AST Changes Ideas

Hi!

This post is mainly to get my ideas down on paper of some things I think the Dev team could do with AST.

Change the card system. The card system could be changed to only 3 cards (1 for each seal) that have various healing abilities, such as:
- Instant single target heal
- Single target regen
- Single target shield

I know that cards are a main source of rDPS for AST, so in light of that I think it would be neat to have an action called something like "Reverse". Reverse would apply a 15s (ish) buff to self that allows all cards to have a "reversed" function with a 2 min CD (to line up with Div) ie:
- Single target %dmg increase
- Single target %crit chance increase
- Single target %DH chance increase

I also think it would be interesting to have a skill/action that predicts future cards. So something like, if you achieved 3 unique seals for divination, you're granted "foresight" which allows you to see the next two cards you'll pull. Or add "foresight" as a trait to Sleeve draw.

Another idea I had for AST with this type of card system was something like "shared fate" where the card is turned into an aoe for the party but cannot be used with reverse is active.

I'd love to hear some other ideas about changes to AST - I'm sure there's already threads out there with some ideas too! Feel free to post some links so I can check them out :)

Thanks for reading!

~Iveh

Honestly I would be happy if you just got some kind of tissue prize like a small 1% or 2% mana buff or a small heal on a random party member every time your forced to redraw a card you do not want. Would make it seems at least a bit more meaningful when fishing for a card.

I feel like reducing the cards down to three would invalidate the seal system more than the current system already does, to the point you would question why it's even there. On top of that I really don't think giving AST anymore oGCD heals is a wise thing, their kit is already obnoxiously overloaded with incredibly potent low-CD healing that anymore is just reaching overkill. I really do like the foresight concept though.

Personally I feel the old card effects were fine in concept, the problem was the execution caused by the opportunity cost of the Royal Road + Spread interaction. The reason Balance fishing was so prevalent wasn't just because Balance was broken, but because you were stuck in a decision loop caused by those two skills. You couldn't spread anything but Balance because if the next card you drew was Balance, you lose. On the other hand if you have royal road up you want to hold it for Balance because if you don't and the next card ends up being it you potentially lost yourself an AoE Balance later in the fight, especially if you draw a back-to-back Balance, so double lose. Utility and DPS cards can coexist but the system needs to be designed to allow a window for those utility cards to function on their own merit outside of the power vacuum of the DPS cards.

If I were to redesign the system I would first return all cards to their previous effects (Make Spire give DH, maybe change Ewer to ‘increased healing received’ since MP sustain is already too strong) and adjust potency/duration(make it around 18secs and keep potencies around 6% for dam and 10% for everything else). From there I would do something like this:

Draw
Same as before but re-united back with Play to cut-down on button bloat. Maybe add a 1 sec buffer to prevent players from accidently double taping it, which I'm guessing is the reason they split it in the first place?

Expanded Spread
Stored arcana will have 50% potency, extends effect to nearby targets

Extended Spread
Stored arcana will be double duration

Enhanced Spread
Stored arcana will have double potency

*Stored arcana cannot be the same across all spreads and cannot be used out of combat. All Spreads have a CD of 1sec.

Redraw
Stays the same

Sleeve Draw
3m CD
Returns to the previous effect where you draw three cards with three major differences .
- All three cards will be visible on your status bar in sequential order with a 30sec duration to use/spread. (inspired by your foresight idea)
-Doesn’t overwrite draw, if a card is drawn it will get pushed to the back of the line.
- All three cards drawn cannot be the same and this also applies to any currently held card and redraw(IE. if you Redraw the first card it will pick from the remaining one* in your deck)

Divination
3m CD
When activated enters a 10 second "Divined" state that converts all card skills to an associated Major Arcana (think Dancer steps) except for Draw (so if you goof and forgot to prep Draw you can still do so). The arcana played will have all Royal Road effects at once, so basically an Expanded without the reduction and double duration. As a consequence for manipulating the heavens the selected arcana will be removed from your Draw pool until Divination comes back off CD. Divined Arcana cannot stack with regular arcana or be overwritten by them.
*If you have Sleeve/ Spread or Draw arcana that is the same as the one selected during Divination they will be retroactively removed.


