I love Astrologian - Minor Arcana Rework Suggestion

Hello everyone,

I currently enjoy Dawntrail's version of Astrologian, so much so, it's now my main healer. I only have one suggestion for it, and I'm curious about your thoughts on it.

It's for Minor Arcana - rather than give me Lord or Lady, I would prefer that Minor Arcana be reworked to convert the next card you use into a team-wide/party card. For example, rather than the balance just going on one person, through this reworked Minor Arcana, it'd be applied to everyone.

I'm suggesting this for two reasons: 1) it's fun to see my cards apply to everyone in pvp, and 2) it feels better as a controller player.

As of now, I have to create macros to comfortably weave my cards on controller. Through this rework of Minor Arcana, I could just convert my cards into team-wide/party cards without having to go through the hassle of using the directional pad to select a player (which I do sometimes).

As for lord and lady, using lord isn't that impactful or fun to use. While lady certainly has its use, Astrologian has enough instant heals to comfortably do without it.

What are your thoughts on this suggested rework?

This would not work, as you might as well remove it then and just make the +damage cards AoE. That's the actual outcome of this change.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

This would not work, as you might as well remove it then and just make the +damage cards AoE. That's the actual outcome of this change.

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What if giving the cards single target offered a player an extra 1-2 percent dps?

Even without it, I wouldn't be against the damage cards being aoe, and the utility cards being single or team-wide.

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Originally Posted by Mae_Proet

What if giving the cards single target offered a player an extra 1-2 percent dps?

Even without it, I wouldn't be against the damage cards being aoe, and the utility cards being single or team-wide.

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The single target cards would have to be about 15-20% stronger used on the correct DPS at the correct time in their rotation to overcome how much better an AOE card would be

At that point AST is doing 40% more damage than the other healers

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The single target cards would have to be about 15-20% stronger used on the correct DPS at the correct time in their rotation to overcome how much better an AOE card would be

At that point AST is doing 40% more damage than the other healers

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So if Astro's damage cards just became aoe cards, it'd end up being overpowered in the dps department? Would keeping the damage buffs at a minimum and/or significantly reduce them help in balancing out an aoe damage card idea?

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Originally Posted by Mae_Proet

So if Astro's damage cards just became aoe cards, it'd end up being overpowered in the dps department? Would keeping the damage buffs at a minimum and/or significantly reduce them help in balancing out an aoe damage card idea?

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The way the current design of AST is set up is that both damage cards go under the two minute burst window when you press divination, if you made the cards AOE they would be stacking with divination and the other party buffs

3 AOE buffs at the same time would be enormous for their rDPS, you’d either need to make each worth like 1% or nerf their personal DPS massively

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The way the current design of AST is set up is that both damage cards go under the two minute burst window when you press divination, if you made the cards AOE they would be stacking with divination and the other party buffs

3 AOE buffs at the same time would be enormous for their rDPS, you’d either need to make each worth like 1% or nerf their personal DPS massively

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So would making each worth 1 percent work? Personally, I'd be fine with that. I'm mostly concerned with how Astro feels on controller, working from my experience in pve and pvp. I'd be fine with a bunch of 1 percent buffs to accommodate aoe cards. It'd make the Astro experience a lot smoother for me.

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Originally Posted by Mae_Proet

So would making each worth 1 percent work? Personally, I'd be fine with that.

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You might be, but there's a ramnifications of such a change.

Among others, there's the thing that this would make Astro significantly weaker outside of raids, as there are a) less people to affect and b) things don't align as well in dungeons.

From a controller perspective and not wanting to select targets for cards, maybe a better thing would be what someone else suggested in another thread: Making cards able to be attacks. What we could then do is that if you use them as attacks, they'll automatically select a "good" target nearby (the DPS cards the closest damage dealer, the tank cards the closest tank, the support cards the close person with the least health). That way, we can select whether to pick targets or do some minor extra damage but in return lose the ability to optimize the utility.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

You might be, but there's a ramnifications of such a change.

Among others, there's the thing that this would make Astro significantly weaker outside of raids, as there are a) less people to affect and b) things don't align as well in dungeons.

From a controller perspective and not wanting to select targets for cards, maybe a better thing would be what someone else suggested in another thread: Making cards able to be attacks. What we could then do is that if you use them as attacks, they'll automatically select a "good" target nearby (the DPS cards the closest damage dealer, the tank cards the closest tank, the support cards the close person with the least health). That way, we can select whether to pick targets or do some minor extra damage but in return lose the ability to optimize the utility.

