AST Suggestion Thread 5.05

I know we have a bunch floating around, especially with discussion going on in other threads, but it might be a good idea to push suggestions here.

For my suggestion, I would change Sleeve Draw to be better instead of the mess it is right now.

Sleeve Draw
Cooldown: 120s

Draws 3 Arcana in a row, doubling the potency of each card used(up to 3 times). Regardless of seal, if the card is played correctly you fill the Divination Gauge with a Wild Card Seal(name tentative).

This allows for you to not worry too much about Redraw and oGCD havoc since if you’re playing correctly you’ll be rewarded with less oGCDs.

As mentioned in other threads, Celestial Opposition needs its stun restored. As long as another healer has a stun (actually a better version than what AST lost), there's no reason for this to have been removed from our toolkit. Was bad enough that the ability lost its buff extender.

So question for devs: did you NOT want healer jobs to have a stun? If you're okay with WHM having one, give us back ours please.

I think the idea of a Wild Card is cool, one that you can use on anyone with a penalty. Maybe instead of it being from Sleeve Draw it could be from a Minor Arcana type ability. So when you’re in that double ranged party and get two Arrows in a row, instead of having to either suck up the loss or desperately spam Redraw, you could use that and get a card that can work on anyway in exchange. It could have a 60 second cooldown for balancing (wouldn’t be any point in real cards if it was 30s lol).

For Celestial Opposition if I had to choose I’d prefer the buff extension to return than the stun. But with cards as they are now you only ever have them up on a total of 4 party members at any given time, so maybe it wouldn’t feel as good to use. The stun effect was very satisfying though, and the ‘stopping time’ concept really fit Astrologian

Sleeve Draw being 180 isn't that bad, it's designed to work with Lightspeed so that you can Dish out Lords and Ladies during the 3 min burst window and isn't supposed to be used to Fill the seal requirement after the initial opener. If you make it 120secs, Lightspeed needs to be 60secs. I think alot of AST players don't actually know how to use Sleeve draw and are misguidedly using it to fuel Divination when it's mean't to compliment it during your biggest burst windows. and making them Lords and ladies allows you to ignore the seals system anyway thus eliminating the need to redraw if you have a standard comp of 2 melee and 2 ranged.

Buff Malefic IV to 250 or 260 potency.
Buff Combust III to 50 potency.
Buff Divination %'s to 5/7/10.
Draw now restores 5% of total MP (500) when drawing a card.
Buff Collective Unconscious to 100 regen potency.
Buff Sleeve Draw so that cards drawn from it are 4/8% damage increase instead of 3/6%, or double their duration to 30 seconds.
Buff Horoscope to auto-detonate instead of being wasted.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wayfinder3

I think alot of AST players don't actually know how to use Sleeve draw and are misguidedly using it to fuel Divination when it's mean't to compliment it during your biggest burst windows.

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Squeen's design of how to use these skills is very widely open to interpretation.
Because they designed Sleeve Draw to grant 3 draws of Major Arcana, the up-front idea is to use it to power Divination and use any subsequent draws for lady/lords. This is further supported by their decision to shorten the potency gaps between seal combinations, where it can be interpreted that they want us to not care about which seals we get, and just use the cards we get.

Your idea works too, of course.

How players treat the cards will influence how well they perform. Not that that means that the design is actually good, but Squeen was very up front about how they felt about their design choices coming into this expansion.

I wish they would just make CU deployable.

Make redraw return a seal you don't already have. Burning through multiple redraws is terrible design, there should be no reason for more than one charge.

EDIT: Also maybe add another mechanic to CU to make it interesting such as distributing the damage taken evenly to all allies inside. Would give something unique to AST and fits very well with the lore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Squeen's design of how to use these skills is very widely open to interpretation.
Because they designed Sleeve Draw to grant 3 draws of Major Arcana, the up-front idea is to use it to power Divination and use any subsequent draws for lady/lords. This is further supported by their decision to shorten the potency gaps between seal combinations, where it can be interpreted that they want us to not care about which seals we get, and just use the cards we get.

Your idea works too, of course.

How players treat the cards will influence how well they perform. Not that that means that the design is actually good, but Squeen was very up front about how they felt about their design choices coming into this expansion.

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The reason why that interpretation doesn't work is because you can draw and gather seals after the initial pull and the cooldowns are different. if Div is 120, and Sleeve is 180. the only time where you can use them together in the way you're thinking is the Pull, and 6mins into the fight

Sleeve is 0, 3, 6, 9 in a 10min fight but you can also do 0, 4, 8 in a sub 9 min fight by delaying them a minute at the 3 and 7 min mark
Div is 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 consistently in every fight which very rare exceptions.

So this means you're required to draw and fill Div manually for the 2, 4, and 8 min mark in the first example, or the and the 2, 6 mark in the 2nd example assuming you're not playing the job wrong. You can Draw 2 times a Min and thats giving you 3 Draw inbetween each Divination at the 30, 60, 90 marks between each divination.