The system is characterized by two phases, deck building and deck maintenance. At the start you will open with Draw + Divination as normal (no need to wait on Draw as the 36sec divi arcana pretty much means you would sit on it regardless). Where the difference comes in is Sleeve Draw; with your current card + SD + Redraw you can manipulate the RNG to basically be a non-factor and spread all the cards you feel necessary to maintain for the next 3 minutes. So after Divined Arcana drops you can start playing and rotating cards based upon draws and dealing with what RNG hands you until reaching the two minute mark, where you’ll start offloading your cards in preparation for the next deck build.

The intention here is to compensate for four problems with the old/current system while maintaining the lore/ job fantasy of its former self. First it removes Balance from the draw pool by quarantining it with Divination. Secondly it offers multiple spread slots to hold utility cards for long periods to prep for future mechanics without competing with the rest, as you’ll want to funnel Spear/Spire through Expanded and Arrow through Enhanced or Extended to feed your cohealer/blm or whoever wont flip out over it. Lastly, it gives you an opportunity to control the RNG to a degree. The problem for utility cards is that you couldn’t have the opportunity to use them effectively without sacrificing damage or even just have one ready for the moment. Now you can effectively setup a defensive CD every 3mins without worry. And even if you get stuck with a dupe, you can just use and replace the old one if needed or toss out the drawn card with no RR buff. Lastly and a very minor one is this solves the quite annoying opener problems with rapid target swapping and weaving, especially on controller. As it stands you cannot play any cards while Divination is running so you have the full duration of SD to decide and spread yours cards at a somewhat lax pace.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Manuka

Utility and DPS cards can coexist but the system needs to be designed to allow a window for those utility cards to function on their own merit outside of the power vacuum of the DPS cards.

If I were to redesign the system I would first return all cards to their previous effects (Make Spire give DH, maybe change Ewer to ‘increased healing received’ since MP sustain is already too strong) and adjust potency/duration(make it around 18secs and keep potencies around 6% for dam and 10% for everything else).

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Ewer is effectively the useless card since you can't guarantee drawing for it when you need that extra healing boost to survive an encounter. Holding onto that card specifically for that encounter that may or may not happen is probably going to make the player redraw for a different card or clip into your next draw. Utility and DPS cards cannot coexist if they share the same RNG resource because you cannot guarantee drawing the utility you need when it becomes necessary, but DPS buffs are always beneficial.

To have both is pretty much required to decouple both types of cards from the same draw pile in such a way that you can guarantee the utility when you need to draw it - but this effectively defeats the purpose of having RNG cards in essence and would require the AST to change its current card system. While DPS buffs does not have to be tied to the cards in itself (think Divination only activating by having any 3 seals), the main problem is still getting the utility you want, and that would most likely end up causing a balancing issue unless the effects of all the cards' utility is equalized or ends up giving you the illusion of versatile utility (like how all cards give DPS).

The other issue is how damage buffs scale. DH scales worse than Crit or straight up damage %. Removing Balance from the list of card effects but keeping Spire being a DH increase will just make people fish for whatever gives more damage - in this case, Spire if Crit is not available. I mean, theoretically you can have Crit, DH, and Damage % if the ratios are properly adjusted to be equal to each other, but in the end, isn't that just the same as having 3 cards that do the same exact thing - which is give more DPS?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Manuka

Draw
Same as before but re-united back with Play to cut-down on button bloat. Maybe add a 1 sec buffer to prevent players from accidently double taping it, which I'm guessing is the reason they split it in the first place?

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The reason why Draw is decoupled with Play is because initially, the Sleeve Draw mechanic gave you 3 stacks of 'Draw', rather than immediately drawing a card. Later on, Sleeve Draw automatically drew the next card after playing until you ran out of sleeve draw stacks. Nowadays, because sleeve draw is reduced to only 1 card, you don't see this problem, but you do end up with the problem of waiting ~15 to 30 seconds for the AST to pre-draw a card for Divination.

I personally rather have Draw and Play decoupled because you would be able to see the remaining time you have left to hold the card until a a new card appears, letting you space out the card's usage for a more opportune time before the next draw. Having the two overlap is easier to end up holding the card for too long and clip the next draw, or encourages playing the card immediately rather than looking for a better time to play it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iveh

Hi!

This post is mainly to get my ideas down on paper of some things I think the Dev team could do with AST.

