I really miss the old system.
This new rework would offer an engaging and fun new method to have fun with cards buff and seals, and I believe that will grants ast a better identity removing the old stances but keeping them at the same time. I know I m not good in this so plz be comprehensive XD

Oh I forgot sleeve draw

Effect revamped- now reset draw cooldown and grants u 3 redraw stacks- cooldown reduced to 90 sec

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking:
- Time Dilation and Spread returned.
- Celestial Opp and Draw reverted.
- Play, Undraw and Redraw removed.
- New action "Turn": Flips the current drawn Arcanum into the opposite position. Hold 3 Charges. 45 second recast.

Cards now all have a Divine Position effect and an Inverted Position effect.

- Inverted: Generic damage boost.
Lord and Lady: Flat damage/Heal
- Divine:
Balance: Nullify a portion of damage received and reflect it as damage.
Spire: Increases maximum HP.
Spear: Healing potency increase.
Bole, Ewer, Arrow: Old effects.
Lord and Lady: DoT and HoT.

- Sleeve Draw: Fills your Draw and Spread slots with cards. These cards can appear in the Divine or Inverted positions, Minor Arcana can also appear.

- Divination: No longer requires Seals to activate. Effect of Divination is determined by the previously played card. Inverted will provide an AoE damage buff, Divine will provide an AoE damage reduction buff.

- Synastry: Select a partner to form a bond and recast to cancel. Recast timer begins upon cancelling the bond. Any Arcanum being played is also shared with the bonded partner, has no effect if card is played on the partner. Additional card buffs overwrite previous buff.

So the idea behind these changes is to satisfy both parties by having the option to either go for straight up damage all the time or to switch to utility. Likely you will still want to go for damage most of the time, but the ability effects are no longer so useless in more prog or "oh crap" moments.

By reworking Sleeve Draw this way, removing the ability to Redraw cards and deleting the Seal system, my aim was to reduce the amount of oGCDs needed to be spammed during the opener or just anywhere. You Draw a card, Turn/Spread/Minor Arcana if you need to, then play it using Spread/Draw.

I also reworked Minor Arcana in this way because fishing for Lord prepull was a thing and free Lords from Sleeve Draw made AST personal DPS inconsistent which goes against the aim of these changes, and also because 5.0 has made MA too prevalent. I want the Minor Arcana to be just that. M I N O R. You would now only use it if you run out of Turn charges and end up with a Divine effect you have no use with, so you want to MA and play the card immediately to begin the Draw recast. Additionally, the DoT/HoT Divine effects of Lord and Lady are stronger than the flat damage/heal variants, so if you were to end up with a Minor Arcana with Sleeve Draw, you would have to make a choice between using a Turn charge for a potency increase or just play the MA as is and save Turn for another Draw.

That should also leave us with the exact amount of buttons as we have now... except less of them are completely useless. Oh well, even though it will never happen, one can dream.

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.

- Nocturnal sect needs a buff, incresing shields given and decreasing MP cost to make it competitive with Diurnal.

- Card system needs to be simplified, there are too many spells that are straight useless (Undraw), underwhelming (Divination) or could be changed after use (Draw -> Play). I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

- Damage is really low, this is theorically compensated with card buffs but it doesn't feel like its worth the tradeoff.

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Originally Posted by AmurT

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking
"the rework"

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Very cool rework, sound nice !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.
- Nocturnal sect needs a buff, incresing shields given and decreasing MP cost to make it competitive with Diurnal.

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This is the big problem here and I'am sure SE have operated like that.
Sure we can look at Diurnal and Nocturnal for balance and it's needed, but most importantly, Nocturnal need to be competitive with SCH !

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

Sure we can look at Diurnal and Nocturnal for balance and it's needed, but most importantly, Nocturnal need to be competitive with SCH !

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Noct will never be competitive with SCH because SCH has the toolkit to work off of and around shields optimally. Instead Noct needs to be internally viable, while the rest of the AST toolkit can compete with SCH at least in utility.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.
- Card system needs to be simplified, there are too many spells that are straight useless (Undraw), underwhelming (Divination) or could be changed after use (Draw -> Play). I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

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I think one of the main issues now is that the cards have been oversimplified.

Oversimplified is an understatement. Going from like 18 cards to 2 makes ast boring!

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Originally Posted by Brarry

Oversimplified is an understatement. Going from like 18 cards to 2 makes ast boring!

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Having 18 cards that do the same or very niche unusable things is also boring. As I said on my previous post, I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AmurT

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking:
- Time Dilation and Spread returned.
- Celestial Opp and Draw reverted.
- Play, Undraw and Redraw removed.
- New action "Turn": Flips the current drawn Arcanum into the opposite position. Hold 3 Charges. 45 second recast.

Cards now all have a Divine Position effect and an Inverted Position effect.

- Inverted: Generic damage boost.
Lord and Lady: Flat damage/Heal
- Divine:
Balance: Nullify a portion of damage received and reflect it as damage.
Spire: Increases maximum HP.
Spear: Healing potency increase.
Bole, Ewer, Arrow: Old effects.
Lord and Lady: DoT and HoT.

