For AST, why not both card systems?...

I genuinely believe that we could have both some aspects of the new and old card system to accommodate both sides of the AST card dispute. My question is why cant we just have the damage bonuses with the utility effects of the old cards? Would it be too overpowered? Obviously we would have Spire and Balance changed to new effects. I believe the new abilities could work just fine with the old cards (Especially the new Redraw and Sleeve Draw, they would be FANTASTIC with the old effects....I think). We may not need to necessarily bring back the old abilities like Royal Road, for it might get a little to complicated for some peoples' taste, but I 100% believe we can bring back the different arcanum effects while keeping these new changes. I also believe for Divination they could even add the old "50%+AoE" effect on use based on the last arcanum drawn, but maybe that would be a little too good.

If anyone thinks this is a dumb idea, please do tell why. Please keep in mind I am in no way a master of balancing jobs, im just a guy trying to have fun with his main again, while keeping the most intense of high level raiders accommodated. This is simply a question thread in search of thoughts and answers, not intended to spark any arguments for plenty of threads are doing that already.

It is no secret I don't like the new "card" system but if I'm honest it is a cool idea wasted where it wasn't needed, they could make a new class as a Gambler of some sort for a 4th healer or just a new Support job, you have the coin flip and a slot machine with the seals.

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

It is no secret I don't like the new "card" system but if I'm honest it is a cool idea wasted where it wasn't needed, they could make a new class as a Gambler of some sort for a 4th healer or just a new Support job, you have the coin flip and a slot machine with the seals.

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Unfortunately the entire card system, especially the old system, was basically half the class identity alongside the time mage aspects. The time mage aspects were removed and the card system gutted so the response to that is no surprise.

Not to mention a gambler job would need to be a DPS job. As a true gambler job would need the entire kit to have the gambling aspects which is not something that would work with a healer which needs at least a stable base of consistency.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Unfortunately the entire card system, especially the old system, was basically half the class identity alongside the time mage aspects. The time mage aspects were removed and the card system gutted so the response to that is no surprise.

Not to mention a gambler job would need to be a DPS job. As a true gambler job would need the entire kit to have the gambling aspects which is not something that would work with a healer which needs at least a stable base of consistency.

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To be fair if it takes to to have a few abilities removed like time dialation, etc just to have the cards not all do literally the exact same thing i'd gladly drop them for it. It too will be missed, but at least there will be a reason to actually enjoy what you draw, which I think is the main reason why most play it (the cards that is).

I don’t think the old Bole and Ewer would work well in any kind of ‘hybrid system’. In fact even before any changes were revealed, many people were suggesting making all the cards DPS cards to give some kind of stability to the system.
Core healer toolkits shouldn’t be tied to an RNG gimmick.



So my suggestion would be something as follows:

Balance: 8/4% DHit for Melee/Ranged, generates a Solar Seal.
Bole: 8/4% DHit for Ranged/Melee, generates a Solar Seal.

Arrow: 8/4% Speed for Melee/Ranged, generates a Lunar Seal.
Spire: 8/4% Speed for Ranged/Melee, generates a Lunar Seal.

Spear: 8/4% Crit for Melee/Ranged, generates a Celestial Seal.
Ewer: 8/4% Crit for Ranged/Melee, generates a Celestial Seal.

This would make your choices even more impactful than they used to be. For example, Crit being best on a Bard or a Monk, would now be split into two cards. (although not so impactful now with Bard changes)

Minor Arcana would keep the same Ranged/Melee pattern as it currently does, but it would convert the buff into a pure 8/4% Damage buff, so this would be the new Balance.

The Seals would be more impactful too.
Instead of just getting different values of damage up, each seal would carry its effect.

Solar = DHit
Lunar = Speed
Celestial = Crit

Each seal would equate to a 5% buff for its respective effect, but be reduced with duplicates.

