Fix AST's Accessibility Issue

[HyperiusUltima]

This is kind of what I was trying to say earlier in the thread.

If your fishing doesn't work out in the new system, you lose 1% on divination. Maybe 2% if you're phenomenally unlucky. You still get to buff people.

If your fishing didn't work out on the old system, you didn't get to play a card at all.

Now if people want the old system back because it's more interesting - OK. Understandable and relatable. But for those that want it back because they're annoyed at not getting the cards they want... The old system is much harsher when RNG doesn't play nice; going back isn't going to fix it like they want.

All I was suggesting is that Royal Road be brought back to recover some of AST's depth of gameplay and decision-making instead of this Seal Fishing Contest with 3 Charges of Redraw. As far as old Royal Road goes, it literally made 1/3rd of those things useless since 150% didn't work out for most cards(except Balance, Spear and Ewer back then?). They can reimplement Royal Road so that AST isn't clogged up by Sleeve Draw. Namely, they could decide on the following for effects:

- All Royal Road effects are AoE, no matter what and can only be applied via Play or Minor Arcana.
- Lunar Seal: Increases Ranged DPS by 2%.
- Solar Seal: Increases Melee DPS by 2%.
- Celestial Seal: Recovers 1000 MP for the entire party.

Now, you may think: "But we only want Lunar and Solar Seals to matter when we Play or Minor Arcana!" But given that AST already has a decent buffing system in place, I didn't want to tack on too much given how we might wind up in the problematic issues we had before with balance in both HW(overbuffing AST) and SB(AST contributing better than WHM, but only because of WHM mechanical oversight).

It's easy to differentiate between Sun and Moon either way for DPS Buffs, and Celestial Seal could definitely go a long ways for AST recovering MP for the raid by a set amount(given it's capped at 10000 anyway). It won't be much, but it can help healers that are still learning for the high-end plus deal with some of AST's MP issues in Dungeons in particular.

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Oh just to clarify, I think most of your suggestions are pretty reasonable. Just others - in this thread a little bit, and in other threads a lot more - some of the complaints are system-agnostic and will be here no matter what SE does, because they're essentially saying they don't like RNG. But non-RNG buffs are SCH's thing, so no matter what changes come for AST, I doubt RNG will be taken out.

Back a little more on topic. So I agree targeting can be very messy, RR might be one way to address it; overall I do like that your suggestions aren't a total revert that would bring back all the problems of the old system.

Just one specific criticism: 1k mp for the whole party sounds a bit excessive. It might not sound like a lot at first, but when you consider lucid cycles every minute, and the fairly powerful natural MP regen, throwing in another 1k like that could have quite a bit more swing than it sounds like. If something like that was added - honestly, I'd be a lot more comfortable if it went to RDM or physical ranged or similar, so it's not tied to any particular healer...

[HyperiusUltima]

Oh just to clarify, I think most of your suggestions are pretty reasonable. Just others - in this thread a little bit, and in other threads a lot more - some of the complaints are system-agnostic and will be here no matter what SE does, because they're essentially saying they don't like RNG. But non-RNG buffs are SCH's thing, so no matter what changes come for AST, I doubt RNG will be taken out.

Back a little more on topic. So I agree targeting can be very messy, RR might be one way to address it; overall I do like that your suggestions aren't a total revert that would bring back all the problems of the old system.

Just one specific criticism: 1k mp for the whole party sounds a bit excessive. It might not sound like a lot at first, but when you consider lucid cycles every minute, and the fairly powerful natural MP regen, throwing in another 1k like that could have quite a bit more swing than it sounds like. If something like that was added - honestly, I'd be a lot more comfortable if it went to RDM or physical ranged or similar, so it's not tied to any particular healer...

You make a valid point. I wasn't sure if it was a viable way for balance, but AST has been lacking in the MP management department since the other two healers have better management. Especially in regards to N.AST, which needs the extra MP. If 1k MP is that much, they could simply just make it 500 MP since that's what a Aetherflow is for SCH. Though in hindsight, we already have WHM that has a ridiculous amount of MP Management(Infinite MP for 12s, Free GCD Healing, Free Instant Cast, etc.) while SCH has to manage a fairy while on GCD and their Aetherflow which is all oGCD.

My guess is what you're trying to say is that if we go over the top on MP Recovery, we basically nullify an issue Healers SHOULD have by design: Running out of Resources, and on top of that people would prefer AST/SCH since N.AST isn't in the best of spots. It doesn't invalidate AST/WHM, either though, but it would make AST a bit more appealing to the raid crowd by doing that simply because of the DPS that MP can provide for certain jobs(extra Despair for BLM in particular should the stars align, since I think limit on MP for it is 1000).

Edit: Also, thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Risvertasashi]

You make a valid point. I wasn't sure if it was a viable way for balance, but AST has been lacking in the MP management department since the other two healers have better management. Especially in regards to N.AST, which needs the extra MP. If 1k MP is that much, they could simply just make it 500 MP since that's what a Aetherflow is for SCH. Though in hindsight, we already have WHM that has a ridiculous amount of MP Management(Infinite MP for 12s, Free GCD Healing, Free Instant Cast, etc.) while SCH has to manage a fairy while on GCD and their Aetherflow which is all oGCD.

It's worth noting that a frequently-overlooked SCH CD lets them use anything without consuming aetherflow and guarantees crits. Sort of the SCH version of thin air.

