AST Wishlist for 5.0

[Teraluna]

Problem SE made for themselves was making AST to be WHM mk2 on introduction. Since then they’ve tried to move it away, but they’ll always have the issue now with people playing one or the other.
Anyway for AST- sort the card mechanics out to reflect real time use in raids when your attention is on a whole host of boss and environment mechanics. It still looks like an add on rng gimmick used to say I’m not a whm.

[MintnHoney]

If I could have anything, I would want an ability of falling stars that attacks and/or heals with randomly placed falling stars (essentially, creates momentary (like, 1 second) tiny aoe circles (like, maybe as small as a Lalafell's body in radius) that deal damage (/and heal) in minute amounts, for a limited time, which can be set up within a set distance of the player, and within a possibly large maximum radius to prevent too many stars from stacking upon themselves to damage (/and heal) too much in a specific area). Long cooldown, of course, but I crave something like that, and would be staring at the cooldown timer and counting the seconds.

Frankly, though, if I just get a shooting/falling star spell of sorts again (and not this burst of sparkles that they turned Malefic III into), I'd be pretty happy.

Or, maybe, the return of ability cooldown reduction, possibly in the place of Spire's current TP refresh (since TP is going away).
Or bringing the PvP versions of the Lady and Lord of Crowns into PvE, that'd be neat and make me think about going after Minor Arcana more.
Zodiac related abilities/spells? Though I've not put much thought into what sort of spells.

[Mansion]

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect.

The problem about Noct AST is not its potency, it's just that shielding in general is less powerful than regens. SCH is not the prefered healer for its shields, but because of its oGCD heals and DPS / raid contribution. For example, unless a fight requires a special shield value, you could go WHM / diurnal AST and survive just fine.
Trying to make double AST viable like you did is valuable but it's far too OP like this, even if the enemy debuffs are shorter.

I like your new Spire, but I think it kinda messes up with some rotations (I just think about BLM AStral Fire and Foul / Thundercloud timings and PLD Requiescat / Holy Spirit right now), which revolve around X number of spells cast fitting into a buff or whatever, and being out of MP forces you out of this phase. But I don't know how detrimental this would be... seems okay.
Maybe MP will be consumed differently in 5.0 for other classes so it could work anyway.

[Mhiro]

I just want all healers (not just AST) to get back the utility tools we had before the cross class ability rework. And not as a cross class skill like...bring back disable and make it AST's version of a weakening mechanic to combine with other mitigation for harsh tank busters or party busters. Idk how anyone else feels on the subject, but one of my favorite things about mitigation healing back in 2.0/3.0 was cheesing tank busters with a combination of spells/skills. That satisfied me far more than this ABC damage dealing side show nonsense I have to do when there's no need for my support.

[Seraphor]

The problem about Noct AST is not its potency, it's just that shielding in general is less powerful than regens. SCH is not the prefered healer for its shields, but because of its oGCD heals and DPS / raid contribution. For example, unless a fight requires a special shield value, you could go WHM / diurnal AST and survive just fine.
Trying to make double AST viable like you did is valuable but it's far too OP like this, even if the enemy debuffs are shorter.

I like your new Spire, but I think it kinda messes up with some rotations (I just think about BLM AStral Fire and Foul / Thundercloud timings and PLD Requiescat / Holy Spirit right now), which revolve around X number of spells cast fitting into a buff or whatever, and being out of MP forces you out of this phase. But I don't know how detrimental this would be... seems okay.
Maybe MP will be consumed differently in 5.0 for other classes so it could work anyway.

How do PLD and BLM deal with refresh?

[Brandedblade]

I've been playing around with the idea of the draw being divided into two skills that provide a set of Fortune (buffs) or a set of Misfortunes (debuffs)

Something like:
Astral Draw:
Balance- 10% Direct Hit
Spire- 10% Crit Hit
Arrow- 10% Skill/Spell Speed

Umbral Draw:
Spear- 2% Physical Vulnerability
Ewer- 2% Magic Vulnerability
Bole- 2% Damage Reduction

And then altering the way the current draw utilities work, Royal Road and Spread only working with Astral Draws, Redraw working on the last draw used, and Minor Arcana having a guaranteed effect based on the draw it uses (Lady for Astral, Lord for Umbral) Lord would get a damage nerf but would also be used to refresh the duration of their debuff, so the idea would be you pick the debuff you need, then spend the rest on Lords for damage and debuff maintenance. And then a cooldown that temporarily augments the debuff to 10% for a few seconds then granting immunity to the boost for a minute (to prevent cheesing) Ofc it would be a balancing issue without proper restrictions, but having buffs and a debuff to maintain might be a nice gameplay flow.