Change the card system. The card system could be changed to only 3 cards (1 for each seal) that have various healing abilities, such as:
- Instant single target heal
- Single target regen
- Single target shield

I know that cards are a main source of rDPS for AST, so in light of that I think it would be neat to have an action called something like "Reverse". Reverse would apply a 15s (ish) buff to self that allows all cards to have a "reversed" function with a 2 min CD (to line up with Div) ie:
- Single target %dmg increase
- Single target %crit chance increase
- Single target %DH chance increase

I also think it would be interesting to have a skill/action that predicts future cards. So something like, if you achieved 3 unique seals for divination, you're granted "foresight" which allows you to see the next two cards you'll pull. Or add "foresight" as a trait to Sleeve draw.

Another idea I had for AST with this type of card system was something like "shared fate" where the card is turned into an aoe for the party but cannot be used with reverse is active.

I'd love to hear some other ideas about changes to AST - I'm sure there's already threads out there with some ideas too! Feel free to post some links so I can check them out :)

Thanks for reading!

~Iveh

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I disagree with the idea to further simply the Astrologian cards and make them even more boring, by reducing them to 3...
but, on that note, I do like the idea of "reverse", and the "ForeSight" idea would not work simply because the cards are complete random RNG.
there is no pattern or certainty for a "ForeSight" effect to reveal.

back to the "reverse" idea, another thing. Critical Hit is "superior" to Direct Hit, as far as damage goes, so for the sake of balance and to avoid "fishing" mentality, the Direct Hit Chance increase would have to be a lot more large than the Critical Hit buff to its chance and/or damage, while the pure damage increase, being like Determination, would have to be larger than, and large enough to keep up with, both of those.

Don't remove there shields. Change the card system back to how it was. Make each card have a different ability.

Hey Guys,

Long time no seen I hope everybody is fine or on the way to getting fine again.

I've waited a long time to talk about this topic. Since this topic has drawn a huge gap between the AST community and SHB. However, I am of the opinion that we have to find a compromise between utility cards and DPS push cards. So that the players don't turn their backs on the AST!
I know that my suggested solution may not be the best. However, I hope to find a way to enable AST playing styles.

Let's start:

My Idea is that pure

Idea for the Tooltipp:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...98/unknown.png

Bufficon:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...68/unknown.png

My idea of the pure DPS push is based on enabling this ALWAYS when play is used. Here, the AST should serve as a pivot point. This has the advantage regardless of melee / ranged cards (what is if you have no of this jobs like in DF), sleeve draw and the missing card for the pull. These are all problems that are now occurring in SHB.

The balance team can think about the balance of the XX% and the range of the AoE around the AST. (Maybe like the BRD with 30y?)
I think in terms of gaze to Bard its a not a bad idea to make the push to a Trait for Play. That makes the AST playstil in the early better (in my eyes) and give the push that the people want for everyone.
If Divination is a trait now delet the Lvl 50 skill that can compair in the XX% push. And if every card is in a 30s window it lines up in all buff windos well!

Now we come to the Crard that give the utility a part of the Comunity misses atm:

The Cardrules

- Draw is allowed to use out of Combat. BUT "Play" is not use anymore out of Combat. (No way to fish the Best Card [in your eyes])
- "Play" activates divination (as a trait)

The Balance

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...84/unknown.png

The balance is a card that has increased the damage in SB or HW. This should continue and this is where I find the idea of integrating Ninja’s 80s talent. This is easier to balance than to give a broad percentage gain. So the further you call the strength of the card as too strong. Here you can balance by maintaining the stacks and the stack power. And it might ruin the thought that balance is the only right thing in the deck of cards.

The Arrow

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...84/unknown.png

The strengthening of certain jobs with this card depends on the situation. However, there are jobs that shine through these cards and it is was the effect of the card from SB. Maybe a BLM or SAM will be happy if this card comes back like this.

The Spear

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...14/unknown.png

After the Spear became a Crit-Card, its popularity increased. I think that the card can also show its effect in this way. The 5% are just a placeholder and a task for the balance team. Taget means here the AST himself!

