Would varied Astro buffs work without the RNG?

People like old Balance (current everything), and people like flavor.

Back in Omega I remember the day the AST and I (Sch usually) swapped jobs and I thought spread Bole would be nice to put up at the start of 11S for flamethrowers. I still think old bole and ewer can be optimal plays for DPS at times, as they were all marginal anyway. Anyway, I digress.

A lot of the shenanigan buffs could be very nice. But obviously DPS buffs are ideal to have a lot of the time. So why can't we have both? A system where you *pick* cards like actions, perhaps paying for them in different ways. Given how the general power level of the healers has sort of stagnated, giving AST an effective 6-10 more ogcds wouldn't really be bad.

Give us back the old types of card effects EXCEPT for Balance's. Make the balance effect something else. Then keep the seals and divination on top of it. Boom. You have the variety of useful options, but none as clear the best option as "straight up damage", while encouraging you to use a variety of them.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Give us back the old types of card effects EXCEPT for Balance's. Make the balance effect something else. Then keep the seals and divination on top of it. Boom. You have the variety of useful options, but none as clear the best option as "straight up damage", while encouraging you to use a variety of them.

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I agree that balance needed to be brought in line with the other cards, but so long as they’re different, and one has marginally more damage to give than any other, one will still be considered the best. What could fix that is bringing the damage potential close enough to being in line that it’s more optimal to use whatever card you have optimally than to try and fish for a better one. (Don’t know the old balance, exactly. I never crunched the numbers for myself).

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Originally Posted by Hatstand

I agree that balance needed to be brought in line with the other cards, but so long as they’re different, and one has marginally more damage to give than any other, one will still be considered the best. What could fix that is bringing the damage potential close enough to being in line that it’s more optimal to use whatever card you have optimally than to try and fish for a better one. (Don’t know the old balance, exactly. I never crunched the numbers for myself).

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One will always be the best, which is why I would like them to keep the seals and divination, and have that be the one that gives a bonus everyone can love. Even though the lesser ones will undoubtedly have a card you want above the others, encouraging you to get three seals will help alleviate that I feel.

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Originally Posted by Hatstand

I agree that balance needed to be brought in line with the other cards, but so long as they’re different, and one has marginally more damage to give than any other, one will still be considered the best. What could fix that is bringing the damage potential close enough to being in line that it’s more optimal to use whatever card you have optimally than to try and fish for a better one. (Don’t know the old balance, exactly. I never crunched the numbers for myself).

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Or cut the chance to get Balance to half that of any other card. Or any number of other things to make the optimizers salty and those of us that actually were working with what we drew just keep bending fates.

Divination still feels pretty trash though, the amount of hoops you have to jump through for max seal potential and then also you can only use it every two minutes(?) when you've probably gone through another dozen cards just makes it less hassle than it's really worth. In comparison SMN can do a 5% damage increase (1% less than 3 matching seal Divination) without having to work for it, click your cooldown and everyone (in range) gets the benefit. Reduce Divination cooldown to maybe 1min and have it spread effects from the target you use it on, or potentially also reset any card timers, anything would be nice.

The new Cards are comparable to Trick Attack, and because they're less 'random' now, you can actually measure it!

Trick attack is 10% over 10s every 60s.

Divination being 6% over 15s, is equivalent to 9% over 10s, so only 1% less.
It’s only every 120s though.

But then consider that as Divination is cooling down, you can use four single target cards of the same effect or greater.
Use them on all four DPS in a full party, or all party members in a 4-man, and that’s equivalent to having 2 Divinations every 120s, or… one every 60s.
Then consider you’ll get at least one Minor Arcana for 8% over 15s, which would be equivalent to 12% over 10s, completely making up for that 1% loss to Trick Attack on the other three cards. Except you can target the top DPS instead of it being a blanket buff on all party members.

Throw in Sleeve Draw and you’re in credit.


Now, that's not to say the current system doesn't still have issues. The biggest being that while the effects of the system have been simplified... the mechanics haven't, so it's kinda clunky and takes more effort than it feels is 'worth it'.
I think it could be tweaked a little better.

So the following system is what I would do to improve it:


Balance/Spear/Arrow: 10/6% damage increase for Melee/Ranged.
Bole/Spire/Ewer: 10/6% damage increase for Ranged/Melee
Seals are the same as they currently are, but they do not apply when Playing the card.
Minor Arcana’s are the same for each card.

Minor Arcana: Applies the Seal of the currently held card and discards that card, while generating the effect of Lord/Lady of Crowns. Can only be used in combat.

Lord of Crowns: Grants you a 5% crit buff for 10s and restores 250mp.
Lady of Crowns: Grants you a 5% healing potency buff for 10s and restores 250mp.

