AST Cards on GCD build

[LeftHandedLion]

(Part 1 of 3)

TL;DR
Put cards on GCD but with increased frequency.
Three Draws give one Minor Arcana. Two Minor Arcanas give one Divination. Repeat.
Button bloat is reduced by five.


Benefic upgrades to Benefic 2.
Synastry procs from Essential Dignity and Celestial Intersection.
Delete Astrodyne.
Delete Redraw. (Can shift learning Aspected Helios to level 40 action)
Draw, Play, Minor Arcana, Crown Play and Divination are all on GCD.
Draw doesn’t have charges anymore.
Draw can only be used in combat.
Draw has a recast timer of 15 seconds.

Basic 30 seconds rotation now looks like this:
0-15s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
15-30s Draw > Malefic > Play > Malefic > Malefic > (Repeat)
(Combust/Malefic between Draw and Play likely needed to give players time to decide who to give cards.)

Change damage buff percentages as needed to ensure increased frequency of cards and loss of Malefic casts balance out. Add effect where damage buff is high when cards are played on self to help with solo content.

At level 50, AST learns Minor Arcana and gains the trait where cards start giving Astrosigns.
Playing a card on a preferred target grants an astrosign. And playing a card on the incorrect target yields no astrosign. After getting three astrosigns, Draw turns into Minor Arcana. Minor Arcana consumes all three astrosigns, turns Play into Crown Play and grants Lord or Lady of Crowns.

Lord of Crowns gives you five stacks of Baleful that lasts 30 seconds. A stack of Baleful increases the potency of Malefic. Each Malefic cast also does a low-potency AoE heal around you.
Lady of Crowns grants you two stacks of Nocturnal that lasts 30 seconds. While you have stacks of Nocturnal, Benefic 2 and Helios turn into Nocturnal Benefic and Nocturnal Helios, have the same cast times as Benefic 2 and Helios, have no MP cost and have no direct heal but apply a shielding effect like Divine Benison. They both also do a malefic-equivalent potency AoE attack around you so they're worth using.

The potency effects of Lord and Lady of Crowns need to compensate for not playing a card on a party member or self via Draw. Both maintain their primarily offensive and defensive orientation but now have a little bit of the other to reduce to variability in performance due to the random drawing until level 70.

An opening 60 second rotation now looks like this:
0-15s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
15-30s Draw > Malefic > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
30-45s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
45-60s Minor Arcana > Malefic > Crown Play > Malefic > Malefic > Repeat

With Lady of Crowns, two Malefic casts within the next 30 seconds are replaced with Nocturnal Benefic or Nocturnal Helios uses. Lord of Crowns doesn’t change the rotation as you should be able to hit five Malefics and keep Draw on cooldown and refresh Combust appropriately.

[LeftHandedLion]

(Part 2 of 3)

At level 70, AST learns Divination and gains the trait Crown Seals.
With the trait, Lord and Lady of Crowns now gives you a Lord or Lady seal which is displayed on the updated job gauge. Additionally, when you have one seal, Minor Arcana draws the Crown card corresponding to the seal you don’t have. This ensures that each pair of Minor Arcana uses gives you one Lord and Lady each.

After getting both Crown seals, Draw turns into Divination. Divination consumes both Crown seals and is largely the same—AoE damage buff—but also draws a card for you to play so your rotation stays aligned to a 2-minute window.

The AST starts encounters with all astrosigns and seals so they can start off with Divination.
Minor Arcana and Divination share a recast timer with Draw so they stay aligned to the 15-second increments.

The two minute rotation now looks like this:
0-15s Divination > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
15-30s Draw > Malefic > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
30-45s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
45-60s Minor Arcana > Malefic > Crown Play > Malefic > Malefic >
60-75s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
75-90s Draw > Malefic > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
90-105s Draw > Combust > Play > Malefic > Malefic >
105-120s Minor Arcana > Malefic > Crown Play > Malefic > Malefic > (Repeat)

A downside to this setup is that your rotation drifts by 15 seconds if you give a card to an incorrect target once. I recommend bringing back Sleeve Draw to help mitigate this.
Sleeve Draw and the trait Lesser Fortune are learned somewhere between level 50 and 70. Sleeve Draw has a recast time of 2 minutes.
The trait Lesser Fortune gives you the buff Second Chance for 15 seconds when you play a card and don’t get an astrosign. Sleeve Draw can only be used when you have the buff Second Chance. Sleeve Draw draws a card and replaces the Second Chance buff with Lesser Fortune buff. Lesser Fortune halves the damage buff of the next card that’s played.

