Ast rework

[finnegandadaeon]

Well it seems like even buffing the potencies, right now the Ast would surely wont save himself from his basically new design with shadowbringers’ rework. So what are your thoughts on a possibile rework?

I am not good with balancing but i ll give it a try:

I would not buff healing potencies

Diurnal sect and nocturnal sect are no longer stances but buffs

Casting asp benefic, asp Helios and using abilities with stances influences will grant u both regen and shield (surely they ll need a rebalance in this case)

Horoscope- revamped- cooldown 40 sec - activating it will change your gauge to diurnal or nocturnal (RNG) granting u a diurnal or nocturnal buff for 40 secs
Diurnal buff- buff your regen potencies by 5% while buffing your melee cards by 3%
Nocturnal buff- buff your shields potencies by 5% while buffing your ranged dps cards by 3%

Divination - cooldown reduced from 180 to 120 sec (maybe buff also the duration of divination effect by 5 secs)

Minor arcana- new trait- reduces by 5 secs divination recast everytime u turn a card into minor arcana

Celestial opposition- new trait- grants u 2000 mp

Neutral sect- name changed into “crepuscolarity” (so cool)- grants u 30 secs of both stances buffs (removing the 20% healing buff)

Well I believe that devs decided to remove the cards effect just because the game was about to get a new design cutting off most of the synergies, well I understand this but at the same time I really miss the old system.
This new rework would offer an engaging and fun new method to have fun with cards buff and seals, and I believe that will grants ast a better identity removing the old stances but keeping them at the same time. I know I m not good in this so plz be comprehensive XD

[finnegandadaeon]

Oh I forgot sleeve draw

Effect revamped- now reset draw cooldown and grants u 3 redraw stacks- cooldown reduced to 90 sec

[AmurT]

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking:
- Time Dilation and Spread returned.
- Celestial Opp and Draw reverted.
- Play, Undraw and Redraw removed.
- New action "Turn": Flips the current drawn Arcanum into the opposite position. Hold 3 Charges. 45 second recast.

Cards now all have a Divine Position effect and an Inverted Position effect.

- Inverted: Generic damage boost.
Lord and Lady: Flat damage/Heal
- Divine:
Balance: Nullify a portion of damage received and reflect it as damage.
Spire: Increases maximum HP.
Spear: Healing potency increase.
Bole, Ewer, Arrow: Old effects.
Lord and Lady: DoT and HoT.

- Sleeve Draw: Fills your Draw and Spread slots with cards. These cards can appear in the Divine or Inverted positions, Minor Arcana can also appear.

- Divination: No longer requires Seals to activate. Effect of Divination is determined by the previously played card. Inverted will provide an AoE damage buff, Divine will provide an AoE damage reduction buff.

- Synastry: Select a partner to form a bond and recast to cancel. Recast timer begins upon cancelling the bond. Any Arcanum being played is also shared with the bonded partner, has no effect if card is played on the partner. Additional card buffs overwrite previous buff.

So the idea behind these changes is to satisfy both parties by having the option to either go for straight up damage all the time or to switch to utility. Likely you will still want to go for damage most of the time, but the ability effects are no longer so useless in more prog or "oh crap" moments.

By reworking Sleeve Draw this way, removing the ability to Redraw cards and deleting the Seal system, my aim was to reduce the amount of oGCDs needed to be spammed during the opener or just anywhere. You Draw a card, Turn/Spread/Minor Arcana if you need to, then play it using Spread/Draw.

I also reworked Minor Arcana in this way because fishing for Lord prepull was a thing and free Lords from Sleeve Draw made AST personal DPS inconsistent which goes against the aim of these changes, and also because 5.0 has made MA too prevalent. I want the Minor Arcana to be just that. M I N O R. You would now only use it if you run out of Turn charges and end up with a Divine effect you have no use with, so you want to MA and play the card immediately to begin the Draw recast. Additionally, the DoT/HoT Divine effects of Lord and Lady are stronger than the flat damage/heal variants, so if you were to end up with a Minor Arcana with Sleeve Draw, you would have to make a choice between using a Turn charge for a potency increase or just play the MA as is and save Turn for another Draw.

That should also leave us with the exact amount of buttons as we have now... except less of them are completely useless. Oh well, even though it will never happen, one can dream.

[Marc-Vigar]

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.

