the card shuffle

[zuzu-bq]

Even those things being annoying sometimes, those are my toughts as a competitive TCG player while playing AST:

Considering you're already inside the combat. If you got a card, it will always make a difference to use it, sometimes it'll be stronger or weaker depending on the card and situation. If you use Shuffle, be ready to recieve any card, even those you don't want and be ready to adapt and use it right after drawing a it. Try to combine your 3 RNG-controller skills togheter. If you have a Royal Road buff and have drawn a card you wouldn't like to use the royal road buff you have a lot of options: you can shuffle like most do, you can use the spread saved card to get your royal road buff in it then use the drawn card, you can also save the drawn card and wait the next one, while still having the shuffle option to mix with it.

Still, the mechanic is rng-based but giving not as good cards will not make people complain and giving slightly weak buffs can make your party to be happy. You're the responsible of using the rng at your favor to optimize your buffs, complaining about the randomness will not help.

[Lyrinn]

If you got a card, it will always make a difference to use it, sometimes it'll be stronger or weaker dependng on the card and situation.

So much this. I see tons of ASTs try to set up that perfect Royal Road + Balance combo while burning every other card drawn in the meantime, yet these are the same people who complain about AST not offering party utility if they use cards on themselves. If you're burning cards, you're offering no one utility, including yourself. The Spread into Royal Road trick lets you use a card almost every minute (depending on which RR you want) without losing anything. Unless you strictly need a particular combo for a particular point in the fight, holding onto cards is a waste.

[416to305]

I disagree though, it won't always make a difference to use it. If the tank or whoever has popped their buffs then Spear isn't going to do really anything and if you pull Spire or something when the pull is almost dead then it probably won't make a huge difference. Like yeah each card might have some small benefit, but the problem is that no one knows when a card is up on them. Like I see all the time on Reddit etc, like "Wow the Ewer reduces MP by 20%, that means a WHM can pop out a total of 6 Holy's instead of 5!" Like for one thing, what WHM is going to blow through all 100% of their MP? Secondly, unless the AST has some kind of macro that says "MP reduction up on WHM!" they probably wouldn't have any idea it's even up on them. I don't know how many times I'd do the Balance on someone just to watch htem suddenly STOP attacking and stand there. I think the main issue is that no one knows when the cards are on them or what they do, so no one changes their play style because of it. That's just the way it is. Think of how many times a DPS actually has an AST in the group and popping a card on them. It's not like it's so often that everyone should know they have something on them. If you're in the heat of battle and tons of stuff is going on, you aren't noticing that you have a card on you. It would almost be better if it made your character light up or something more obvious like a bubble around them or something. I still enjoy using the cards, but I think the big flaw with AST is when people think of it as being beneficial because of the "extra" cast or whatever it gives another class. It's impossible to be that coordinated that you pull the Ewer, pop it on the WHM just at the exact moment that it would help them switch to CS and start doing Holy. Spire is the most useless one, you can't see anyone's TP, so a DPS could be completely out, with the tank at 80% and you use it on the tank since you have zero idea of what everyone else is at. Furthermore the class is designed to shuffle and discard cards, so when people say they see so many people holding cards or discarding waiting for the best one, then clearly that's how it was meant to be played or they wouldn't have shuffle or other abilities like that. There's nothing that specifically says you must use all cards and not to burn cards, otherwise they wouldn't have those abilities.

[Apeiron]

Sideboard Spear for yourself and make your next draw + shuffle take less time.

[Lyrinn]

snip

Just because you don't notice the effect doesn't mean it's not there. Random Bole on tank? Less damage for you to heal through --> MP saved (albeit only a small amount). Spear? If you don't think anyone is going to use a buff anytime soon, Spread it or use it on yourself. Spire? Ok, this is probably the only card I RR or burn on a regular basis.

Burning is a matter of perspective. You see Spread and Shuffle as a way of cycling through your deck to get good cards. Again, here's the problem: you're doing nothing for your party nor yourself if you burn cards while you're waiting on your perfect combo. Go play any TCG - or poker if you're more familiar with that. If you draw a bad hand or a bad card, you don't immediately discard it or fold your hand and give up. You make the best out of whatever you're dealt until you draw your good cards. You can still aim for setting up your combo while playing other cards in the meantime. Draw Ewer and don't need it? No problem, RR it. Draw Spire? Spread it. Draw another Spire? Toss your Spread on someone and RR the one you just drew and you're back to square one.

[zuzu-bq]

Go play any TCG - or poker if you're more familiar with that. If you draw a bad hand or a bad card, you don't immediately discard it or fold your hand and give up. You make the best out of whatever you're dealt until you draw your good cards. You can still aim for setting up your combo while playing other cards in the meantime

Yup, just analyze the situation and make the best use of the card and the card won't ever be useless! Thats why I feel being a card games player made me a better AST.

snip

Like I said, it will make a difference, if you'll feel it or not; if its potent or not, depends on how you use the card and how the player that recieved the buff will use it too! And if the player is not constantly checking his buffs he is just not playing correctly, I'm sorry. I remember BLM complaining about Fey Glow buffs because "makes my ice rotation to be too fast"... Please BLM, just check your buffs.

[416to305]

I'm not saying they are useless, I'm saying they are more like bonus vs something that's going to win the day or save the party. Maybe if Ewer actually refreshed MP or something. If the party is wiping and you're down to just a few people left and running out of MP, then no card you pull is going to save that day where as a WHM can increase potency by 30%, pop a Benediction, hit Regen on someone, Medica II that actually reaches the party vs just people standing near you, etc, etc, and have time to raise others.

[Krixus]

If they just copy-pasted FFXI COR-healer how JP players used to play it in colibri merit parties, Astrologian would've end up an avesome class. But nooo, instead we got a bland joke with boring buffs you can't even notice looking at parses.

Kind of like all of ffxiv, its a shitty version of ffxi lol. Other than the graphics.

[Alahra]

Yup, just analyze the situation and make the best use of the card and the card won't ever be useless! Thats why I feel being a card games player made me a better AST.

That's not really the best analogy, IMO. At least in TCGs, the explicit purpose of deckbuilding is to put together a set of cards that will be as useful as they can be in a wide variety of situations. Nobody would put a card so narrowly useful as Spire or Ewer in a Magic: the Gathering deck. They'd stack as many Balance- and Arrow-level cards as they could.

I don't fetishize an Extended Balance/Arrow and toss cards for an entire run just to get it at all, but it's still rather common to draw Spire after Spire with only caster DPS (or Ewer for only physical). Even with the proper types of DPS, the resource recovery is essentially negligible, which doesn't "feel" fun or useful. Spread and Shuffle can only do so much to combat the RNG, and there comes a point where the class would just feel more satisfying if the "lesser" cards had more generally applicable utility.

[zuzu-bq]

That's not really the best analogy, IMO.

Sometimes a bad card does good things. And my analogy with TCG was about being used to work with any card I draw and the resources I already have.