Divination: Bestows a party wide 6/8/10% damage buff based on the number of different Seals.

Sleeve Draw would have to be nerfed to just 2 free draws instead of three. Still enough to get your three Seals if you make use of Draw first.


Rather than throwing out a 6% every 30s consistently, you’re using card buffs less often, but for greater effect.
This gives you more impact for each single card/divination (feels better to use) and choice between single targets and building an AoE buff, plus a way to burn cards for healer utility.
There’s fewer buttons to press and less switching targets, because using Minor Arcana doesn’t require you to target anyone, and also doesn’t run the risk of failing to apply the seal.

Basically, in any 2 minute cycle, you will be choosing between four 10% single target buffs, OR one 10% single target buff and one 10% party-wide buff.
In four man content, it might be swings and roundabout which you do because you only have 2 DPS.
In eight man content, you will always want to feed your Divination. And because of how powerful this will be in eight mans, better than Trick Attack, it’ll be more equivalent to WHM’s Misery.
Plus you’ll be boosting your healing output and MP in the process. Two birds with one stone, AST would be fixed.

RNG is what caused the problem with the old cards, so removing it would only allow them to be used to their fullest potential. However I think converting spread Balance into Divination was a good move and I like putting out more cards on an individual basis instead of just using spread on larger parties. SE probably won't just revert the card system either so I think any changes that would realistically happen would involve the seal system.

If the seals were changed to grant different additional effects to Divination based on the types of seals acquired we could have something that achieves the old card system's variety without totally reverting to SB AST. So for example 3 Lunar seals would give increased MP regeneration in addition to the attack buff while 3 Solar Seals would be equivalent to the Bole. Divination itself could also be changed to work like Horoscope in that you would need to press the button twice to get all the effects (once for damage, twice for support). This would prevent tying support effects to damage so that you wouldn't have to worry about holding on to one at the cost of being unable to use the other. The only issue would be that seals would still be random if nothing else changed, but that could be addressed by having the cards drawn in seal order instead of randomly and maybe reducing the cooldown on redraw.

The problem with the old system is the fact that there was always a "best" card which meant while there where niche moments for the "non-best" cards, ultimately in most settings you wanted whatever buffed the groups damage. Minimizing the rng from the cards and placing it into another mechanic is honestly the healthiest way they could do it at this point. What needs to be addressed, if anything, is making the gameplay loop as smooth as possible, numbers can always be tweaked as needed.

If they changed Minor Arcana to automatically play the card, I would be one happy pickle.

RNG was a core element of AST gameplay and thematic.
Remove it, and it will lose his players as now.

The anti-RNG 'AST' players (who use probably Crit / Direct hit anyway) should know that a way to fix it is to give some actions to reduce the rng part, to have more control on it (and not necessary remove it entirely).
For example, "Draw a card. It has the same effect as the previous card played" (1st card system) ; "The next card drawn is tied to a seal you don't have" (2nd card system).
Another example (1st card system) : "The next card drawn will be a Balance, an Arrow or a Spear. Condition : Horoscope.
Otherwise, the next card drawn will be a Bole, an Ewer or a Spire.

I could take the day to do a list with more effect.

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.

Technically I think they can work without the RNG. Heck there's already existing card systems out there that can be stolen. When AST was announced and saw the cards, I was excited because I loved Corsair in FFXI and card buffs there were good fun, but a little sad when I realised it wasn't going to be that. But you chose the buffs you wanted but you gambled the potency through a version of Black Jack modified for the game. Giving a whole risk/reward thing going. If you got overzealous you could debuff your party. Whilst many things from FFXI wouldn't work so well in FFXIV, I think this is a kind of card system that could still work in FFXIV.

But I don't think it'd work so well with AST's theme. For Corsair it was fine, gambling is a thing pirates do so gambling with numbers was appropriate and kinda plays to Setzer a little, with his being a gambler. AST is Astrology and the card system is a little more like a Tarot reading, cards are always randomly picked out of a deck and the telling will depend in the card you've drawn from the deck. At least this was a case before they made it about seals instead. They kept it loosely appropriate, but doesn't work with the lore they already set out.

However, much of the RNG is mitigated by how you can use them. As one must make the best you can out of the cards you've been dealt with in life, it was the same for AST. Although I never properly leveled it in SB, as I understand it, no cards were actually useless. I feel maybe that should have been SE's approach to the "useless card" syndrome, offer more tools to make the most out of what you've been dealt instead of residing to a 'wasted' card. I thought Lord/Lady was a good approach to that.

I wonder why they didn't just take the old card system and slap a dps buff on all of them as a secondary effect, then change only Balance to have a different main effect? I mean it must have came up as an option.