There is no way SE intended for you to use Sleeve Draw for Divination anytime after the opener as the 2 skills only ever line up every 6 mins and or at the 4 and 8 min mark if you're delaying them do to the expected kill time. SE wants you to fill the seals manually after the opener and sleeve draw is supposed to compliment that with Minor Arcana

-Card buff: duration increased to 25 secs;
-minor arcana: potency buffed to 10% if applied on right job, 5% if applied on wrong job;
-Divination buff: increased to 8/5/4% and duration increased to 25 secs;
-sleeve Draw: reworked; grants u a seal u don’t have, draws a card, grants u 3 stacks of redraw;
-New Passive “Luminiferous Aether” (the old mp refresh skills name): grants u 5% mp recover every time u use “Play”;
-Horoscope reworked: using the skill will grant a horoscope buff using again the skill will cause a healing explosion ( healing potency 150), after 10 secs it will turn into “charged horoscope” ( healing potency 250 also applies regen if diurnal or shields if nocturnal ) once buff time expires the heal will explode authomatically (like earthly star);
-Collective unconscious: potencies buffed, also after 5 secs u got the dome on, it will depositate on the battle field for 10 secs;

-Card buff: duration increased to 25 secs;
-minor arcana: potency buffed to 10% if applied on right job, 5% if applied on wrong job;
-Divination buff: increased to 8/5/4% and duration increased to 25 secs;
-sleeve Draw: reworked; grants u a seal u don’t have, draws a card, grants u 3 stacks of redraw;
-New Passive “Luminiferous Aether” (the old mp refresh skills name): grants u 5% mp recover every time u use “Play”;
-Horoscope reworked: using the skill will grant a horoscope buff using again the skill will cause a healing explosion ( healing potency 150), after 10 secs it will turn into “charged horoscope” ( healing potency 250 also applies regen if diurnal or shields if nocturnal ) once buff time expires the heal will explode authomatically (like earthly star);
-Collective unconscious: potencies buffed, also after 5 secs u got the dome on, it will depositate on the battle field for 10 secs;

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wayfinder3

The reason why that interpretation doesn't work is because you can draw and gather seals after the initial pull and the cooldowns are different. if Div is 120, and Sleeve is 180. the only time where you can use them together in the way you're thinking is the Pull, and 6mins into the fight

Sleeve is 0, 3, 6, 9 in a 10min fight but you can also do 0, 4, 8 in a sub 9 min fight by delaying them a minute at the 3 and 7 min mark
Div is 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 consistently in every fight which very rare exceptions.

So this means you're required to draw and fill Div manually for the 2, 4, and 8 min mark in the first example, or the and the 2, 6 mark in the 2nd example assuming you're not playing the job wrong. You can Draw 2 times a Min and thats giving you 3 Draw inbetween each Divination at the 30, 60, 90 marks between each divination.

There is no way SE intended for you to use Sleeve Draw for Divination anytime after the opener as the 2 skills only ever line up every 6 mins and or at the 4 and 8 min mark if you're delaying them do to the expected kill time. SE wants you to fill the seals manually after the opener and sleeve draw is supposed to compliment that with Minor Arcana

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This is the most productive thing related to ast I've read here, I love the fact that 2min divination and 3 min sleeve draw means that ast can cover most major burst windows.

HY there

As was an astrologian main, i can tell i loved the old astrologian far more. It was perfect. The feeling to play with it was far sperior and far much unique than any class even worldwode not just in FF. Now astrologian is nothing... can do nothing, and its buff dont do anything compared to the real astrologian what it was in stormblood.
Astrologian is something like prophetess. Fate guides you nothing else. If the fate gives you The Bole card, go and find a use for it. It have so many way to use that card. The new astrologian, well, i wont call those things cards anymore, much more a piece of paper with some low lvl enhancement, nvm, so the real thing, this astrologian is not astrologian anymore.
The real astrologian was the old one, what was guided by fate (RNG cause fate is probably is that) and followed by luck and creativity, to find use for what fate choses for you.

But to take aways from the "RP" side of the class, astroologian old card system was far superior and enjoyable in every way. Every card has its own use. For me, as a not that professional gamer, ewer was everything. Free mana? Jesus, need.
But for other options, with AOE + Bole combo + aspected helios with nocturnal was a great boss aoe mechanic blocker. What is main priority in this game afterall. Yet its gone.
Other realy useful thing was for me in dungeon runs, it was pretty much helpful The Arrow card, for faster recasts and such.
In other situations, a +50% buffed The Spear card was a very nice buff for a dragoon or other high dmg dps to melt even bosses in no time.
So please, peoples... The Balance is not the only card. As that it is most worthless card in the whole deck. Yes, the combination effect to gives +50% to the effect of the next used card was good. But realy... still that was the lowest card in the deck.
Cause as a healer, my role is not dmg buff but saveing the group. And well, dmg dont gives defense nor anything else. For dps boost, there is many support class like Bard for example or now Dancer.

But please, be somewhat "realistic". The role of the healer is not to support damage output of the dps's. Its role save them and heal them.

So anyway, i prefer the old astrologian much more. For player experience and for usefulness too. I hope Developers will see the logic in this and hope they undo this astrologian called charlatan.

Fate be with you everyone.

Minor Arcana: Be able to use Minor Arcana like how Play is used now (IE, Bole has been drawn, target player and select Minor Arcana and they will get the Lady of Crowns buff). Just one less oGCD to deal with in AST's already bloated oGCD kit.
Horoscope: To auto detonate when the timer expires.

AST has become my favorite healer to play in casual 8-mans ATM, so I wouldn't mind the buffs / QoLs above to streamline the AST experience.

Just to ease a few button presses, I would adjust the card system a bit.

Make Sleeve Draw's current functionality the base function.

Give Play a 30s cooldown.

Remove Draw and Undraw from the game.

Sleeve Draw now gives 3 charges of reducing Play's cooldown to 1s.