- Nocturnal sect needs a buff, incresing shields given and decreasing MP cost to make it competitive with Diurnal.

- Card system needs to be simplified, there are too many spells that are straight useless (Undraw), underwhelming (Divination) or could be changed after use (Draw -> Play). I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

- Damage is really low, this is theorically compensated with card buffs but it doesn't feel like its worth the tradeoff.

[Ceasaria]

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking
"the rework"

Very cool rework, sound nice !

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.
- Nocturnal sect needs a buff, incresing shields given and decreasing MP cost to make it competitive with Diurnal.

This is the big problem here and I'am sure SE have operated like that.
Sure we can look at Diurnal and Nocturnal for balance and it's needed, but most importantly, Nocturnal need to be competitive with SCH !

[TankHunter678]

Sure we can look at Diurnal and Nocturnal for balance and it's needed, but most importantly, Nocturnal need to be competitive with SCH !

Noct will never be competitive with SCH because SCH has the toolkit to work off of and around shields optimally. Instead Noct needs to be internally viable, while the rest of the AST toolkit can compete with SCH at least in utility.

[Seoulstar]

AST doesn't need a rework, just a careful review on some stuff.
- Card system needs to be simplified, there are too many spells that are straight useless (Undraw), underwhelming (Divination) or could be changed after use (Draw -> Play). I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

I think one of the main issues now is that the cards have been oversimplified.

[Brarry]

Oversimplified is an understatement. Going from like 18 cards to 2 makes ast boring!

[Marc-Vigar]

Oversimplified is an understatement. Going from like 18 cards to 2 makes ast boring!

Having 18 cards that do the same or very niche unusable things is also boring. As I said on my previous post, I'd rather have 4 cards with critical hit, direct hit, skill/spell speed and a damage buff.

[BahamutxD]

Sounds fun, if I had to have a go at reworking:
- Time Dilation and Spread returned.
- Celestial Opp and Draw reverted.
- Play, Undraw and Redraw removed.
- New action "Turn": Flips the current drawn Arcanum into the opposite position. Hold 3 Charges. 45 second recast.

Cards now all have a Divine Position effect and an Inverted Position effect.

- Inverted: Generic damage boost.
Lord and Lady: Flat damage/Heal
- Divine:
Balance: Nullify a portion of damage received and reflect it as damage.
Spire: Increases maximum HP.
Spear: Healing potency increase.
Bole, Ewer, Arrow: Old effects.
Lord and Lady: DoT and HoT.

- Sleeve Draw: Fills your Draw and Spread slots with cards. These cards can appear in the Divine or Inverted positions, Minor Arcana can also appear.

- Divination: No longer requires Seals to activate. Effect of Divination is determined by the previously played card. Inverted will provide an AoE damage buff, Divine will provide an AoE damage reduction buff.

- Synastry: Select a partner to form a bond and recast to cancel. Recast timer begins upon cancelling the bond. Any Arcanum being played is also shared with the bonded partner, has no effect if card is played on the partner. Additional card buffs overwrite previous buff.

So the idea behind these changes is to satisfy both parties by having the option to either go for straight up damage all the time or to switch to utility. Likely you will still want to go for damage most of the time, but the ability effects are no longer so useless in more prog or "oh crap" moments.

By reworking Sleeve Draw this way, removing the ability to Redraw cards and deleting the Seal system, my aim was to reduce the amount of oGCDs needed to be spammed during the opener or just anywhere. You Draw a card, Turn/Spread/Minor Arcana if you need to, then play it using Spread/Draw.

I also reworked Minor Arcana in this way because fishing for Lord prepull was a thing and free Lords from Sleeve Draw made AST personal DPS inconsistent which goes against the aim of these changes, and also because 5.0 has made MA too prevalent. I want the Minor Arcana to be just that. M I N O R. You would now only use it if you run out of Turn charges and end up with a Divine effect you have no use with, so you want to MA and play the card immediately to begin the Draw recast. Additionally, the DoT/HoT Divine effects of Lord and Lady are stronger than the flat damage/heal variants, so if you were to end up with a Minor Arcana with Sleeve Draw, you would have to make a choice between using a Turn charge for a potency increase or just play the MA as is and save Turn for another Draw.

That should also leave us with the exact amount of buttons as we have now... except less of them are completely useless. Oh well, even though it will never happen, one can dream.

"Turn" might be the best single idea I've seen in a while around here