AST Cards: Why they aren't fun and how they can be made better

[Lodi]

In order to avoid "useless" cards, every card is useless now!
Oh and we got rid of all the buff extenders, just because we can!
A complex and interesting healer class? Not on MY watch!

I find it ironic that the excuse for the new card system is to avoid "useless" cards, and yet the whole system as it now stands could be deleted if the AST themselves simply had better DPS abilities :/

Yeah, it's called White Mage. Similar heals, better rdps, less work.

Everybody who tells me the current AST is fine can go sit on a cactus.

[Allegor]

It’s funny that they made the changes to avoid useless cards, then every time I’m in a double melee/ranged I keep getting cards for opposite role. It’s not useless, but I mean, it doesn’t feel any better than drawing a Bole/Ewer/Spire with Expanded Royal Road already up

Nothing like hitting Redraw 3 times in a row because I don't get the seal I want, and then MA it anyways. Even that doesn't really matter anymore because the fact Divination now gives 4% damage boost at a minimum proves the entire system is redundant. No one but the top tier raiders would care about a marginal 2% difference in damage. If you ca practically ignore the job's mechanic then it's not a good mechanic.

[KanameYuuki]

Nothing like hitting Redraw 3 times in a row because I don't get the seal I want, and then MA it anyways. Even that doesn't really matter anymore because the fact Divination now gives 4% damage boost at a minimum proves the entire system is redundant. No one but the top tier raiders would care about a marginal 2% difference in damage. If you ca practically ignore the job's mechanic then it's not a good mechanic.

That was the funniest change from 5.05, why even bother to do all the effort on what little engagement the new card system ask you to do.

[Seraphor]

Need to stop asking for them to revert the changes. It's never going to happen.

They don't go back on decisions like this when they've put this much effort into it.
It's not like they just changed the card effects, they made an entirely new system (seals, divination) and a load of new graphical assets for it.

They also likely made the changes for valid balancing issues.

Crit and Speed are tricky to balance. Crit scales exponentially across an expansion, and some jobs HATE speed, causing clipping and rotation drift.

In addition, having healer toolkit skills, Bole and Ewer, makes it difficult to balance the healers.
Do they count AST as having a 10% mitigation skill every 30s? Or do they discount it because you might not draw it?

They keep saying this expansion is about balancing the healers, and the card changes are a big part of that.


There are still issues though, and things like making Redraw only draw different seals, etc. should be implemented. That's what you should be asking for.
Reasonable request may get answered, unreasonable ones will be completely ignored.

[Seraphor]

I find it ironic that the excuse for the new card system is to avoid "useless" cards, and yet the whole system as it now stands could be deleted if the AST themselves simply had better DPS abilities :/

Trick Attack could be deleted if they just gave Ninja more pdps.
Dancers dances could just be deleted if they increases it's potencies.

It's about differentiating pDPS and rDPS and having a variety of builds on that spectrum.

Cards are AST's Trick Attack, they're even about as comparable of an effect when played well.
They do require more attention for the same effect though, so could do with some streamlining.
Personally I think we should have to choose between individual cards and charging Divination via seals. Then making all the buffs more effective, back up to 10% across the board.

Something like, all cards are 6%/10% buff based on melee/ranged, then Minor Arcana 'banks' the seal while granting the effect of Lord or Lady randomly.
Lord increases your MP regen, Lady increases your healing potency, for a short time.
Then Divination is 6/8/10% AoE buff.

In this system, you wouldn't need to target anyone to charge up a Divination, just 'bank' every card for its seal, then throw out an AoE 10% buff every 2 minutes.

[Hatstand]

If this is the future of healing then interesting healing in ffxiv is dead, as is ffxiv’s status as the mmo with interesting healing. QoL fixes will not change the fact that the new system is fundamentally boring, as well as currently being clunky. Either they can overhaul the entire system AGAIN to make a new system that’s actually interesting, making a bunch of their existing assets useless, or they can roll back to the old system, making a bunch of their new assets useless but letting them reuse older assets rather than making new ones again. Until they do one or the other AST will continue to be a bad class.

[MuseTraveller]

I don't know why they couldn't just change Spire and Bole's effect to something useful and call it a day instead of change the whole game style of the class.
I do get that we get simplified combat with each expac but get more dynamic fights instead but there is so much you can simplify before it gets too...simple.

Ok tanks no longer have dps stance so they are forced to tank, bole is now bit more useless.
Ok no tp anymore so spire is useless too.
MP is now a % and everyone has MP regen skill so ewer is...useless I guess?

So now when I think of it, beyond DPS increase or shields/regens (which you give with your sects anyway) what else can they do with the cards? :/
I'm sure we can come up with something but at the end, I think it's just the system getting so simplified which forces the more versite healers to get bit too close to WHM which is the simple power healer class.

[Hatstand]

Trick Attack could be deleted if they just gave Ninja more pdps.
Dancers dances could just be deleted if they increases it's potencies.

