Weird/random idea for AST to make one ability actually...have a point:

Undraw: Increases damage done by the caster by 25% for 30 seconds.

I'm sure this would end up being some kind of newb trap, but it could be useful for AST in things like Deep Dungeons and solo instances...and it's not like people are using the button for anything right now! :D

Not sure how much it would need to be, but the idea would be where AST could, by Undrawing all cards, make itself roughly damage equal to WHM or SGE, while still being a damage loss vs using the cards on DPS party members.

Anyway, it was just a REALLY random idea I had while reading other people's comments about stuff on Reddit and the FFXIV Job Guide page. I'm sure it would be a terrible idea for all kinds of reasons, but...I dunno. /shrug

I... just... how does this make sense thematically / aesthetically / lore-wise?

It's the same question that comes to mind whenever I see the suggestion that SCH's Dissipation shouldn't actually dismiss the fairy: the entire point is that you're dissipating your fairy's aether so that you can do... something else with it.

'Undraw' the card by throwing it, dealing 50 potency to all enemies in a straight line. Damage scales off of your STR stat.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Undraw: Increases damage done by the caster by 25% for 30 seconds.

I'm sure this would end up being some kind of newb trap, but it could be useful for AST in things like Deep Dungeons and solo instances...and it's not like people are using the button for anything right now! :D

Not sure how much it would need to be, but the idea would be where AST could, by Undrawing all cards, make itself roughly damage equal to WHM or SGE, while still being a damage loss vs using the cards on DPS party members.

Anyway, it was just a REALLY random idea I had while reading other people's comments about stuff on Reddit and the FFXIV Job Guide page. I'm sure it would be a terrible idea for all kinds of reasons, but...I dunno. /shrug

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The end result is decent but personally given AST's button bloat issues, I think it could be done more elegantly whilst also allowing Undraw to go the way of the dodo in the process.

It could be something as simple as adding a trait that enhances cards when played on yourself or perhaps something more interesting as allowing the AST to play a card on something like Earthy Star to boost it's damage.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

The end result is decent but personally given AST's button bloat issues, I think it could be done more elegantly whilst also allowing Undraw to go the way of the dodo in the process.

It could be something as simple as adding a trait that enhances cards when played on yourself or perhaps something more interesting as allowing the AST to play a card on something like Earthy Star to boost it's damage.

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Fair enough. I made that proposal before and I think people didn't like it, lol

This was more a REALLY random thought and I was curious how people would think of it.

Using Undraw means "you don't get the benefit of the card being played, so no Astrodyne either, and you don't buff anyone else", which seems a sufficient punishment to boost AST to doing WHM personal damage, doesn't it? Basically it fixes the balance issue of the foregone card use (why AST does less damage with WHM) by sort of being a shoe-horned "stance" to remove AST's buffing (effectively) while boosting its damage to equal that of its buff-less peer.

That was the thought, anyway.

As I've said before, I have no idea what to do with AST, but from time to time I have thoughts like this and just wonder how they would work with other people's thinking/analysis to help consider the implications, usability, and fun-factor (if any).

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Originally Posted by vetch

'Undraw' the card by throwing it, dealing 50 potency to all enemies in a straight line. Damage scales off of your STR stat.

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Ah! The Gambit school of cards. I could get behind that. :cool:

I'd rather Undraw remain utterly useless so that I don't need to bind it at all and can save the hotbar space.

My actual idea is to change Undraw to 'Shuffle', an out-of-combat non-spell ability with a cast time that removes all active card buffs but refreshes the Astro's card charges, similar to NIN's Hide skill resetting its mudras. It lets you deploy cards more freely in dungeons and also fixes the Astro's enormous 20-second optimal pre-pull.

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Originally Posted by vetch

'Undraw' the card by throwing it, dealing 50 potency to all enemies in a straight line. Damage scales off of your STR stat.

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I see you started taking lessons from Kaiba. Who needs a weapon when you can use your cards to disable the enemy?