Even though Sleeve Draw can help fix your rotation, it gives access to another card which means people will intentionally misplay a card to be able to use it. Additionally, it’s an action you get while leveling so should be beneficial to use and not solely just for fixing a mistake. Going for Sleeve Draw comes at the cost of casting one less Malefic to use Play and introduces a little complexity to the rotation so the DPS gain should be carefully managed. I feel halving the damage buff is a good compromise but that might be too harsh.

Sleeve Draw in an opener would look something like this:
0-15s Draw > Combust > Play incorrectly [Sleeve Draw oGCD] > Malefic > Play >

[LeftHandedLion]

(Part 3 of 3)

Another downside is that there’s no purpose for having different astrosigns, you just need three to use Minor Arcana and it doesn’t matter which three they are. So theoretically, you just need two cards. One for ranged/healer and one for melee/tank. I think this is fine but the six cards are a large focus in the job quests and will likely continue to be the case. Therefore, they need a reason to exist. I recommend changing the cards a little and adding a trait to help this.

The trait Improved Minor Arcana is learned sometime after 50.
Effects are added to Minor Arcana corresponding to the astrosigns consumed at the time of use. These are fudged and might be too OP but importantly they don't enhance DPS in any way or else people will only go for that.
Solar astrosign effect: Reduces the recast time of Essential Dignity, Collective Unconscious, Celestial Opposition, Earthly Star, Celestial Intersection, Horoscope and Microcosmos by 5 seconds per Solar astrosign consumed.
Lunar astrosign effect: Increases healing magic potency of self by 4% per lunar astrosign consumed for 15 seconds.
Celestial astrosign effect: Reduces damage taken of self and nearby party members by 4% per celestial astrosign consumed for 15 seconds.

Lastly, since I recommended removing Redraw, I also recommend updating cards to give options for collecting astrosigns. Damage buff amounts would need to be adjusted per role so it’s not disadvantageous to give cards to tanks and healers.

Bole and Balance: Tank (Celestial), Healer (Lunar), DPS (none)
Ewer and Arrow: Healer (Lunar), DPS (Solar), Tank (none)
Spire and Spear: Tank (Celestial), DPS (Solar), Healer (none)

Spire and Spear should not be able to be drawn when playing solo.

The road to 100 can enhance Draw and Divination to do more, enhance the potency increase of the Baleful stacks, give AST a trait like BLM’s Thundercloud for Combust and call is Combustable.

With all of this, button bloat is reduced considerably.
Astrodyne and Redraw are gone. Minor Arcana and Divination are consolidated into Draw. Crown Play, into Play. Benefic upgrades to Benefic 2. Sleeve Draw is added back. That’s a net change of five actions.
With the rotation and having cards on GCD, there's a lot less oGCD buttons to press which is a pain point for many. AST also becomes about as mobile as RDM. Approximately every other GCD action is an instant cast.

The end. Bye. Have fun.

[Bonkleberry]

I personally feel this is not a problem for AST that actually exists. Card gameplay for AST is not an impossible or brkoen mechanic and I would not agree that button bloat for AST out of hand (I have more buttons to press on SCH and the same amount of buttons as WHM). AST is clearly in the midst of a redesign anyway, which is most likely complete and being tested, so pretty much all of these changes are being suggested for a build that is no longer relevant as well.

[Teno]

I personally feel this is not a problem for AST that actually exists. Card gameplay for AST is not an impossible or brkoen mechanic and I would not agree that button bloat for AST out of hand (I have more buttons to press on SCH and the same amount of buttons as WHM). AST is clearly in the midst of a redesign anyway, which is most likely complete and being tested, so pretty much all of these changes are being suggested for a build that is no longer relevant as well.

I just hope that it's not being tested by their healer tester whose requirement is to not have completed extreme. But that's probably the case...

[Leonerdo]

Draw needs charges to avoid drifting. Like when you need to use Aspected Helios as soon as it comes off cooldown.

RNG healing buffs are useless (the current Lady of Crowns already suffers from this.) If the healing buff isn't reliable in Savage/Ultimate, you just plan how to beat the heal checks without it. Then you just ignore it, unless it can save you an Aspected Helios and buy you an extra Malefic.

Any extra shielding abilities must be rationed carefully so that mitigation checks and shield healers are not trivialized. AST already has too much shielding with CU and Neutral Sect. So your Lady of Crowns idea is untenable.

The rest of the ideas are work-able.