N.AST has issues, but they run much deeper than MP - to make it competitive with SCH, we need to be talking about completely different things. AST as a whole... well, let me put it like this. As of the 5.1 buffs, AST is already topping the damage charts ahead of every other healer, and every tank. And buffing AST's MP (along with faster casts, etc) in stormblood is what sent the healer balance from the relatively balanced 'SCH+AST for farm, but WHM for prog' to the completely out of control 'SCH+AST for everything', so I'm a bit wary about this.

500 MP would be more reasonable, but I think it would be better still if the ability was on something not in the healer role.

Then why not make the "undesirable" cards more desirable, rather than tossing out the baby with the bathwater? The old card system had a minor flaw, and that could have been remedied without scrapping the whole thing and replacing it with something that I cannot even see the benefit of without a parser...

They started to do that.

What happened was more and more of the cards became DPS buffs. Inferior to Balance, however, so most people still sought that.

[Side-Eye]

They started to do that.

What happened was more and more of the cards became DPS buffs. Inferior to Balance, however, so most people still sought that.

Making all of the cards practically the same (and worse than Balance) was not making the old cards more desirable -- it was just a cheap, quick, easy thing to appease DPS who just wanted bigger epeens.

Squeenix could have kept the flavor of the old cards and simply made each better at its purpose, and given Spire a purpose to replace TP. And if they were going to kill off RR/spread, they could have attached a minor DPS boost to each of the cards so that they could provide their original benefits and still be useful on a recipient even if the original benefit wasn't particularly needed at the moment.

What they did was neither creative nor inspired; and it left a lot of AST mains wondering why the F so much was taken away that was scarcely related to the card system, like TD buff extension and AE stun.

[HyperiusUltima]

Making all of the cards practically the same (and worse than Balance) was not making the old cards more desirable -- it was just a cheap, quick, easy thing to appease DPS who just wanted bigger epeens.

Squeenix could have kept the flavor of the old cards and simply made each better at its purpose, and given Spire a purpose to replace TP. And if they were going to kill off RR/spread, they could have attached a minor DPS boost to each of the cards so that they could provide their original benefits and still be useful on a recipient even if the original benefit wasn't particularly needed at the moment.

What they did was neither creative nor inspired; and it left a lot of AST mains wondering why the F so much was taken away that was scarcely related to the card system, like TD buff extension and AE stun.

SE was looking to simplify things because there was too much going on for the player; the level of complexity was something they were looking at, and they wanted to slow it down so that it's not as difficult compared to having to throw cards around. Play fixed many of the Draw Issues when trying to spam it to get the action in because of ping, but either way they should have not removed CO's Stun. TD on the other hand could've been redone for just their own cards to nerf them a bit since it was generally applied to all buffs since inception. Again, look up above for what my suggestion is along with @Risvertasashi's arguments because mind you reverting back and forth from one thing to the other takes a lot of development time to test, perfect, and make sure everything works properly with the new system they had set up for Shadowbringers.

[Side-Eye]

SE was looking to simplify things because there was too much going on for the player; the level of complexity was something they were looking at, and they wanted to slow it down so that it's not as difficult compared to having to throw cards around.

If simplification was truly their goal, they failed spectacularly. Sure, sandpaper is more "simple" than a drill with a sandpaper attachment, but it takes a tremendous amount more work and effort to get similar results. After a session playing AST, my wrists sometimes actually ache from the constant re-targeting and clicking to use those 15 second tiny-dps-booster cards.

Furthermore, there was already a less complex option if one wanted to play a healer job without as much complexity. That's one of the things that has traditionally been great about this game: choices.

[Risvertasashi]

Squeenix could have kept the flavor of the old cards and simply made each better at its purpose, and given Spire a purpose to replace TP. And if they were going to kill off RR/spread, they could have attached a minor DPS boost to each of the cards so that they could provide their original benefits and still be useful on a recipient even if the original benefit wasn't particularly needed at the moment.

Well, for example, SE quite literally doubled the potency of bole, and people still found it to be useless.

So... how would you change it to make it useful? Either you make it not RNG (which means removing it from the card system), or you make it so powerful it breaks the game and lets you flat out ignore mechanics. Not quite as simple as "just make it better", is it?

[SleepyNeko]

Well, for example, SE quite literally doubled the potency of bole, and people still found it to be useless.

So... how would you change it to make it useful? Either you make it not RNG (which means removing it from the card system), or you make it so powerful it breaks the game and lets you flat out ignore mechanics. Not quite as simple as "just make it better", is it?

You can just keep the old cards but have the new Lady/Lord system, since lady/lord guarantees a dps increase effect on any card.

[Side-Eye]

Well, for example, SE quite literally doubled the potency of bole, and people still found it to be useless.

So... how would you change it to make it useful? Either you make it not RNG (which means removing it from the card system), or you make it so powerful it breaks the game and lets you flat out ignore mechanics. Not quite as simple as "just make it better", is it?

It could be better at its purpose by boosting two caster-centric attributes, so instead of just increasing MP regen, it could also decrease cost, or also make the next two casts MP-free, or also provide a lesser DPS boost, or also add a crit%, or....

I mean, I'm sure you get what I'm saying: there are ways to make a card better at its purpose without making that one boost so big it's game-breaking.
(edit: I mentioned caster stuff as an example but similar thinking can be applied to tank/defensive stuff too; a card need not have a single benefit, but two lessers to be better at its purpose)