Replace it with Royal Road, another ability that would never get used but would still be less useless.

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Originally Posted by vetch

'Undraw' the card by throwing it, dealing 50 potency to all enemies in a straight line. Damage scales off of your STR stat.

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And then let's reintroduce Slashing Resistance Down, so it can buff the cuts of your card-based attacks.

There is no way they would ever give anything a buff potency as high as 25%, you'll get 6% at most.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

There is no way they would ever give anything a buff potency as high as 25%, you'll get 6% at most.

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What is the % damage gap between AST and WHM? Personal damage, not counting AST's buffs.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

What is the % damage gap between AST and WHM? Personal damage, not counting AST's buffs.

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Probably close to 20%, but you're playing with fire re: accidentally making 'use card on self' be the bigger damage gain. 's not a terrible idea in theory, but... I'd rather just axe the skill (undraw) to make room for interesting things, and then have the cards reworked to benefit AST in some way too with their effects, and I don't mean just flat damage

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Probably close to 20%, but you're playing with fire re: accidentally making 'use card on self' be the bigger damage gain. 's not a terrible idea in theory, but... I'd rather just axe the skill (undraw) to make room for interesting things, and then have the cards reworked to benefit AST in some way too with their effects, and I don't mean just flat damage

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Fair enough I suppose. I guess at the end of the day, it's whether we're designing classes for noobs or not (typical threads here suggest NOT), so something like a Trait when you get Draw/Play that says "Using a Major Arcanum/Card on yourself increases damage dealt by 18%". Still would be a bit less than WHM, but would put things a lot closer for AST's soloing content.

I think 25% is more proper over time (since you can't keep yourself buffed 100% of the time, after all, since Cards don't last that long), but it could also hassle burst windows, so...

It doesn't have to be Undraw, btw. I was just thinking of making that ability do...well...something. But if everyone's cool with AST doing 20% less damage than the other healers when doing solo instances and stuff now (I THOUGHT everyone was opposed to that, but maybe I just misread all those threads about the topic...), then no need to change it. : )

There's a difference between "I'm not sure if this specific solution would solve the problem in a way that wouldn't have unwanted side-effects on other content" and "I don't think this problem should be solved at all".

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

There's a difference between "I'm not sure if this specific solution would solve the problem in a way that wouldn't have unwanted side-effects on other content" and "I don't think this problem should be solved at all".

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Well, people specifically saying that AST shouldn't do that much more damage.

Outside of a buff to potency, the only other option is...just more base potency. But that would add to its already high party-DPS contribution via buffs, making it OP then. So any solution has to walk that balance. It's why I was thinking something like one of these to options would work, since they preclude the AST from buffing other people at the same time (well, Divination, but the buff being less for AST than the gap to WHM should make that shake out relatively evenly in the end...)

They could then increase the damage of the other healers as well, to maintain the gaps AND make AST able to do the content...but then you run into the problem of every piece of content in the game needing rebalancing and healers doing even more damage requiring Enrages to be further adjusted up in the future and on and on and on.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Fair enough I suppose. I guess at the end of the day, it's whether we're designing classes for noobs or not (typical threads here suggest NOT), so something like a Trait when you get Draw/Play that says "Using a Major Arcanum/Card on yourself increases damage dealt by 18%". Still would be a bit less than WHM, but would put things a lot closer for AST's soloing content.

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They could also thoretically do something along the lines of RPR's Arcane Circle, granting a secondary weaker group-wide buff and then a self buff that allows them to pick between a highly powerful burst attack or a strengthening buff on all your allies. This powerful burst attack would supplement the lack of damage in solo content but keep the AST identity of party-buffing in party content. If they really wanted to differentiate but also allow both skills to be used in party content, then the cooldown of the skill would affect when AST wants to use a burst attack over a group-wide strengthening buff (30s/90s would work better for burst attack and align with solo play to maximize card buffs on self, 60s/120s would align with 2 minute burst window because group burst damage would be way higher than self burst).