The Bole

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...66/unknown.png

In view of the fact that the AST is losing its power to use shields in a picky way. Can he use The Bole to reduce the damage Tank or himself instead. Also the same effect like in SB and HW. This is a good idea for dungeons and okay for raids because the DPS push is still there because the trait of Divination and the Healing increase from 5% - 10% (Balance Placeholder -> Task for the Balanaceteam). True to the motto, if the tank can withstand more damage and heal, the AST can do more damage.

The Ewer

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...59/unknown.png

The Ewer the old acquaintance of the mana addict healer. This card needs its old effect again.

The Spire

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...20/unknown.png

It's a shame that there is no longer a TP. No ... OMG that was a joke. The Spire needs a new effect and I think improving Direct Crit is one.

Minor Arcana

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...55/unknown.png

Minor Arcana should get his ability back before SHB. Only that no RNG should come in here. So the goal of Minor Arcana decides what happens either healing or DMG! But an loses his card, which was drawn so watch out in raids. In the open world for leveling, why not.

Note to the dev side if they read it. The minor arcana skill changes when you have a card to the icon of Lady of Crowns when aiming at a friendly target and to the Lord of Crowns when aiming at an opponent.

Spread for the SHB Divination

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...29/unknown.png

Spread strikes back. At the place of divination, Spread comes back. This skill should be able to delay divination or the card of the AST. Here the AST should decide when to play it. Important Spread also triggers divination as a trait.

Sleeve Draw

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...06/unknown.png

Sleeve Draw should again feel like a hand full of cards. I know it can be stressful to play as a controller. To play this, however, I think this is okay without the compulsion to have certain seals because you have the freedom to play the card consciously.


Conclusion

I think the outsourcing of the percentage gain through divination as an AoE around the AST removes the old RNG (which was rightly criticized in SB). You always have this push now as it is now in SHB.
The cards have a utility factor which they had in SB and which many players liked to use. There may still be a best card, but this can be fixed quickly. The DMG push from the card itself is supposed to be a small bonus and make it easier to use the cards. We don't have that with pure melee and ranged cards!

I think that a middle ground could be struck here between DPS cards and utility. This is not perfect that should be clear to everyone. But numbers are a matter of balance and the idea should aim to keep a large number of AST players in Endwalker.

greetings

Marius in good health from the server Odin

As cool as it may seem I really don't think a system that requires you to know how every other job works and their best stats in order to optimize your own is a good one, from a game design perspective. Don't need healing cards, there are spells for that.

As for utility, it's situational and you really want those abilities to be reliable rather than random card draws, especially if they're going to result in feels-bad moments. Stacking half the deck defeats the purpose of the deck, but the foresight idea... that almost sounds perfect. Astrologians are supposed to be able to read fates and such, no?

What if: There are 2 cards to buff melee and tanks, 2 cards to buff ranged and heals, and 2 different utility cards + you can always see what your next card will be + you can either consume your current card to buff the next or remove it from the deck to save for later? Sleeve Draw could either give one card in each slot (may mess up your plans) or give a missing symbol like now or maybe let you choose between 3 cards though the interfacing for that sounds icky. It could also buff Redraw to only draw new cards for a limited time and/or get more charges while also drawing a card maybe.

For the type of utility... increased move speed + either reduced cast time or the ability to cast while moving might be nice though all those could be potentially bad as well. What's universally good, is not a dmg buff, and has nothing to do with healing? Hell if I know. Maybe a simple dmg reduction or mp regen (for healers only) would be good enough.

Weird ideas for utility cards: A card that does nothing on its own but buffs your next card even more. A wildcard that has a different effect each time it's drawn ranging from killing the user to a free rez without the debuff with different chances of drawing each effect depending on its power (learning them would be a pain); likewise there could be a mechanic that randomly transforms normal cards into wildcards once in a while... meh, too random. A card that gives you a symbol you don't currently have while buffing any player melee or ranged. A card that debuffs or crowd controls an enemy. A card that just damages something, a lot. A card that lets you teleport or become immune to everything for a couple seconds. A card that makes everyone in a 100y radius dance. Idk.

And for the symbols and Divination... maybe the utility cards have their own symbol while the dps cards share the other two, Divination's dmg buff caps at 2 symbols and gains an extra non-dps effect for having the 3rd? Or there could just be 9 total cards: 3 melee buff, 3 ranged buff, 3 utility, with 3 symbols each. I do like the number of threes involved there but introducing new cards might mess with lore too much.