For example if you had one of each, then the party would get the following three buffs at once.
Solar = 5% DHit
Lunar = 5% Speed
Celestial = 5% Crit
Total = 15% cumulative buffs

If you had two different seals as below, then the duplicate would be reduced.
1 Solar = 5% DHit
2 Lunar = 4% Speed x2 = 8% Speed
Total = 13% cumulative buffs

And three identical seals would be reduced again:
3 Lunar = 3% Speed x 3 = 9% Speed
Total = 9% cumulative buffs

In this system, you’re still encouraged to get three different Seals for the maximum effect.
However, if you happen to have a party that benefits more from Speed, say a SAM and a BLM, then you’ll end up using more Arrows and Spires, and in turn generate more lunar Seals, meaning if you do end up with the 2/3 identical seals as above, that extra Speed bonus will be more effective and not as much a detriment.



The only glaring issue still here, is that Crit and Speed aren’t the easiest buffs to balance.
Crit scales exponentially across the life of an expansion.
Speed is downright detrimental to some jobs.
This is probably why they were removed to begin with.

I'll say here what I've said elsewhere.

If they just kept all the changes they made, gave back time dilation, and made the cards do what they used to, except nerf balance and change spire to Direct hit, it'd be perfect.

Personally, I'd like for cards to apply an effect based on the target's Role, if we can't have the old system back. Healer's get +heal%, Tanks get +mitigation%, and DPS get +Damage%.

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Originally Posted by Wuglug

To be fair if it takes to to have a few abilities removed like time dialation, etc just to have the cards not all do literally the exact same thing i'd gladly drop them for it. It too will be missed, but at least there will be a reason to actually enjoy what you draw, which I think is the main reason why most play it (the cards that is).

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Except in this case it wasn't one or the other, just... both or neither. 'Cus that makes sense? Somehow?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I don’t think the old Bole and Ewer would work well in any kind of ‘hybrid system’. In fact even before any changes were revealed, many people were suggesting making all the cards DPS cards to give some kind of stability to the system.

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That'd literally only require Royal Road being balanced. As it stood, Enhanced was useless and Extended was useless if you had a good Spread ready to go or a second AST, while Extended was simply up to twice as good as Extended and four times as good as Enhanced. That's disgustingly imbalanced.

Adding to that the cards themselves being balanced and it'd really only be icing on the cake. Just being able to have multiple cards up at a time, Enhanced being a true 200% effectiveness, and Extended splitting both effectiveness and duration as the number of affected targets increased (making it only superior to Enhanced or Extended just before Collective Unconscious's duration extension, while Enhanced is best before Dilation and Extended for multiplicative stacking) would have been technically sufficient to make Bole and Ewer desirable, if not in their own right.

Heck, kill off Lucid Dreaming in favor of greater base MP regen, give Spire Ewer's old %MP cost reduction effect, and make all jobs actually use resources and voila! Bole's nearly overtuned for dungeon-mass-AoE and good for RR, Spire's (disgustingly) powerful before AoE heals and on BLM during Flare rotations ("Want an Umbral Heart atop your Umbral Heart?"), and Ewer's now a lifesaver for overextended SCHs and WHMs who can't manage Thin Air.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Heck, kill off Lucid Dreaming in favor of greater base MP regen, give Spire Ewer's old %MP cost reduction effect, and make all jobs actually use resources and voila! Bole's nearly overtuned for dungeon-mass-AoE and good for RR, Spire's (disgustingly) powerful before AoE heals and on BLM during Flare rotations ("Want an Umbral Heart atop your Umbral Heart?"), and Ewer's now a lifesaver for overextended SCHs and WHMs who can't manage Thin Air.

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This sounds LESS balanced.

I think Balance should stay within Divination and release the old cards.
Generate random seals a card, no more fishing for crap.
You get what you get and don't throw a fit.

Its too complex or something. (It really wasn't)

I don't think they'll ever revert it but it needs something because it just feels boring to play now to the point I wish I never played Stormblood so I wouldn't know any better.

What about this:

All cards have their current effects, but are 4/8% instead of 3/6%, and no longer give seals.

Minor Arcana transforms the card into a random card, either Lord, Lady or Page.
Each Minor Arcanum gives a different Seal, and acts as either a Heal, a Regen, or a Shield.
So let’s say:
Lord = Shield + Solar Seal
Lady = Heal + Celestial Seal
Page = Regen + Lunar Seal

Or, can keep the current Minor Arcana system of specific cards giving either Lord or Lady, have them be a Shield and a Regen, but then gives a random Seal when used.

Divination is boosted to giving a damage buff of 4/6/8% to the whole party.

