AST changes for 6.0: Let's forget 5.0 happened, and just fix what was wrong with 4.0

[ShinShimon]

A lot of us have adjusted to new AST (and a lot haven't...). But general opinion still seems to be that 3.0/4.0 AST was better. Hopefully we can have something like that system back in 6.0. But, there were serious problems with 3.0/4.0 AST. Could we have a new old AST, that fixes these problems?

Yes!

Using the old card system as a starting point, make the following changes:
Balance: 10% damage buff
Bole: 20% damage resist buff
Spear: 10% crit buff
Arrow: 10% direct hit buff
Spire: 10% physical damage buff
Ewer: 10% magic damage buff
The Arrow change will prevent the card from messing up people's rotations by buffing attack speed. The Spire and Ewer changes will mean that there are no more useless cards. In fact, they will be as good as Balance in parties with the right composition. And even in casual parties with all physical/ranged DPS, they can be used on tanks/healers for some damage buff.

On top of that, remove Expanded Royal Road; a 5% damage buff to the whole party was too powerful, buffing everyone is less interesting than having to choose who gets our beloved Balance. Also, give us a long-CD, out-of-combat ability that gives two Balances and Extended/Enhanced Royal Road, so that nobody has to waste time with pre-pull card-fishing.

This revised card system will make RNG management more forgiving, but still allow for optimization by skilled players.
Only 1 card won't give any damage buff (Bole); depending on party composition, 1/3 or 1/2 of the cards will give a full 10% damage boost; you won't have to fish for Expanded Royal Road, because it won't exist. But we will still have to know which jobs benefit more from crit or more from DH, and we'll have to decide if it's worth it to give Ewer to the crappy BLM, or reroll and hope we get a Balance or Spire to buff the killer SAM... even if we risk getting a Spear or Arrow or Bole instead.

In addition to this just being a better system than 5.0 AST (opinions vary, of course...) it remains true that nobody asked for the old card system to be completely replaced. Even if the replacement is just as good, it still represents a fundamental break with the trust of the players to gut a unique job with a devoted player base. Of course, we would have to gut new-AST to restore old-AST, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as loved by the player base as old AST. And with a new healer job likely coming out in 6.0, it can take inspiration from the best elements of new-AST, while old-AST is restored to its former glory. So give us back our old job. Pretty please, Yoshi-P?


PS. Can we also get back Time Dilation and the buff extension on Celestial Opposition? The other fun part of AST was double-extending three HoTs on the tank, and then spending the next 20 seconds instant-casting Gravity on dungeon trash.

[Side-Eye]

I would like to see Divination as a standalone ability, independent of seals. With that change, some variety could be brought back to the cards, AST healers could use Redraw more for replacing a card buff they don't need at the moment (instead of frequently spamming it for a seal).

I'd also agree with the OP in restoring Celestial Opposition's stun -- even if it remains to be a small group heal. As for Time Dilation, I'd love to see it back, but I'm not sure devs want the challenge of trying to balance the potential damage increase of extending buffs.

Oh, and in regards to my thought of dropping the seal requirement for Divination: there are tons of ways to revamp the AST job gauge. I just think that if Yoshi's true intention for making all card buffs similar was to reduce fishing, he needs to consider that 5.0 merely replaced one type of fishing with another.

[GrimGale]

I'd rather have all cards grant a baseline percentage buff to all damage to mitigate the fishing for specific cards. Then you can get creative with the choices. We also have enough substats to give each card something if you count Piety and Tenacity.

Balance: Determination
Bole: Tenacity
Arrow: SkSp/SpSp
Spear: Crit
Spire: D.Hit
Ewer:Piety

[Kurando]

As much as I would like the old AST effects back, it'll only result in the job being an almost must-pick for raids, log runs and whatever else, so I don't think Yoshi wants it going back to that. More curious about the new healer and what they will bring rather than AST at the moment, can come back to that later

[MintnHoney]

As much as I would like the old AST effects back, it'll only result in the job being an almost must-pick for raids, log runs and whatever else, so I don't think Yoshi wants it going back to that. More curious about the new healer and what they will bring rather than AST at the moment, can come back to that later

You know what would help mitigate that?
Granting utility to other healers.