I like the idea alot posted by Heilstos and i hope that AST will be like that by the time Endwalker hits.

The only thing i'd say should be better improved upon, is divination. Instead of giving it a flat dps boost, it should work in a similar way how ninjutsus work for NIN. Depending on the Sigil combination, you get a completely different effect out of it.

Imagine it kind of like this: Instead of the Aracana Gauge showing only a star, moon and planet symbol, it shows instead the sigil of each card. Playing for example 3 times the same card like Ewer, could grant the Mana restoration effect both a AoE effect, as well as a increase of the granted effect. Playing different Cards into the Divination table, like any combination with the Balance, can lead to a different Dps Skill (said spells could be inspired maybe even from Geomancer and Time Mage). When a Combination has been finished, the Arcana Gauge will show which Skill you got yourself together to.

Unpopular opinion but I have no interest in the obsession with utility cards. It's always the same ideas. "increased cast/attack speed", "restore mana", "increased movement speed", "increased healing taken", "tiny bit of mitigation". Most of these are flat out worthless in a lot of situations or even problematic (such as reduced recast time on the wrong class or too much unexpected movement speed sending someone over the edge of a platform). Fights are designed and we gear our classes to beat them without such Utility. It's the reason tenacity is worthless, permanent 10% damage reduction sounds great on paper but if the fight is designed so you can beat it the same without it, it serves no use. We use Piety if we need mana, we meld SkS/SpS if we need to reach a perfect breakpoint, we mitigate enough to survive. In other games it might work, but ff14 is just so scripted and exact.

Sure some utility might be handy if someone screws up but I'd rather not build a whole class mechanic around "might be useful if you group sucks, maybe, then it's worthless later". Utility cards often just feel useful to players who don't really care if they're actually being useful. Dps cards are always useful.

If you make the utility impactful, like heavy mitigation, you make AST too good. It's really quite hard to design and balance.

I'd rather they looked at other ways to make AST more interesting. Delayed time magic, both heal and dps. A Sleeve draw that aligns with Divination. The ability to place a Return marker like on e12s. A buff Share cd, so you could share a card buff, shield or Lightspeed on you with another player. More dps abilities than Malefic spam. I'm just throwing things out, but there's plenty of other things they could look at. Cards are mostly fine though.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Unpopular opinion but I have no interest in the obsession with utility cards. It's always the same ideas. "increased cast/attack speed", "restore mana", "increased movement speed", "increased healing taken", "tiny bit of mitigation". Most of these are flat out worthless in a lot of situations or even problematic (such as reduced recast time on the wrong class or too much unexpected movement speed sending someone over the edge of a platform). Fights are designed and we gear our classes to beat them without such Utility. It's the reason tenacity is worthless, permanent 10% damage reduction sounds great on paper but if the fight is designed so you can beat it the same without it, it serves no use. We use Piety if we need mana, we meld SkS/SpS if we need to reach a perfect breakpoint, we mitigate enough to survive. In other games it might work, but ff14 is just so scripted and exact.

(...)

I'd rather they looked at other ways to make AST more interesting. Delayed time magic, both heal and dps. A Sleeve draw that aligns with Divination. The ability to place a Return marker like on e12s. A buff Share cd, so you could share a card buff, shield or Lightspeed on you with another player. More dps abilities than Malefic spam. I'm just throwing things out, but there's plenty of other things they could look at. Cards are mostly fine though.

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That Aspect of Cards still exist about the idea from Divination as trait. So you get the reforcement to play the card. So its like Card (Utility) + Divination trait ( that is the effect from very card now) (Dps push)
Your aspect that a dps push is important. Is there because you have to play every card, which are not independent of the jobs (Melee ranged) which are available for the DPS part. It feels not great to give ranged cards in a group to the melee but what is the other way to do it. To give a 3% card to the melee or 6% to a tank. The SHb Sytsem has is problems aswell.

This idea is intended to be a further development of the SHB card system. The DPS push is and remains trivial, but the card itself is a game for the branch.The style of play goes in the direction of the bard.
As you said, the utility effect of the card is a pure bonus that is under the RNG. And that Part is not important for you Liam.
Because the approach that every card pushes the DPS is important and correct. Otherwise there is no incentive to play the card.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

act.