A mix and rework of Divination and Astrodyne can work to fit in that kind of playstyle as well, as Astrodyne is already mostly useless in the face of AST's already overbearing mana regen and the damage boost in the worst DPS job is negligible at best.

Gameplay-wise, Undraw's niche original purpose was completely lost when Minor Arcana was introduced, and any niche point to Undraw (the only thing I can see is to attempt to preserve your seal structure if you can't or don't want to use Minor Arcana and want to hit a button instead of terminating the held-card effect) is currently negligible. With that in mind, I don't think Renathras' idea is bad, personally. It would give Undraw a reason to exist nowadays, and we could say, thematically, it fits because the AST has chosen to toss that thread of fate aside and chosen to take destiny in their own hopefully-more-capable hands.

However, if it were me, I'd have Undraw create a random effect on the battlefield, as the AST has chosen to leave things in the chaotic hands of Fate, rather than try to make a more controlled (and subdued) tug on the tapestry of Fate directly.
Not-necessarily-balanced-and-off-the-top-of-my-head example effects could include: 20 Potency DoT effect on all creatures (including allies) in a 30-yalm radius [can be removed with Esuna] for 2 minutes, 125 potency lightning strike on all enemies, a sudden vacuum pulls all enemies into a position centered on the AST's original position 3 seconds after using Undraw, 100 mp regeneration effect on all party members for 30 seconds, Main Stat + 10% for all creatures (including enemies) in an AoE around the user, Main Stat - 10% for all creatures (including enemies) in an AoE around the user, and a chance to create a 30y field of falling stars for 1 minute that creates tiny AoE circles that deal 10 potency damage at a rate of 1 circle per second in a random spot within the field effect.

Or something like that, with perhaps many more random effects.
But it'll likely never happen in any capacity, and I really just expect that the best they'll do for Undraw is to have it reduce the cooldown of draw by 40 seconds, one day, so that the player can make sure they're ready for the 2 minute meta burst windows.

Can they just return the card effects back to being diversified and not just dmg

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Undraw: Increases damage done by the caster by 25% for 30 seconds.

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You realize they actually fixed Undraw in SB right? Minor Arcana was a 1 sec recast that you can use to proc a lady/lord. It was active every time you used Draw. It was was a way of "discarding" a card you didn't want, but still got a positive effect. It was literally everything Undraw needed to be and there was no reason to use Undraw, yet Minor Arcana got removed and Undraw stayed. It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

However, if it were me, I'd have Undraw create a random effect on the battlefield, as the AST has chosen to leave things in the chaotic hands of Fate,

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That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself. Logs would have to exclude the effect for parse purposes because otherwise the top parses will be 'the ASTs who ran enough runs to get a god run where they Undraw Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc every time'. Could you imagine if they roll a non-present raidbuff, eg if their comp is NIN DRG BRD RDM, and they rolled Technical Step? Complaints about 'how badly RNG screws parsing' would be out of control

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Originally Posted by Marxam

It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

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It's been a long long time, but wasn't Minor Arcana in SB that 'you delete the Major Arcana, to get the Minor Arcana'? So that if you drew, say, Spire, you could convert it and have a 50% chance that it turns from 'useless' to 'well it's a little bit of damage I guess'. In SHB it was truly 'fixed', as it was better to use MA over playing the card regular, as long as you had already set up your 3 seals. Then for EW they went back to the RNG style of SB, but forgot to include the system hook that incentivized you to use the skill (deleting 'bad' cards to manipulate them into a more useful effect), since every card is now 'useful' due to being the same damage boost, and because MA is just a standalone 60s CD. It's like the worst of all worlds in design. I'd honestly find it so much more interesting if Lady was 400 heal, and Lord was anywhere from 100-200 shield, because then neither are a 'damage gain' over each other directly. But AST is 'pure healer' so it's not allowed shields, that's not part of it's new 'identity'. Don't look at Neutral Sect. Or Intersection.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself. Logs would have to exclude the effect for parse purposes because otherwise the top parses will be 'the ASTs who ran enough runs to get a god run where they Undraw Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc every time'. Could you imagine if they roll a non-present raidbuff, eg if their comp is NIN DRG BRD RDM, and they rolled Technical Step? Complaints about 'how badly RNG screws parsing' would be out of control