[Mansion]

How do PLD and BLM deal with refresh?

I think there's a difference between a small mana tick every 3 seconds and 10% of your mana cost off each spell in a short window. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think Refresh has a lesser value than your Spire. Especially with the AST tweaks of being able to Royal Road this card.

[Seraphor]

I think there's a difference between a small mana tick every 3 seconds and 10% of your mana cost off each spell in a short window. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think Refresh has a lesser value than your Spire. Especially with the AST tweaks of being able to Royal Road this card.

I don't think it would really effect PLD or BLM rotations.
10% off of each spell cost isn't going to give you the opportunity to extend that rotation unless it effects at least 10 spells. at 15s duration, that's only about 5/6 spells/skills you're going to fit into that window. It'll just be inconsequential to those rotations, but it will greatly benefit other casters/healers, and depending on how the MP/TP merge works, potentially most other jobs too, and DRK will probably get a huge benefit from it.
At the very least, it won't be nearly as bad as giving Arrow to a NIN.

[Seraphor]

New Spire effect: Reduces MP costs for target by 10%.
This would compliment it's counterpart in Ewer, while Ewer would recover lost MP, Spire would preserve MP, and with TP merging into MP this will benefit anyone.

Sects effect cards: Current effects are present in Diurnal Sect*, new effects for Nocturnal Sect target enemies instead of party.
Balance: Enemy deals 8% less damage for 15s.
Bole: Enemy takes 8% more damage for 15s. (does not stack with Trick attack)
Arrow: Enemy’s attack speed is reduced by 10% for 15s. (but certain special moves and phase changes are unaffected)
Spear: Enemy cannot deal critical hits for 15s.
Ewer: Inflicts a 50 potency DoT for 15s.
Spire: Enemy takes 10% of the damage they inflict on any party members for 15s.

The point of this is to allow dual-AST compositions to use their cards without worrying about overwriting the other’s effects.
The duration is nerfed to 15s for Nocturnal effects as they could be more OP than party buffs, with Bole/Balance nerfed in potency to 8% as well.
*Diurnal Balance and Bole also nerfed to 8% effect.

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect.

Some additional ideas for Noct Sect.

Nocturnal Sect Minor Arcana:
Queen of Coins: Bestows a HoT on target party member for 21s.
King of Coins: Inflicts a DoT on enemy for 21s.

Celestial Opposition additional effect: Extends debuffs inflicted by yourself by 5s.
Time Dilation additional effect: Resets the value of HP-shields.
(e.g. if a 3000 HP shield is erected, they suffer 2000 dmg, then TD would reset that back to 3000, but will have no effect if the shield is already fully depleted. Hopefully the indications that changes to the battle system UI will display HP shields will make this easier to manage.)

These would give Nocturnal Sect an extra HoT it can use but on RNG, and a way to modify its shields through TD.
I thought this was the most effective way to have you enhance the effect of Noct shields, but would be too OP to have two skills like this, likewise two skills extending the duration of debuffs would be OP if you could essentially stretch a Trick attack out to 25s.

[Archwizard]

I'm still leveling my AST, but so far I'm disappointed that we have no means to spread Combust to enemies, or at least a way to deal DoT damage in multi-target without just spamming Combust all the time. WHM has Aero III, SCH has Bane and Miasma II, AST has nothing.
Last time I brought it up, it was mentioned to me that the concern was making Healer DoTs "unique". Perhaps then, Combust III could do as the name says... and cause the target to continuously combust for partial radial damage? With a limitation to one target, of course.

Beyond that though, my most realistic expectation is more control over the deck, short of picking exactly the card you want. I wonder what they'll do to replace the Spire's TP generation...

I was also very surprised that AST doesn't have any enemy debuff effects, given its Time Mage motifs and emphasis on influencing fate -- surely some fates are going to be worse. I'll grant that vulnerability may be a bit out of the jurisdiction of a support-type healer (and more the area of SCH anyway), but surely effects like reducing enemy damage or (more fittingly) speed would at least fall under their purview as a means of damage prevention and making heals more efficient.

Likewise, why is "Celestial Stasis" considered a spell so strong even we don't know it yet, if crowd control effects are presently useless in a raid context and best saved for leveling anyway? It's just surprising to me that WHM gets Sleep while our Ersatz Time Mage doesn't get its trademark Stop while leveling, or at least some form of single-target immobilize. Something like, "The target can't attack but is immune to damage until the timer ends or spell is recast" maybe?

Just seems like the "ultimate time magic" from a healing standpoint would be something like Reraise -- twist fate around to undo an event before it happens.
Which, come to think of it, would be the perfect way to cheese out reaching the Seventh Gate, actually...