Sure some utility might be handy if someone screws up but I'd rather not build a whole class mechanic around "might be useful if you group sucks, maybe, then it's worthless later". Utility cards often just feel useful to players who don't really care if they're actually being useful. Dps cards are always useful.

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And that mindset is exactly the reason why the game gets more and more boring, I'm sorry. It's all about fighting in your own little bubble while almost completely discounting the possibility that people would like to have more utility. Raw DPS increase at the exclusion of fun will just lead to stagnation. I can wrap my head around this spreadsheet approach of playing a game, no offense.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And that mindset is exactly the reason why the game gets more and more boring, I'm sorry. It's all about fighting in your own little bubble while almost completely discounting the possibility that people would like to have more utility. Raw DPS increase at the exclusion of fun will just lead to stagnation. I can wrap my head around this spreadsheet approach of playing a game, no offense.

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That is the reason to make a compromise. If only the wishes of all parts of the community are felt. (So the DPS push and the desire for utility).
Did we win or am I mistaken Payadopa?

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Tl;dr

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Take that attitute to the next WHM discussion Thread. In case you don't know, AST currently has despite the "utility cards" the lowest Dps in the game, having the Balance card as well as its Divination combinations as it has been suggested, would already be a good boost in damage.

If Jobs were to be reworked in a way where overall manacosts would be increased as well as the distribution of utility based skills would be limited to healers and only certain jobs such as bard and maybe DRK or GNB (not both), things would be different.

My point on this is, the Homogenisation Train for Jobs has been arround for way too long, if this doesn't change, then this Game wont last long enough until it has more People leaving the game, than joining. This isn't the first time this kind of stuff happens and it clearly isn't the last time either.

Tl;dr: current Jobs are boring anyway, so might as well rework it from the ground up.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Take that attitute to the next WHM discussion Thread. In case you don't know, AST currently has despite the "utility cards" the lowest Dps in the game, having the Balance card as well as its Divination combinations as it has been suggested, would already be a good boost in damage.

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AST has the lowest personal DPS but the highest raid DPS of all healers. On all bosses and at all percentiles btw.
And what ultimately counts for compraing healers is not the pDPS but rDPS. Don't just look at flat ingame potencies or ACT overlay numbesrs.

Hmn... The identity crisis of Astrologian seems to revolve around the old versus the new, with the problem at the center of that revolving, being that Astrologian has three different themes... like with those of us, myself included, in the Dark Knight community, or even as with the Bard community...

The Astrologian community will have to come to a identity consensus. / Is Astrologian: a Astrologian, a Cartomancer, or a Chronomancer?
what matters the most to Astrologian identity? chronomancy, time magic, Cartomancy, card magic and divination through cards, or Astrology-based/themed magic, and divination through the stars?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Cards are mostly fine though.

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Cards are not "fine". We have 8 different cards with six (three each) that do the same damn thing. You could literally change Divination to a 1 button skill on a 120s cool down, remove the seals, keep say Balance and Ewer with Lord/Lady of Crowns and it would literally feel no different than the current state.

And while you are right to say that moving from the cards to instead distance AST from WHM in its healing deparment would be a better idea, the fact remains that what makes AST AST is the cards. Yes we had time magic (when I wasn't even playing the game). Yes I personally enjoy the idea of time based healing (Horoscope/Earthly Star). But what drew me and many other ASTs to the class was the cards. They have to be addressed. Either they should be outright removed, or changed from its current system.

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

Hmn... The identity crisis of Astrologian seems to revolve around the old versus the new, with the problem at the center of that revolving, being that Astrologian has three different themes... like with those of us, myself included, in the Dark Knight community, or even as with the Bard community...

The Astrologian community will have to come to a identity consensus. / Is Astrologian: a Astrologian, a Cartomancer, or a Chronomancer?
what matters the most to Astrologian identity? chronomancy, time magic, Cartomancy, card magic and divination through cards, or Astrology-based/themed magic, and divination through the stars?

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AST is nothing more than a fortune teller, and it would be great if it would actually feel like one with the cards as its main focus instead of being a healer who cant decide between going SCH or WHM.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

And while you are right to say that moving from the cards to instead distance AST from WHM in its healing deparment would be a better idea, the fact remains that what makes AST AST is the cards. Yes we had time magic (when I wasn't even playing the game). Yes I personally enjoy the idea of time based healing (Horoscope/Earthly Star). But what drew me and many other ASTs to the class was the cards. They have to be addressed. Either they should be outright removed, or changed from its current system.