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Well, I did say "if it were me." I tend to prefer my RNG effects to have downsides so that real boons can be mixed in (risks for rewards, in my opinion, is the only way for it to be fair), but, if we must dampen the risks significantly, then all negative effects could be removed via Esuna or its equivalent.
I also prefer the effects to be reminiscent at best of existing actions, because otherwise it would just feel like AST is stealing skills from other jobs and, to be honest, many of the skills aren't all that interesting to begin with (on top of other players then potentially complaining that we're stealing their kits, or messing with their rotations if we somehow use something that would put some kind of 2minute meta debuff on the enemy ahead of the 2minute meta timeframe).
If we're worried about serious players in a serious instance with a serious difficulty range and serious enrage timer that comes down to the very second of the allowable timeframe, then those players should probably focus on using the 2 tones of balance and their 3 rebrands, due to consistency (because, as we all know, serious players who must succeed at all costs leave no room for fun in their always-perfect-and-perfectly-consistent rotations, because their fun comes from rigid success and nothing but).

But my idea is, indeed, a very unsafe way to go about things, and, honestly, this game is like 96% not made for players like me. Therefore, it's probably better to go the safer route and just make undraw a "metronome" of random healing abilities, so that we can have the extra healing that new healers can't get enough of and experienced healers don't need but will try to fit into their rotation somewhere, maybe.

If I am remembering right Minor Arcana, worked well with the old set up of StB, where we still had royal road as well. So you could decide to use the drawn card for Royal road to enhance your next draw or if you already had an enhancement you wanted you could Minor Arcana it for either the heal or the damage. I also remember being able to hold a card to be used later so you could minor arcana if you had a card stored you wanted to use but didn't have a desirable card for Royal Road. It really is a system I enjoyed and want back since it had a lot of different effects and uses instead of giving just a damage boost that you would need a parser to even know was happening.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

You realize they actually fixed Undraw in SB right? Minor Arcana was a 1 sec recast that you can use to proc a lady/lord. It was active every time you used Draw. It was was a way of "discarding" a card you didn't want, but still got a positive effect. It was literally everything Undraw needed to be and there was no reason to use Undraw, yet Minor Arcana got removed and Undraw stayed. It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

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I first started seriously playing AST in ShB, so yeah, I remember that version. I genuinely don't know why they got rid of it and not Undraw, though. I can only think of Undraw as being useful for managing seals for Divination, but Minor Arcana was the tool for that in ShB, as it burned the cards without applying the seals, and actually gave them a slightly more potent effect (4/8% instead of 3/6%?) to make up for the delay slightly.

I guess it made the burst window and opener even more insane, so maybe that's why they changed it, but at least it had a PURPOSE.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself.

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If this were me, I'd make it so that the skills always span the range of "definitely undesirable" to "most definitely wanted." But I'd calibrate it based on content. So, for example, in solo content, the range would be relatively limited, and heavily biased towards "desirable" skills. At the other end, in a savage or ultimate, you might see everything from "Morbol Bad Breath on the entire party" to "god-run Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc.", with lesser "bad" outcomes being a real possibility.

Leaving things in the hands of "chaotic fate" shouldn't always be a net-positive, but we don't need to make solo and normal-mode content stupidly punishing, either.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I guess it made the burst window and opener even more insane, so maybe that's why they changed it, but at least it had a PURPOSE.

