Astro in savage

[Rewind]

I know devs are reading this thread and I thought I'd post my ideas for changes to AST as someone who plays both SCH/WHM as well. I was thinking about making my own thread but there's enough out there already.

Cards

Cards typically drawn from draw (Bole, Balance, Spear, Arrow, Ewer and Spire) are "Action Cards" that AST can select to use.
Base duration is 15 seconds.

When you use a "Action Card" e.g Balance it is placed on a 1 minute cooldown
When you use a "Action Card" e.g Balance, the remaining cards are placed on a 30 second cooldown.

Draw, Spread, Royal Road, and Shuffle Function:
Draw instead, allows plays to draw for buffs (20 second cooldown)
This includes;

• Potency - Increases potency by 50%
• Duration - Increases duration by 15 seconds
• Extend - Spread action card to players within 15 yrds
• Reduce - Reduce the CD of played action card by 10 seconds
• Aura - Effect emits from player (10 yrd radius)

Royal Road instead, allows plays to gamble for improved buffs. (no cooldown)
This includes;

• Potency - Increases potency by an additional 100% (total 150% potency)
• Duration - Increases duration by an additional 30 seconds (total 45 seconds)
• Extend - No yrd restriction (covers entirity of room)
• Reduce - Reduce the CD of played action card by an additional 20 seconds (total 30 seconds)
• Aura - Effect emits from player (25 yrd radius)
• Fumble - You lose the card

Spread and Shuffle can remain relatively the same - instead you shuffle and spread buff cards, and you can't shuffle and retrieve the same card.

Utility and DPS Spells (work in progress)
If its green it's new.

- Luminferous Aether (No MP cost; Duration 15secs): Reduces Emnity Generation, Refresh potency by 80

- Lightspeed (No MP cost)

• Diurnal - Duration, 10 seconds - Reduces MP cost by 25%, spell cast time and GCD reduce by 2.3 seconds.
• Noctural - Duration, 25 seconds - Reduces MP cost by 75%, increases healing potency by additional 10%

- Essential Dignity (No MP cost - CD:40s) - Restores target's HP. Cure Potency: 400 Potency increases the lower the target's HP. (Scales linearly up to 1000 potency).

• Diurnal - 15% chance aspected benefic will cost no MP (duration: 12 seconds)
• Noctural -25% chance aspected helios will cost no MP (duration: 12 seconds)

- Synastry (No MP cost - CD:120s) -Generate an aetheric bond with target party member. Each time you cast a healing spell on a party member not under the effect of Synastry, the party member with which you have the synastry bond will also recover HP equaling 50% of the original spell.

Duration: 20s

• Diurnal - Regen with a cure potency of 40 on both targets
• Noctural -Erects a magic barrier on both target - 10% chance when barriers are struck, the striker will do 10% less damage.

- Combust (535mp - Instant) - Deals unaspected damage over time. Potency: 40 Duration: 18s

- Combust II (618mp - Cast 2.5) -Deals unaspected damage over time. Potency: 45 Duration: 30s

- Stella (No MP - Cast 2.5 - CD; 30seconds) - Spread a targets combust and combust II to nearby enemies. Restore 5% MP.

- Collective Unconscious (No MP cost - CD: 90s - 15y) - Creates a wheel of fortune around the caster. Effect granted to party members upon entry differs depending on active Sect. Can only be executed when a Sect is active.

Refresh with a potency of 60

Effect ends upon using another action or moving.

• Diurnal - Regen with a Cure Potency of 200 (duration: 12 seconds)
• Noctural -Damage taken is reduced by 10% (duration: 12 seconds)

- Celestial Oppossition (No MP cost - CD:120s) - Stuns all nearby enemies. Duration: 4s (PvP 2s) Also extends duration of beneficial effects cast on self and party members by 5 seconds.

• Diurnal - Restores own and HP of nearby party members (Potency:350)
• Noctural - Damage taken of nearby party members is reduced by 10% for 10 seconds

Healing stances - Nocturnal & Diurnal

Still thinking a bit more about this - Need to do some potency crunching. Will edit later after work .

[Brightshadow]

The cards are overpowered in the idea presented above because you remove the "random" nature from the cards and can basically keep the best buff "balance" up 50% of the time; in addition it also makes the "bad" cards useless (spear,ewer,spire) because why would you use these if you can keep "balance & arrow" up full-time. While the RNG isn't optimal its one of the main features of the job, and by doing what you are suggesting with the cards it makes the job broken. All Astrologian needs is a bit more control over the cards (For example shuffle not redrawing the same card) and when a card isn't used (Royal Road) cut the recast of the draw in half. As for healing a new emergency heal and adjustments to Collective Unconscious & Celestial Opposition should be enough.

Another thing I think needs changes is the situational cards (Ewer & Spire) to function for any party composition by merging both TP & MP recovery into ewer, and making spire a "Mantra (HP recovery increase)" effect. And Definitely Spear needs to work on abilities already on cooldown.

[Rewind]

The cards are overpowered in this idea because you remove the RNG nature of the cards and can basically keep "balance" up 50% of the time, and it also makes the "bad" cards useless (spear,ewer,spire) While the RNG isn't optimal its one of the main features of the job, and by doing what you are suggesting with the cards it makes the job broken. All Astrologian needs is a bit more control over the cards (For example shuffle not redrawing the same card) and when a card isn't used (Royal Road) cut the recast of draw in half. As for healing a new emergency heal and adjustments to CU & CO should be enough.

My idea is that AST can supplement a BRD/MCH in raid. The benefit of the cards must also be as consistent as Eos/Selene buffs. I haven't discussed healing potency yet but I actually think no changes are needed to healing potency. Just some of the utility spells and some aspects of nocturnal stance because it just seems a bit...meh.

Maybe a debuff can be placed on a player so you can't roll the same card on the same player within a specific period of time? (e.g can't spam ewer on self, or balance on DRG) etc.

In most of the fights there are portions of downtime where other cards would be useful (bole, spire, ewer) that just don't get play now regardless because we didn't draw the right card at the right time and don't have the ability to spread more than once.

AST needs control of the cards to be a viable replacement. The potency of cards can easily be reduced (e.g Balance) to rebalance the now lack of RNG.

[Muahbec]

The cards are overpowered in the idea presented above because you remove the "random" nature from the cards and can basically keep the best buff ....

Of course that would not be overpowered
Just look at this job, weak healing power, no healing cooldowns and not a huge healer presence like whm/sch thanks to our cards.
If we are going to exchange our healing power for buffs then we MUST at least be able to choose which buff to apply and WHEN to apply it.
I totally support the individual card skills idea.
AST should look more like a green mage and like a true buffer job.