[Eloah]

You know what would help mitigate that?
Granting utility to other healers.

wouldn't that just make it worse? Cause then it would be who brings the best utility, ostracizing the one healer who can't cut it. I'll admit that the current card system is a bit meh, but if you think about it its implementation makes sense, given how a majority of the players only wanted Balances anyways. I'm sure SE can figure out a way to update the cards, but it'll need to be in a new fashion, not an old one.

[ShinShimon]

As much as I would like the old AST effects back, it'll only result in the job being an almost must-pick for raids, log runs and whatever else, so I don't think Yoshi wants it going back to that. More curious about the new healer and what they will bring rather than AST at the moment, can come back to that later

Without being able to give a 5% buff to the entire party, I don't think new-old-AST would be any stronger than new-AST. New-AST is still the only healer with regular damage buffs for the party, and it was only Expanded Royal Road which made old-AST OP.

If this is still too much, then individual card values can be nerfed. I wouldn't mind if Balance was 7% or even 5%, as long as we got the old distinction between cards back.

[Jaelommiss]

Using the old card system as a starting point, make the following changes:
Balance: 10% damage buff
Bole: 20% damage resist buff
Spear: 10% crit buff
Arrow: 10% direct hit buff
Spire: 10% physical damage buff
Ewer: 10% magic damage buff

This is just another flavour of "cards are damage" except some are objectively inferior (spear is roughly a 5% damage increase, arrow is a 2.5% damage increase) and reverting to the 4.0 mistake of placing defensive and offensive tools on the same resource. Splitting spire and ewer between physical and magical is almost identical to the current melee/ranged divide, except magic damage jobs are less common.

It's simply the current system with a new coat of paint and trap options thrown in for good measure.

Reintroducing Royal Road is a good idea that would add depth to the card system. As long as Draw's CD stays divorced from Play I'd like to see it brought back. I'd also like to see more cards drawn per unit time. One card every 30 secs is far too infrequent for what is supposedly AST's defining ability.

[Marxam]

I doubt we will ever go back to old AST due to a combination of complexity to new players and the devs inability to actually teach the new players. They also removed TP and buffed the hell out of mana regens. Their idea of 'balance' is to reduce buff potency so low that the margins are only felt in min-maxs. AST went from possible 20-30% dmg buff with RR to a measly 3-6% in 5.0 so I'm pretty sure they will nerf it even further in 6.0 by removing the dmg buff and just making a straight crit buff to compensate the new healer we will be getting.

That being said, they need to remove Undraw. It's literally useless since Play has no time limit and you could hold a card till Draw is off cd and have simultaneous buffs and despite the tool tip says it returns the card to your deck, it does not reset Draw, which you think it would. Replace Undraw with 'Set', that places your card face down/up, depending on if it had a blue or purple border. Blue border will double the potency the longer it stays (similar to Earthly Star) and Purple Border will create and aoe that buffs players as long as they are in it. Regardless of color it will buff all players instead of the blue = melee and purple = ranged.

[ShinShimon]

This is just another flavour of "cards are damage" except some are objectively inferior (spear is roughly a 5% damage increase, arrow is a 2.5% damage increase) and reverting to the 4.0 mistake of placing defensive and offensive tools on the same resource. Splitting spire and ewer between physical and magical is almost identical to the current melee/ranged divide, except magic damage jobs are less common.

It's simply the current system with a new coat of paint and trap options thrown in for good measure.

Reintroducing Royal Road is a good idea that would add depth to the card system. As long as Draw's CD stays divorced from Play I'd like to see it brought back. I'd also like to see more cards drawn per unit time. One card every 30 secs is far too infrequent for what is supposedly AST's defining ability.

1 non-damage card is fine, because it can always be safely rerolled for a damage card if you draw it, and allows for one critical fail state if you take a risky reroll. However, it can always be Spreaded to mitigate a tankbuster later. Risky RNG is good, that's the whole point of AST.

Some cards being straight-up better than others is the whole point. Again, RNG is good. The fun of the old card system was planning around the RNG on the fly to get the most out of your buffs. There is no point to AST if every card is functionally identical, but it's ok for almost every card to be a damage buff, because not all damage buffs are created equal. Some have more utility than others, some have more utility on certain jobs than others (like giving 4.0 Arrow to BLM or SAM, or Spear to Bard). Even if Spire and Ewer just follow the current melee/ranged divide, it would still be a fundamentally different system to new-AST if it exists alongside meaningful card diversity and Spread, Redraw, and Royal Road.