AST Adjustments 6.2

[Denji]

I’m not super experienced with this job but here’s my humble suggestion for a reworked card system if AST is indeed getting major adjustments soon.

I feel that there needs to be a middle ground between the pre SHB card system and now. Reduce the damage buff to somewhere around 3% regardless of melee and ranged but now every card has a unique effect on top of the small damage buff. This means that you are dealing out cards based on the situation and the other jobs which sounds more interesting than just “got a blue card, give to the Sam, now it’s a pink card give it to the MCH” (I do know there is higher level skill expression with card timings).

Some of these effects could be:

-small regen/heal
-small mit/shield
-short movement speed buff (throw it on a melee during mechanics)
-a small MP restoration (healers and RDM would appreciate if they are rezzing)
-increase to healing received for a limited time, 10% or less (could be put on a tank or someone with vuln stacks)
-an Esuna or a status effect protection like Bard’s (would be pretty cool to esuna without using a GCD if the situation comes up)
-etc.

These effects aren’t crazy impactful enough so that ASTs who just wanna focus on damage buffs can’t just do that but it could be a fun way to contribute party utility. Some cards will inevitably be better than others, but it won’t be like pre SHB when the Balance was by far the best option because of how invaluable higher damage is.

The problem with making cards do different things is that the randomness makes most of those benefits useless unless you're in a very specific situation. You'd either be forced to hold onto a crappy card OR you'd just have to deal with mediocracy.

The only way I could see this working is either to allow one to redraw far more often — which might cause people to just hyperfocus on 1-2 cards because they're the meta — or to give a flat, generic boost to damage when you undraw so that it at least isn"t wasted.