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Changed to what though? All I've heard is "dps cards are boring" and "utility cards are fun" and no one touches on the fact they're also useless in the current game design. They don't even care. It's similar to how healbots don't care that spamming overheals is actually useless and they're denying their party about 5-8k rdps if they'd just spammed damage instead, because they feel useful and that's fun to them. I don't feel like designing a class to have useless abilities but "feel" useful is a good idea. There are other areas to look for adding fun.

Cards could use some tweaks, but you have ranged, melee and 3 flavors of seals that become a minigame to match 3 different colours on the correct role. The idea that every card does the exact same thing is flawed, although the basic cards are quite similar.

I'm sure there are some ideas you could do to spice it slightly. For example, occasionally drawing an empowered range or melee card that gives double/triple benefit to healers or tanks, or changing Lord/Lady into a card that causes the target to deal X potency damage with weaponskills or casts, with a bloodbath or small mana drain effect, so you could pass it to a tank/healer sometimes. Even then it's hard to balance it to being useful. Perhaps you could also only give a seal if you apply a card to the correct role, align sleeve draw with Divi but make Divi far worse without 3 seals so playing the seal minigame right becomes more important.
But mitigation, movement speed, reduced cast/recast, crit/DH/Det divides are all generally bad ideas.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

All I've heard is "dps cards are boring" and "utility cards are fun" and no one touches on the fact they're also useless in the current game design.

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Please understand that optimal and useful are different concepts, just as sub/non-optimal and useless are also very different.
Utility cards would not be optimal for DPS gains, but would still be useful.
The fun part is subjective.
Though, with that in mind, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you would want to mince words over whether or not we should view the current cards as being the same, considering that the differences between the cards boils down to 1/2 of them having a 1 word difference in their description (the optimal target). The Seals, meanwhile, are an underdeveloped, tacked-on token mechanic that's more trouble than it's worth, especially since it brings back that which had already been mitigated very well with the prior cards: fishing.


But otherwise, I think there's a lot we could do with the concept of fortune telling rather than what we currently have or previously had. For example, often times, when getting ones fortune told, the reading is made with something specific in mind (prospects of love, the future, the immediate fate of a specific person, etc.).

If I could ask for anything, then I propose we change the "Draw" command into "Astrology" and choose to do an astrological reading for 1 of 3 paths: Life (target allies only), Death (target Enemies only), and Fortune (target Allies or Enemies). Keeping the job's storyline as it is, we would end up revealing a celestial body through our reading; depending on the celestial body we reveal, the exact effect(s) changes.
Life corresponds to healing, Death corresponds to attacking, and Fortune corresponds to buffs/debuffs.
This way, we have access to a variety of effects for a purpose that we specify.

Some (not-necessarily-balanced, off the top of my head) examples of readings could be:

We use Astrology, and choose to read for Life, targeting an ally: our reading reveals The Spire. As a result, our target gets a 100 potency heal, and also gains a 50 potency regeneration effect every 3 seconds, for a period of 30 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Bole, then our target would receive Althyk's Gaze, a 10 second buff which records how much damage the target receives during the duration of the buff. Once the timer expires, the buff consumes itself and activates Nophica's Embrace, healing for an amount of the total damage received (say, 50%).

or

We choose to read for Death, targeting an enemy: our reading reveals The Spear. The target then takes 100 potency of (I'd prefer Ice-aspected, but elements in this game are "whatever" now) damage and covers them with ice. The next attack done to the target triggers the ice to shatter, dealing a 10 potency DoT to enemies within a certain radius, including the target, for 15 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Balance, the target would take 3 instances of 100 potency (fire-aspected) damage, applied each time the AST uses an offensive spell or ability, but not necessarily having to target the enemy.

or

We choose to read for Fortune, targeting either an Ally or an Enemy: we target our ally, and our reading reveals The Ewer. The Ally and allies near them gain faster passive HP and MP regeneration, and casting time reduced by 1.5 seconds for 15 seconds.
Alternatively, we target an enemy, and our reading reveals The Arrow. The enemy's auto-attack speed and accuracy are reduced by 25%.

