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

[Seraphor]

Personally, I've always thought AST had a disproportionately greater workload for its mechanics than the other healers.
WHM has, basically nothing outside its core healer toolkit, and SCH just has a couple of extra skills that execute via the Faerie, and a gauge to manage it.
AST had 6 RNG skills and 3 modifiers to those, to balance and weave between healing. Maybe you could argue that the other two healers should have been brought up to ASTs level rather than the other way around, but I think having healer toolkit (Bole and Ewer) tied to an RNG mechanic, was ALWAYS a bad design, regardless of how much people liked it at the time.
AST having a bigger, better healer toolkit, with Intersection and Horoscope, etc. makes much more sense, and makes it a more effective healer (in theory, potencies allowing of course)

So with those shifted out of the card system, the card system has to necessarily be reduced, it can't have 6 options anymore. But it's stuck with a lore of having 6 cards and needs to work with that.
As I said, Crit and Speed have their own balancing issues. Kinda sad to see them go, but I understand why they might have made that choice.

So now we have a flat damage buff, which for a job mechanic, is par for the course I'm afraid.
The issues now are over effectiveness and effort required to use it.

Would you be happier with better proportionality, even if the overall effect was similar, like this:

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.
But in a light party, it might be more effective to give you DPS regular single target 10% buffs. Instead of Divination.

Each card/divination you use will have a greater impact on its own, and you will be required to switch targets less often.

[Hatstand]

Seraphor, what makes you want to play AST over some other healer? Did you want to play AST before? Why do you think people should want to play AST now? What's your favourite healer and why?

[Seraphor]

Seraphor, what makes you want to play AST over some other healer? Did you want to play AST before? Why do you think people should want to play AST now? What's your favourite healer and why?

AST is my favourite healer, and it still is.
I play AST for it's Time/Space Mage roots, for its Diurnal/Nocturnal sect versatility, and it's role as a damage buffer rather than personal DPS.

[Hatstand]

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.
But in a light party, it might be more effective to give you DPS regular single target 10% buffs. Instead of Divination.

I think this would be an improvement, but still not as good as the old system. Having all the defensive abilities being given at random means that if you don’t need that ability you get it anyway and you can’t be sure you’ll get an ability when you need it, whereas with the old cards you had the option to bank a card for later (giving you the ability to keep a defensive buff for when exactly you needed it) or to use it for something else (royal road or minor arcana, or just redraw). That said, I like fact that you can exchange offence for Defense.

The unpredictability is part of what I liked about old AST. Unpredictability that you had to respond to, as opposed to unpredictability you had to live with. I’d be happy to give AST some more control so long as they could keep some of that. You don’t seem to be looking for that in a healer, so I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye on this. (If you want to see what I would like in terms of adding reliability to AST you can go check out the AST section in my essay on healers over in the “everything wrong with current healers” thread. Though be warned, it’s a doozy of a post. Very long).

That said, I’m still interested in knowing what other people are after in healers. Would you mind if I pick your brain a little? Why is it significant to you that AST is a buffing healer? Why do you prefer buffs over direct damage? Seperate from the means through which those buffs are delivered.

[Seraphor]

I think it makes sense for a healer build, to buff your damage dealers over personal damage.
Makes for more of a 'pure healer' feeling than the dps/healer hybrid that this game enforces.
It also makes for an easy way to balance and differentiate the healers, pDPS versus rDPS, and with healer balance being the core issue right now, anything that simplifies it and allows us to get a fourth healer is good in my view.

As I said, having healer toolkit tied to RNG was an obstacle.
Do you balance the healers with AST having a 10% mitigator every 30s in Bole, or not, because they may or may not have it?
Does AST have MP issues, or no MP issues, because of Ewer?
Removing them from the card system means they can have a healer baseline to work with, and they do still need to work on it, but it should be much easier to balance the healers now.


EDIT: I do think AST has always had a bit too much going on with it though. You could almost split it into two jobs, Gambler/Time Mage.

Time Mage could have the its core toolkit, Diurnal/Nocturnal sects with maybe the ability to change between them every 30s, and a speed buff.
Gambler could have the card system (just tarot based, no constellations) with room for more skills to give you greater control over it. Expanding the system rather than dumbing it down. Then a new healer toolkit, maybe DPS skills would be throwing cards like Gambit, healer skills could include Minor Arcana, and have a ‘gambling’ oGCD where it could randomly cause a regen or a shield or something like that.
Then Gambler would be the more buffing support healer, and Time mage would be more SCH level of buffs, with the sects being it’s gimmick.

But that's an hypothetical ideal. As long as it’s only one job, which isn’t likely to ever change, I’m happy with the card system being ‘dumbed down’ for balance.

[Hatstand]

I think it makes sense for a healer build, to buff your damage dealers over personal damage.
Makes for more of a 'pure healer' feeling than the dps/healer hybrid that this game enforces.
It also makes for an easy way to balance and differentiate the healers, pDPS versus rDPS, and with healer balance being the core issue right now, anything that simplifies it and allows us to get a fourth healer is good in my view.

As I said, having healer toolkit tied to RNG was an obstacle.
Do you balance the healers with AST having a 10% mitigator every 30s in Bole, or not, because they may or may not have it?
Does AST have MP issues, or no MP issues, because of Ewer?
Removing them from the card system means they can have a healer baseline to work with, and they do still need to work on it, but it should be much easier to balance the healers now.


