Idea: Making Card Diverse and Reliable (Less RNG)

[LariaKirin]

For the DPS cards:

Keep in mind that the three dps effects you chose would set in stone the best targets you have the moment you create the party and will lead to the "post your stats" meta. The 10% crit buff will be competely worthless if I'm running a min-crit BLM. You would have to know the stats of your party members to make good use of the cards.

Additionally, as the expansion progresses and crit becomes more impactful, the other two cards will become weaker in comparison, leading to the same "not Balance, sadface" feeling you had in Stormblood.

I understand that you chose this for diversity. But in terms of target choice for optimization and overall gameplay, the raw damage increase we have now is better.

What you said is true if every one in the party know how to play their job and avoid unnecessary damage (especially tank and healer).
In a different situation (PUG, new player, undergeared, etc.), umbral card can be a better option for survivability.
We have to make a decision between offensive buff or defensive buff because you cant use everything.
This will make AST gameplay more interesting and showing more of its support side (not restricted to only boost DPS).

Maybe you have other idea to address this?
Please share it if you have one.

Let's say you want/need one of the Umbral cards for mitigation. You have 33% chance to get the one you want. Your currency is dps and you're paying for a chance to gamble for a card that may or may not be useful to you. The issue with your Umbral cards (and old AST support cards) is that they are random, therefore unreliable, and probably too weak. I don't know why you chose a 15s duration for Umbral Cards.

A defensive card can be a dps increase if it results in extra dps gcds for the healers. But due to the unreliability, this will never be "a thing". Balancing this system would be a nightmare, which is most likely one of the reasons why they changed it in the first place.

You're going to have this problem on any system that has a dps vs support dichotomy coupled with randomness.


I do like your Astral/Umbral split idea, but the way I'd prefer it is by keeping the melee vs ranged dichotomy we have now and having the Minor Arcanas be the support cards. The default would be dps cards with a melee vs ranged dichotomy and an option for support cards. The support cards would have to be very strong ("save healing gcds" strong) in order for them to be used over the basic dps cards you draw every 30 sec. In other words, put the randomness into the dps cards and the reliability into the support cards.

[Bobsmiaw]

I understand that you chose this for diversity. But in terms of target choice for optimization and overall gameplay, the raw damage increase we have now is better.

True, raw damage increase card will make optimisation and balancing easier.
Then, why don't we just get rid of major arcana completely?
Will it be much easier to only have Lord and Lady? (consistent % dmg increase, easier balancing and optimisation).
Shuffle/redraw will give the opposite card (Lord -> Lady, Lady -> Lord) which ensure every DPS get the optimum card.
And make divination a regular cooldown so it always have the same % damage increase and eliminating the seal fishing.
So the job will have almost no RNG

Let's say you want/need one of the Umbral cards for mitigation. You have 33% chance to get the one you want. Your currency is dps and you're paying for a chance to gamble for a card that may or may not be useful to you. The issue with your Umbral cards (and old AST support cards) is that they are random, therefore unreliable, and probably too weak. I don't know why you chose a 15s duration for Umbral Cards.

I already explained how to control the RNG:
Shuffle/Redraw LV. 40
Draw an opposite card from your deck
- Held an Astral Card -> Redraw -> obtain a random Umbral Card
- Held an Umbral Card -> Redraw -> obtain a random Astral Card
Cooldown: 30 sec (No Charge)

This will minimize the RNG. I want player to have a choice in card usage (offensive or defensive).
I just want a decision making flow maybe like Aetherflow: do we use ED to gain DPS and MP? or do we use it for healing?
So it become more like: do we buff the party damage? or do we reduce the incoming damage which can save someone from death?
This making card usage more situational and pushing us to adapt faster which I think exciting.

Other option will be deleting all major arcana card and focusing in minor arcana:
Lord of Crown: Increase target damage dealt by 10% for 15 sec
Lady of Crown: Reduce target damage taken by 20% for 15 sec
Honestly, I don't like it but seems a better choice for the sake of balancing the class

[LariaKirin]

I already explained how to control the RNG:
Shuffle/Redraw LV. 40
Draw an opposite card from your deck
- Held an Astral Card -> Redraw -> obtain a random Umbral Card
- Held an Umbral Card -> Redraw -> obtain a random Astral Card
Cooldown: 30 sec (No Charge)

This will minimize the RNG. I want player to have a choice in card usage (offensive or defensive).
I just want a decision making flow maybe like Aetherflow: do we use ED to gain DPS and MP? or do we use it for healing?
So it become more like: do we buff the party damage? or do we reduce the incoming damage which can save someone from death?
This making card usage more situational and pushing us to adapt faster which I think exciting.

Other option will be deleting all major arcana card and focusing in minor arcana:
Lord of Crown: Increase target damage dealt by 10% for 15 sec
Lady of Crown: Reduce target damage taken by 20% for 15 sec
Honestly, I don't like it but seems a better choice for the sake of balancing the class

Yes, you can control the RNG in the sense that you can get an Umbral Card whenever you want. You do not control which Umbral Card you get, which is why I said 1/3. Because if you want an Umbral Card, most of the time the one you want will be The Bole.

You can put the RNG into the dps increase cards in the form of melee (Astral) vs ranged (Umbral).
And you can put the consistency in support cards in the form of Minor Arcana.

So to put this as an analogy to Aetherflow: do we use this astral/umbral card to gain DPS? Or do we turn it into a mitigation card?
It's not quite the same kind of tradeoff, though. Lack of Aetherflow will lock the SCH out of its most powerful abilities, whereas AST will be just fine without the mitigation from the card.

Because AST's kit can currently handle anything without any support from cards, I don't see many scenarios where someone would choose to exercise this option. Or any choice where dps increase is an option.

I thought this could work when I wrote my previous post, but nah. I don't think anything will work as long as the support cards compete with dps increase cards. So my next idea would be to leave the dps increase buffs to divination only and make every Major Arcana a support card. It would essentially become its own minigame and it's purpose would be to make your life easier.

As for Divination, you can rework it into a tiered system that depends on the number of seals, rather than the type (e.g. 7%/8%/9%/10%). You have 4 draws between Divinations. Use them all and you get the 10%.

This is still lazy, though. It's just shifting the balancing work to the healing side of things. These card buffs will still have to be balanced with the other healers. I don't know ...

But I hope our exchange illustrates how difficult this is. Job design and balance is not as trivial as a large part of the population frequenting this forum would have you believe.