- Sleeve Draw: Fills your Draw and Spread slots with cards. These cards can appear in the Divine or Inverted positions, Minor Arcana can also appear.

- Divination: No longer requires Seals to activate. Effect of Divination is determined by the previously played card. Inverted will provide an AoE damage buff, Divine will provide an AoE damage reduction buff.

- Synastry: Select a partner to form a bond and recast to cancel. Recast timer begins upon cancelling the bond. Any Arcanum being played is also shared with the bonded partner, has no effect if card is played on the partner. Additional card buffs overwrite previous buff.

So the idea behind these changes is to satisfy both parties by having the option to either go for straight up damage all the time or to switch to utility. Likely you will still want to go for damage most of the time, but the ability effects are no longer so useless in more prog or "oh crap" moments.

By reworking Sleeve Draw this way, removing the ability to Redraw cards and deleting the Seal system, my aim was to reduce the amount of oGCDs needed to be spammed during the opener or just anywhere. You Draw a card, Turn/Spread/Minor Arcana if you need to, then play it using Spread/Draw.

I also reworked Minor Arcana in this way because fishing for Lord prepull was a thing and free Lords from Sleeve Draw made AST personal DPS inconsistent which goes against the aim of these changes, and also because 5.0 has made MA too prevalent. I want the Minor Arcana to be just that. M I N O R. You would now only use it if you run out of Turn charges and end up with a Divine effect you have no use with, so you want to MA and play the card immediately to begin the Draw recast. Additionally, the DoT/HoT Divine effects of Lord and Lady are stronger than the flat damage/heal variants, so if you were to end up with a Minor Arcana with Sleeve Draw, you would have to make a choice between using a Turn charge for a potency increase or just play the MA as is and save Turn for another Draw.

That should also leave us with the exact amount of buttons as we have now... except less of them are completely useless. Oh well, even though it will never happen, one can dream.

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"Turn" might be the best single idea I've seen in a while around here

4 cards that are essentially damage up. Which is what they did in shb however simplified. Taking out variety and rng made people who didn't parse or fish for balance leave the class for something more fun. By trying to make both the min maxers and casuals happy they instead made it into what it is now and the number of ast mains or parties accepting ast is proof enough their changes failed.

I suggest these changes to give AST it's own identity:

-Remove Noct and Diurnal sects.
-New Job gauge: Star Globe
Star globe consists of a circle with two hemispheres, Nocturnal and Diurnal. There is a star that circles around the globe when AST is in combat in cycles of 60s.
-When star is in Diurnal or Day, potency of healing spells increases from 1% to 10% as the star makes its way to Noon then wanes back to 1%.
-When star is in Nocturnal or Night, potency of damage spells increases from 1% to 10% as star makes its way to Midnight then wanes back to 1%.
-Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios heal for X potency initially and after 15s they heal again for same potency.
-Celestial Opposition is an AoE heal and allows the AST to move the Star to a point diametrically opposed to its location with a cd of 60s.
-Combustion deals X damage at the beginning and then deals damage again 15s later.

Position of the star also affects which cards you are able to draw.
In nocturnal you'd draw offensive cards and in diurnal you'd draw defensive ones.

-All cards grant a base 3% damage increase plus an additional effect.
Diurnal cards:
-Balance Damage reduction
-Bole Increased healing recieved
-Ewer MP recovery
Nocturnal cards:
-Spire Direct hit increase
-Spear Crit increase
-Arrow Skill/spell speed increase

AST would still retain its identity as a Buffer but with the delayed effect mechanic it would play around aligning its healing/damage spells with the cycling buff to damage and healing.

I'd love to see more of the Time Mage theme in AST.

After the rework they've just done? If that's the kind of thing we can expect then hell no.

If they actually listen to player feedback and somewhat revert it and buff potencies? Sure.

I think they need to do something more radical than just potency boosts and just scrap Diurnal and Nocturnal sects all together. Having a rip off “WHM or SCH” mode is severely hampering the potential for AST to shine in its own area. Double down on the time mage aspect and have powerful wide-ranging instant heals. Let’s WHM’s shine with HoT’s and Scholars with Shields, and have AST specialise in fast heals contrasted with delayed time heals like Earthly Star. Just spitballing ideas I guess.

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Originally Posted by AhriSazame

I'd love to see more of the Time Mage theme in AST.

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SO MUCH THIS!!! Time Dilation and 4.0 Celestial Opposition were such amazing abilities that were both versatile in their use and really helped to set AST apart from the other healers.

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Originally Posted by Cled-cat

I think they need to do something more radical than just potency boosts and just scrap Diurnal and Nocturnal sects all together. Having a rip off “WHM or SCH” mode is severely hampering the potential for AST to shine in its own area. Double down on the time mage aspect and have powerful wide-ranging instant heals. Let’s WHM’s shine with HoT’s and Scholars with Shields, and have AST specialise in fast heals contrasted with delayed time heals like Earthly Star. Just spitballing ideas I guess.

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I also think this would be a great way to differentiate the healers. SCH kind of has the "Insta" healer thing going for it atm, but I definitely feel like more Time Release heals would be fantastic. If Horoscope popped at the end of it's timer this would help to add more of this kind of flavor.