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MA's 'purpose' is that it allowed you to delete a card you did not want to play (for example, you have AOE Royal Road ready for a Balance/Spear/Arrow in a pinch, but you drew Bole/Spire/Ewer). Normally you'd be able to rightclick the buff off, or use a macro to remove the status, but with the shift to Job Gauges, Playstation/controller users lost access to that. Thus, Undraw was 'invented' as a pseudo-replacement to the macros they used to use. I say pseudo, because unlike the macro, which could be used not only mid animationlock but mid-cast of a spell, Undraw is a true OGCD and so has to be weaved, so the solution is clunkier than the 'janky workaround' we used originally. Classic. Anyway, with SHB changes, MA became the 'Undraw but better', and so UNdraw's existence became questionable, but it remained for some reason. Just like Freecure, I guess the devs either forgot, or they think it has some use that we're just not skilled enough to see.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Leaving things in the hands of "chaotic fate" shouldn't always be a net-positive, but we don't need to make solo and normal-mode content stupidly punishing, either.

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Yes, I would agree, however, what we are seeing as 'net positive' is different from one another. Where you and Mint are looking at self-stat-downs and the like as the 'negative outcome', I'd see a lot of potential results from the 'use a random Job Skill' RNG machine as a 'negative outcome', not because it's effect is negative in itself, but because it's worse compared to just playing the card normally on yourself. Like, for example, if your only goal in that moment is 'do as much damage as possible', you have the choice of using the card on yourself for 6% more damage for 15 seconds, or you can risk it with the RNG machine. So while 6% on self would add up to, let's call it 5000 damage for ease of maths, not everything from the Undraw would result in 5000 damage. In my gear (bis except for weapon which is 645), I'd need a move with a potency of at least 130 to deal equal damage to what I'd get from just playing the card, and that doesn't factor in the Astrodyne Seal. So if I got, say, Fan Dance 2, I've lost damage because it's 100p. Bloodletter from BRD, 100p. Quite a few AOE combo starters are 100. A lot of skills don't even do damage at all, such as it randomly giving you pretty much any role action, or tank CD, or self-mit like Arcane Crest. Plus, I imagine it'd do the move as if you've executed it yourself as that job, ie, if it rolls Fan Dance 2 (self centered AOE) and you're in Narnia away from the enemy, you'd just use it out of range and miss, and lose the potency anyway, meaning that it's even more likely you lose damage

And lastly, there's still some truly negative effects (potentially). Gyoten/Yaten, Hell's Egress/the other one, Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, En Avant, Thunderclap, Corps and Displacement would all be on the table as 'oops you got a bad roll, time to randomly flip off the edge/into the deathwall'. Nothing says 'chaotic fate' quite like suddenly being repositioned, unexpected Rescues in DF content show that pretty clearly

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

And lastly, there's still some truly negative effects (potentially). Gyoten/Yaten, Hell's Egress/the other one, Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, En Avant, Thunderclap, Corps and Displacement would all be on the table as 'oops you got a bad roll, time to randomly flip off the edge/into the deathwall'. Nothing says 'chaotic fate' quite like suddenly being repositioned, unexpected Rescues in DF content show that pretty clearly

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Well, so that's where I would personally try to draw the line: any effect that would cause any player to be forced to move isn't just a truly negative effect, it actively stops playtime and potentially ruins the encounter (although I wouldn't avoid this so much in most other games, but in XIV, the extremely choreographed fights mean that unexpected forced movement is absolutely the worst thing you can do to someone). I think it would be better to avoid creating a scenario where the risks begin to severely outweigh all of the potential positive effects, because then Undraw would remain excluded from serious gameplay instead of at least considered for mixing up the now near-non-existent rotation.
Assuming the intent is to make Undraw a contender, but still give it random effects, I think applying status effects onto the party is about where we should cut that off, and even then, to avoid having players whine about ASTs being unplayable due to 1 skill being unpredictably good or bad, being able to Esuna all the negative effects off of players should be the answer to those situations where things go sour (and it'll give us a reason to have the ability on our bar at all times again, and we'll still feel the impact due to needing to spend GCDs removing the effects). If the issue then becomes "but the enrage timer!" because the healer(s) had to spend up to 8 GCDs on removing the effects, then that's probably more a skill issue and potentially a tuning issue for the encounter, and the alternative is to simply use the card rather than undraw if they must have reliability above all.