Why don't astro cards stack?

[HyoMinPark]

it is bad design because communication is necessary as a side effect of the design. i have no problem with communication. do you understand this? if communication was a direct and deliberate design choice then i would have no problem with it but communication is necessary here as a SIDE EFFECT of a poor design choice to not allow buffs to stack.

Allowing buffs to stack would create balancing nightmares that would result in jobs like WHM, SAM, and BLM (i.e., jobs that do not offer party buffs/utility) dying a slow, painful death as they are ousted from optimized settings. This already happens with two of them (WHM, SAM); BLM has just now managed to make it back into some of the top speedkills THIS tier because the developers finally allowed it to do enough damage to make up for its lack of utility—they’ve never been good about balancing utility jobs against “selfish” jobs, and it has shown for quite some time now. Do you understand this? Because I don’t think that you do.

That said, communication isn’t necessarily needed to avoid overwriting. Paying attention is—but that’s necessary to complete content, anyways.

and yes i've done this before on my own. it's not hard to watch people's buffs. it's not difficult and i'm not stupid. the issues happen when i'm waiting for the other astro to use his buffs and after expecting him not to the next second, we end up doing it at the same time or if the other astro is unaware and casts his buffs halfway through mine. the issue is unavoidable.

This happens to everyone at some point or another. It’s happened to me as well—I’ve been overwritten and I’ve done the overwriting. Generally what happens is the AST that made the blunder apologizes, and people move on. Overwriting cards isn’t nearly as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be because the content that this usually occurs in does not matter when it comes to balancing. Balancing only needs to be done in high-end settings; not in leveling dungeons.

The fact that the developers already don’t do this is why we have balancing problems now—see BRD/MCH and the piercing debate. Why has BRD/DRG or MCH/DRG taken up two meta slots since Creator? Because the developers don’t understand the way optimized players work; they don’t understand that BRD/MCH will always want a DRG for their piercing debuff because that is 5% of their damage (much like how optimized groups will want AST for that +5% AOE Balance over a WHM that offers then nothing). They don’t balance around piercing when they balance BRD and MCH against one another, and this is why the physical ranged have always ended up better than the casters (particularly BRD—this is an even larger issue with it because they don’t consider how critical hit-enhancing buffs interact with its Repertoire mechanic).

I don’t think you understand any of this, if I’m being honest; and that’s why you don’t understand why people are disagreeing with your suggestions.

i cannot educate every single astro i queue with and i should not have to because of a POOR design choice. stop pretending like the solution is so simple. if you can only suggest things that are obvious then you are of no help. my suggested changes arent necessary you're right because this problem doesnt exist in high level content where people already communicate but that doesn't mean it would be unwelcome.

Unwillingness to communicate, educate, or cooperate does not equate bad design. Stacking cards and allowing other buffs to stack IS bad design because now the jobs that don’t offer buffs—or who offer weak buffs—will suffer even more. Because players that want to min-max will take the jobs where they can stack buffs. They already do this without the stacking.

The solution is simple. This is a non-issue for the majority of players. If you can only plug your ears against those telling you that your solution would cause issues of its own, then we are no longer having any sort of meaningful discussion.

can you actually suggest something useful?

Sure. I suggest that cards (and other buffs) remain as is—they don’t need to stack.


EDIT because I saw an edit:

Edit due to daily post limit:


No they do.
Shields don’t stack, but all regens do stack. Play dual Diurnal AST and you’ll see the two sets of Helios and two Benefics on your tank.

It's a shield thing, not a dual AST thing.

Diurnal AST HoTs do not stack the same way WHM HoTs do. They never have. That's why you don't see two ASTs both in Diurnal Sect for things - one is always Diurnal and the other is always Nocturnal. And that's not because of a "shields are needed" thing either (shields aren't needed for anything other than high-tier Savage and Ultimate); it's because AST regens do not stack with one another. CU’s HoT also does not stack if you have two ASTs. None of their buffs stack, except for maybe Synastry (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t).

I literally just tested this with a friend—we were both Diurnal AST in a party and our regens (both Aspected Helios and Aspected Benefic) overwrote one another’s. They do not stack.