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I like that. I'd be fine with these changes as it'd allow me to select a person sometimes, when I'm able to. Aside from that, I'm still a fan of Minor Arcana, at least for utility cards, being able to convert them into party/team-wide buffs.

The cards should be on the GCD, personally i think this would be an engaging way to move one of the 4 healers away from single button spam by requiring them to engage with their core mechanic. I think OGCDs on healers in general have gotten out of hand which leads to the monotonous spamming of a single button.


Every card should have random effects similar to their Stormblood version
Royal Roading these 3 gives you Enhanced effect which doubles the effect of a card however makes it so it only applies to 1 person
Balance = 5% Damage
Spear = 5% Crit
Arrow = 5% Dhit
These 3 cards give you the spread effect
Ewer = MP
Bole = Damage Reduction
Spire = Regen
Divination should be removed and instead you get sleeve draw every 2mins that allows you to prep the cards.

Royal Road returns as an GCD that allows you to strengthen, or spread a card and offers a minor heal effect equivalent to the effect lady of crowns

Upon executing sleeve draw (OGCD), Lord of crowns is drawn which is the same potency as the balance and is always played as a spread, lady of crowns(OGCD) is also able to be used and will replace sleeve draw until used which will replace oracle as a powerful ogcd attack for you to use
for balance purposes. You can only benefit from 1 card effect at a time so no stacking balance with lord, or crit with lord. the goal is to prep the 2 min window with a spread balance then use sleeve draw to draw lord and lady. Lady will be used like oracle is now for potency and lord is used as a way to effectively extend the duration of AST balance from 15 secs to 30 secs effectively giving the party a "second potion"


Cards are now on a 30 sec cool down

This system should fix alot of the issues stormblood AST had, Sleeve draw is a good way to give you a controlled spread balance every 2 mins including the start of the fight but also allows the ast to have a powerful card to put in 2 mins should they die. meanwhile, AST regular card goal is to have a spread balance every single minute. thats the goal of having cards reduced to 30.

Balance fishing will still be a thing but i think thats fine, the fact that the job at least has 2 other supplementary good cards makes it so the rng isn't so lopsided but is also something sweaty players can toy with.

The cards WILL be on the gcd though, light speed will be nerfed and instead, the cards manipulation will act as a mobility too. Draw will not have any charges, however redraw will have 3 charges and will also be on the gcd meaning using your redraw and your royal road function will be your rigidity free movement options meanwhile draw and play will be on tight timers but they can also still be used for mobility if it's convenient, however it won't be worth delaying the draw cd or the playing of the card.

DT ast is lazy I'll still stand by this after playing some astro.
Minor arcana should serve as your "RNG damage buff cards" and normal draw as your "RNG Utility buff cards".

add in a cooldown on 90s that will turn your draw effect into a AOE effect (doesn't effect damage buttons)

I think the card system would be really fun and balanced with rng then.

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Originally Posted by Wayfinder3

The cards should be on the GCD, personally i think this would be an engaging way to move one of the 4 healers away from single button spam by requiring them to engage with their core mechanic. I think OGCDs on healers in general have gotten out of hand which leads to the monotonous spamming of a single button.


Every card should have random effects similar to their Stormblood version
Royal Roading these 3 gives you Enhanced effect which doubles the effect of a card however makes it so it only applies to 1 person
Balance = 5% Damage
Spear = 5% Crit
Arrow = 5% Dhit
These 3 cards give you the spread effect
Ewer = MP
Bole = Damage Reduction
Spire = Regen
Divination should be removed and instead you get sleeve draw every 2mins that allows you to prep the cards.

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I like the idea of GCD cards. I think for a simpler implementation something like I said above where they can be attacks that then auto-pick their buff-target could be better - as it also gives more offensive abilities - but yeah, stronger cards that need a GCD also work.

I don't get the second part though. You mean every 2 minutes you draw all 6 cards? Also if it's not that, but the default is groupwide, that'd be quite strong as it would mean you get to apply something like +5% damage and +5% crit every buff window. Sure, you personally lose 2 GCDs for it, but that's nothing. Royal Road as listed would be pretty useless. For solo play I suppose, but not worth a hotbar spot on an already crowded hotbar this way. If you however mean the actual drawn card is radom, that's the opposite effect and it'd just remove ASTs from all Savage/Ultimate. A 50% chance not to contribute to the burst window would be silly. Also, unless you remove the mana regen from draw, Ewer would have 0 purpose (all casters and healers are MP positive), and just be a dud-draw.

And if you remove Divination on top of messing with the damage cards, you make bringing an Astro even less appealing. The overall idea to make the cards much stronger but GCD sounds cool OTOH, just should be done with the current card system, not the old broken one.