Another comparation between AST and WHM

[Fallen_Owl]

Just a thought here: do you guys think it'll be broken if Royal Road buffed the current card instead of the next one? This way, we cancel some rng without changing too much. And it could help AST prepare a little bit better.

[VanEinstein]

Just a thought here: do you guys think it'll be broken if Royal Road buffed the current card instead of the next one? This way, we cancel some rng without changing too much. And it could help AST prepare a little bit better.

You mean treating it like any other cooldown, rather than burning a card to make it happen? I could go for that. As it stands, the only effect worthy of burning a card for is the extended duration. Royal Road being a cooldown that improves a card you've just drawn would be fantastic. You could actually use it to much greater effect then, and not get stuck with the wrong improved effect on the wrong card. "Oh happy day! I have just extended my bole effect to everyone in the party!"... likely said no Astrologian ever.
The same could be said of things like ewer or spire in an all melee dps or mage-dps composition respectively. Whats a bunch of mages going to do with TP, or a bunch of Melee going to do with MP? I'd rather drop the that Ewer on a single target in that case.


Of course I could see some issues with my interpretation of your statement, too. In this case I suppose RR would have to get it's effect trigger straight from the card its improving, meaning that ewer and spire could never have an extended duration, but rather only be spread to additional players, and Spear/Arrow would be subject only to the improved duration, while Balance/Bole had the 'Enhanced' effect. Frankly, I could live with that. It would present me the option in all cases to improve each card in some way on demand, and "on demand" skills is something that Astrologian is sorely in need of.

Even if Ewer/Spire were restricted to single target vs being spread to additional targets, this would be very helpful in duty finder scenarios in which you lack a Bard or Machinist, or one in which you do have said jobs, but they are unwilling to use their support skills (I see this all the time). Unfortunately it's not quite so useful with Ewer... Black Mages hate having their rotation thrown off by the MP regen. Perhaps if they switched Ewer/Spire back to the way it used to be, as duration extending? I don't know. Tough call :/
As for the rest of the cards, I could see there being moments when I'd be willing to burn my RR cd to beef up Bole (though I honestly wish it were better than 15%... perhaps 20%?), or extend the duration of a Balance card during a burn phase.

There's also of course another issue with my interpretation. Cards that have been spread would be unable to function with with RR since it wouldn't be a buff that sat waiting for a card to be played anymore. Spread cards would be more like keeping that card you know you're going to need at some point that you cant leave up to RNG.

Bah! I doubt any part of what I'm saying is useable or likely, because without going deeper into other skills and rewriting those too, I've just backed myself into a corner with new problems as I try to fix the old.

[Roxas_Andrade]

Just a thought here: do you guys think it'll be broken if Royal Road buffed the current card instead of the next one? This way, we cancel some rng without changing too much. And it could help AST prepare a little bit better.

Maybe it could work if SE swapped back the effect of Royal road, so you would make powerful bole/balance, spread arrow/spear and extended ewer/spire.
But I like the way it is now, you can have all the effects for all cards.