Names and lore notwithstanding (assuming I remembered things correctly), that's what I would like.

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Perhaps you could also only give a seal if you apply a card to the correct role, align sleeve draw with Divi but make Divi far worse without 3 seals so playing the seal minigame right becomes more important.

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I also wanted to touch on this bit here.
1) This would make the skill floor rise, but the skill ceiling would stay the same. Put another way, it would bring about player suffering (especially new players) rather than consistently provide "more fun."
2) They used to have Divination provide worse buffs depending on seals obtained, but they changed those numbers to be closer together (likely to try and help bring back the players they lost when they scared them away at the beginning of the expansion, but also because the differences probably threw off the devs intended numbers for their boss fights).
3) I have seen complaints from players where they've been bitched at for not throwing cards on a specific party member, either because they did not realize that the AST never drew the right card or because they believed that the AST should always be throwing cards on that player. While that can be harassment (especially if they continued to attack the AST, assuming an explanation was provided) and should be reported, we should also be trying to avoid putting players into situations where they would be harassed.
4) Imagine trying to get perfect seals and drawing the same seal 3-5 times in a row. Or worse, imagine trying to get any seal, and drawing a card for a DPS type that was not present 3-5 times in a row. Coupled with the point above, we're leading players into situations that are aggravating.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

But otherwise, I think there's a lot we could do with the concept of fortune telling rather than what we currently have or previously had. For example, often times, when getting ones fortune told, the reading is made with something specific in mind (prospects of love, the future, the immediate fate of a specific person, etc.).

If I could ask for anything, then I propose we change the "Draw" command into "Astrology" and choose to do an astrological reading for 1 of 3 paths: Life (target allies only), Death (target Enemies only), and Fortune (target Allies or Enemies). Keeping the job's storyline as it is, we would end up revealing a celestial body through our reading; depending on the celestial body we reveal, the exact effect(s) changes.
Life corresponds to healing, Death corresponds to attacking, and Fortune corresponds to buffs/debuffs.
This way, we have access to a variety of effects for a purpose that we specify.

Some (not-necessarily-balanced, off the top of my head) examples of readings could be:

We use Astrology, and choose to read for Life, targeting an ally: our reading reveals The Spire. As a result, our target gets a 100 potency heal, and also gains a 50 potency regeneration effect every 3 seconds, for a period of 30 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Bole, then our target would receive Althyk's Gaze, a 10 second buff which records how much damage the target receives during the duration of the buff. Once the timer expires, the buff consumes itself and activates Nophica's Embrace, healing for an amount of the total damage received (say, 50%).

or

We choose to read for Death, targeting an enemy: our reading reveals The Spear. The target then takes 100 potency of (I'd prefer Ice-aspected, but elements in this game are "whatever" now) damage and covers them with ice. The next attack done to the target triggers the ice to shatter, dealing a 10 potency DoT to enemies within a certain radius, including the target, for 15 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Balance, the target would take 3 instances of 100 potency (fire-aspected) damage, applied each time the AST uses an offensive spell or ability, but not necessarily having to target the enemy.

or

We choose to read for Fortune, targeting either an Ally or an Enemy: we target our ally, and our reading reveals The Ewer. The Ally and allies near them gain faster passive HP and MP regeneration, casting time reduced by 1.5 seconds, and for 15 seconds, .
Alternatively, we target an enemy, and our reading reveals The Arrow. The enemy's auto-attack speed and accuracy are reduced by 25%.

Names and lore notwithstanding (assuming I remembered things correctly), that's what I would like.

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To be honest... I love this idea. I am all for it... 0.0
I had a similar? idea, when I created a Subclass that has the sole identity of Cartomancy, and I think that pushing Astrologian down this Cartomancy path could be a lot of fun...

The only issue is that Astrologian's lore and story identity paint the Subclass to be a lot more on the Astrology/Astronomy side, than the Cartomancy side, as Astrologian's divine and foretell the future through examining the stars, a lot more than reading their cards... Astrologian cards, the deck of 60, also literally does not exist in-game, and only exists in lore... I would love for Astrologian to be a Cartomancer, but its lore, story, and how the devs designed it, seems far more Astrologian, than Cartomancer...