EDIT: I do think AST has always had a bit too much going on with it though. You could almost split it into two jobs, Gambler/Time Mage.

Time Mage could have the its core toolkit, Diurnal/Nocturnal sects with maybe the ability to change between them every 30s, and a speed buff.
Gambler could have the card system (just tarot based, no constellations) with room for more skills to give you greater control over it. Expanding the system rather than dumbing it down. Then a new healer toolkit, maybe DPS skills would be throwing cards like Gambit, healer skills could include Minor Arcana, and have a ‘gambling’ oGCD where it could randomly cause a regen or a shield or something like that.
Then Gambler would be the more buffing support healer, and Time mage would be more SCH level of buffs, with the sects being it’s gimmick.

But that's an hypothetical ideal. As long as it’s only one job, which isn’t likely to ever change, I’m happy with the card system being ‘dumbed down’ for balance.

I can kind of understand the theme point of view, even though I don’t share it (SCH has always been my favourite job despite the fact that I don’t really like fairies at all. It just felt good to play. AST was my second favourite for similar reasons). And as for the latter point, I guess I’m just not willing to sacrifice fun on the alter of balance. I would have been happy for them to estimate low on AST and risk them being statistically slightly worse than the other healers if they still felt good to play. Also, I think there are several things they could have done to mitigate the problem of not having reliable mana Regen and damage mitigation (again, see my other posts if you want details) without completely removing the mechanic that (IMO) made the class feel good to play.

I also think that what they’ve done for AST now could have been a good foundation for another healer class, which would also have buffed while being more reliable and mechanical. I’m just not at all happy that we lost AST for that class to be born.

Anyway, thank you for indulging my curiosity.

[TankHunter678]

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.

Bole was useful in the majority of content beyond letting a tank tank in DPS stance, it helped with pulls, it helped with TBs, and it helped with raid/party wide AoEs. Spire needed a rework regardless. Balance was problematic in that it created the whole fishing problem that tricked down from optimizers. If any cards needed changes in the old system it was just Spire and Balance.

Also Ewer would still be useful, as despite them improving lucid dreaming you still run into a lot of MP issues if you try to be a shield healer.

Of course one major problem is the fact that everything is built around damage. If you took out the straight DPS boosting cards in the old system and replaced them with more utility/healing cards (such as a cooldown reduction card, excog style shield card, or a card that made it so all damage taken during its effect was staggered like WoW Brewmaster Monk) then if AST still had its pDPS reduced as per utility tax then the class would never see high level play despite the range of useful effects it could give.

[Acidblood]

snip

The old card system was necessarily complex because you had 6 effects * 3 modifiers = 18 possible effects (24 if you include them without modifiers), and these could be further interacted with via Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition... the new card system is needless complex because you have 1 effect and (sort of) 2 modifiers for a total of 3 possible effects (single-target, slightly better single-target, and AoE), none of which can be interacted with.

It's not that I want to see the card system removed, it's that in its current state it is a whole lot of busy work for very little gameplay effect (i.e. you basically need a parser to notice the difference) and zero benefit to the AST themselves (since you still have to spam Malefic / Gravity to keep up your overall group DPS contribution).

Personally I would prefer a return of the old card system and interactions (with appropriate adjustments), but that probably isn’t going to happen, so the least they could do (short of deleting it and renaming a few abilities for the cards) would be to greatly simplify it and maybe give the AST some benefit from all the extra buttons they are pressing.

[Dyvid]

Divination fixed the Balance fishing game of 3.X / 4.X. I think the best option is to change the cards to buffing main Attributes because it benefits the job as a whole rather than just a small aspect of the job. Add a 1% Crit or Direct Hit buff to the card so it's not worthless if the job isn't present. You can add an ability "Tempt Fate" that would either double or halve the effect. Change redraw to 1 charge to help stop the Divination fishing game. Change Lord and Lady back to DPS and Heal respectively.

Spear = STR
Arrow = DEX
Balance = INT
Bole = MND
Spire = Tenacity
Ewer = Restore MP

Note: Any changes to one healer on works if SE is willing to add raid utility to WHM and SCH. Healer/Support is the best option for the game in my opinion.

[Lodi]

Divination fixed the Balance fishing game of 3.X / 4.X. I think the best option is to change the cards to buffing main Attributes because it benefits the job as a whole rather than just a small aspect of the job. Add a 1% Crit or Direct Hit buff to the card so it's not worthless if the job isn't present. You can add an ability "Tempt Fate" that would either double or halve the effect. Change redraw to 1 charge to help stop the Divination fishing game. Change Lord and Lady back to DPS and Heal respectively.

Spear = STR
Arrow = DEX
Balance = INT
Bole = MND
Spire = Tenacity
Ewer = Restore MP

Note: Any changes to one healer on works if SE is willing to add raid utility to WHM and SCH. Healer/Support is the best option for the game in my opinion.

No. Just no.

MND, Tenacity and Restore MP would automatically be useless compared to the other cards, and you'd be screwed if you don't have a physical/magic ranged dps.
Which is already a problem with the current system, since you don't always have both a melee and ranged dps in your group.