I haven’t played NIN, but you could also say that you could delete chain strategem if you gave SCH more personal dps. And I wouldn’t be at all upset if they did. Chain strategem is a boring ability. You just press it once every two minutes, give or take a little bit depending on the fight, then forget about it. That doesn’t mean all buffing cooldowns are useless. I talk a lot about Presence of Mind because I really enjoy it as an ability: you can use it for offence or defence or both as you judge necessary. You can actually think about how you use it.

The new AST cards are bad because you mechanically go through the motions of collecting the correct seal and placing it on the appropriate party member then you forget about it because what happens next is out of your hands and there’s not much you can do to effect it (unless you’re playing god-level AST and keeping track of all your party members rotations so you can buff each person at a time most optimal within that rotation, and even then there’s only so much you can do.) As the OP laid out, the old AST cards required you to actually think about how your cards would be used. Ergo they were a better system.

The difference is that chain strategem isn’t the primary selling point of the SCH, so it being a bad ability isn’t that big of a problem. AST cards on he other hand are AST’s main attraction. If that’s a bad system, it’s a problem for the class as a whole.

[Seraphor]

I haven’t played NIN, but you could also say that you could delete chain strategem if you gave SCH more personal dps. And I wouldn’t be at all upset if they did. Chain strategem is a boring ability. You just press it once every two minutes, give or take a little bit depending on the fight, then forget about it. That doesn’t mean all buffing cooldowns are useless. I talk a lot about Presence of Mind because I really enjoy it as an ability: you can use it for offence or defence or both as you judge necessary. You can actually think about how you use it.

The new AST cards are bad because you mechanically go through the motions of collecting the correct seal and placing it on the appropriate party member then you forget about it because what happens next is out of your hands and there’s not much you can do to effect it (unless you’re playing god-level AST and keeping track of all your party members rotations so you can buff each person at a time most optimal within that rotation, and even then there’s only so much you can do.) As the OP laid out, the old AST cards required you to actually think about how your cards would be used. Ergo they were a better system.

The difference is that chain strategem isn’t the primary selling point of the SCH, so it being a bad ability isn’t that big of a problem. AST cards on he other hand are AST’s main attraction. If that’s a bad system, it’s a problem for the class as a whole.

It's called a job mechanic.

Dancer has to go with the motions of activating Step and then executing dance moves... all just to bestow a 5% damage buff. And this is the primary selling point of the job.

Ninja has to use the correct Mudras to use Suiton, then position themselves behind the boss to use Trick attack, just to inflict a 10% defense debuff.

Like I said, it could be streamlined, so that the effort isnt so disproportionate to the effect, but saying they should just ditch the whole thing for more pDPS, is far too simplistic.
Do you WANT all healers to be WHMs?
Or are you just being overdramatic due to salt?
(not 'you' personally, anyone arguing that the system may as well be ditched because they don't like it anymore)

[Hatstand]

It's called a job mechanic.

Dancer has to go with the motions of activating Step and then executing dance moves... all just to bestow a 5% damage buff. And this is the primary selling point of the job.

Ninja has to use the correct Mudras to use Suiton, then position themselves behind the boss to use Trick attack, just to inflict a 10% defense debuff.

Like I said, it could be streamlined, so that the effort isnt so disproportionate to the effect, but saying they should just ditch the whole thing for more pDPS, is far too simplistic.
Do you WANT all healers to be WHMs?
Or are you just being overdramatic due to salt?

I’m not saying that ditching buffing for personal dps is the right way to go. I’m saying that all the healers’ kits (including their offensive kits) should require thought and decision making. If they could achieve that by giving all the healers a distinct and interesting way of doing personal dps then I’d be happy with that. If they restructured all the healers to have distinct and interesting buffing kits I’d be happy with that. When it comes down to it direct damage vs damage buffing isn’t that interesting a distinction. If you achieve x rDPS by hitting a button I don’t care whether it’s your own damage or your party’s.

So no, I don’t want all healers to be like WHM because WHM has never really had interesting offensive mechanics (aside from Presence of Mind). I want all healers to be like heavensward SCH or Stormblood AST in terms of offensive kits, because SCH used to have interesting personal dps and AST used to have interesting buffs. Not that they should just replicate the kit, but they should replicate the complexity. Or leave WHM simple for the people who like that. Either way. So long as there is an interesting option. Which there isn’t anymore.

That said, I don’t think dancer’s mechanics are all that interesting either. I was very disappointed when dancer’s buffs, which were supposed to be the highlight of the class, came nothing close to the complexity of the old AST cards. Maybe the dps jobs could stand to learn from the old healers, too.

Also, the idea that it’s okay for a job’s central Mechanic to become boring because other classes already have boring mechanics is kind of along the same lines as the idea that it’s okay to make SCH personal dps boring because WHM’s personal dps was already boring. SE can lower their standards all they want, but I will continue to hold them to the standards they have shown they can achieve in the past.