The increased buffs are due to you actively sacrificing a card to get a Seal, so you’re basically choosing between regular single target buffs OR an AoE buff.
Which also makes each buff on its own feel more impactful.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

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Would still vastly prefer old cards.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

To me AST always felt like FFXIV attempt of the classic Final Fantasy Gambler job, about as close as you can get in an MMO. The first key issue with 3.0/4.0 cards was one card, The Balance, outshined everything else and you had the ability to manipulate the card mechanic to try and get that card. Divination fixed that problem. The second key issue was 3 out of 6 cards where good and the other meh. For the RNG to work you need cards that benefit at least one member in the group every draw plus you need one bust card. I have outlined several times in these boards that if you make the card boost main attributes with Tenacity replacing VIT, this would make the RNG nature feel better. Simply draw and use. In fact the only other you would need is a double down to either increase or decrease potency of the card.

As for Divination, it should just be a simple slot machine mechanic with you get what you get. The current form just moved the annoying card fishing game from one form to another.

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From another post

What if you could have a 'hand' of 4 cards, on the old system with minor adjustments to effects if need be to reflect changes they made to tank philosophies and such. Have a long CD to shuffle the deck, draw a new hand. When you read (play) a card you draw a new one, and 'read card' goes on CD.

Would allow for more creative effects, with a higher chance to get the ones you want. Shuffle when you've picked out the good ones and have a stale hand.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Would still vastly prefer old cards.

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Well you're not getting them.
Seriously guys, you have to let go.

they might as well just draw two cards
and enhance them with Arcana

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

What about this:

All cards have their current effects, but are 4/8% instead of 3/6%, and no longer give seals.

Minor Arcana transforms the card into a random card, either Lord, Lady or Page.
Each Minor Arcanum gives a different Seal, and acts as either a Heal, a Regen, or a Shield.
So let’s say:
Lord = Shield + Solar Seal
Lady = Heal + Celestial Seal
Page = Regen + Lunar Seal

Or, can keep the current Minor Arcana system of specific cards giving either Lord or Lady, have them be a Shield and a Regen, but then gives a random Seal when used.

Divination is boosted to giving a damage buff of 4/6/8% to the whole party.

The increased buffs are due to you actively sacrificing a card to get a Seal, so you’re basically choosing between regular single target buffs OR an AoE buff.
Which also makes each buff on its own feel more impactful.

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I have to agree that I highly doubt they would bring back the old cards.

But, Lord and lady of the previous system were easily the most boring aspect of the old cards, they were literally the throw away effects if you draw a bad card. That being said, I would definitely take this over the current setup. I really just want the act of Drawing cards to be fun, which requires some cards to be better than others. If the shield/heal/regen effects are all pretty much equal, I'll only have a slight bias towards the shield, but not enough to actually care what I drew.

In my mind, they should be more situation specific effects so if I draw a card that happens to be useful for the situation we're in, I'll be excited about it. Whatever it is it can't really deal directly with damage, at least not to much of any degree because a plain damage increase is great in pretty much every scenario. An example of situational stuff would be the Dancers En Avant; it's a great movement tool, but because you're a class that never has to stand still in the first place there isn't any actual use for it because you can just run out of everything fine enough.

Effects like:

Mana Regen: Only useful if the healers have had to ress or burn extra mana from people standing in things.
Mitigation: Only useful if the tanks or dps mess up a mechanic.
Movement Speed: Only useful if you're late to move out of something, else encounters are design around just normal run speed.
Surecast/Arms Length: Only useful when the boss uses a knockback more often their your inherent ability.
Swiftcast: Literally just grants Swiftcast. Only useful for casters that need to move on that GCD moment or to ress someone. (tbh, I don't know BLM, so maybe they have some longer than GCD cast times which would mean this buffs their dps?)

Honestly anything that's nice to have at various moments in a fight, but not directly boosting for your damage. They can leave the damage boosting as the flat amount across all cards as it is.

The entirety of the card system was already bloated to the point of dysfunction, let's not add more. Cards require an absurd amount of binds and time for essentially a 30 second ability.

The best time I had with the old cards was prior to getting royal road and spread. You roll a card, you decide where that card is best used, and you use the card.