Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
Yeah. Though never say never - FFXIV has shifted in the past, and may yet again. Honestly, the stuff about AST that I thought was most interesting (though I can't imagine doing it while juggling heals) was some of the modifiers and stuff you could do with them back in...HW/SB? I don't remember the ability names, but where you could draw a different card, turn a card into a diminished effect but AOE, swap a card into the Minor Arcana (think this was ShB when I finally got around to leveling it - I feel that to be a truly good healer, one should at least understand the other healer kits, even if not using them, so you have some idea how your abilities mesh with the randoms you're paired with in DF content), and so on. I felt that was kind of an interesting bit of gameplay that was unique from the other healers.
I actually LOVED HW/SB AST's card system so much. A lot of what you said is correct, I'll try to explain it in a bit more detail. In HW, you drew the same 6 cards as you did now, but they all had unique effects:
Balance: Increases target's damage dealt
Bole: Decreases target's damage taken
Arrow: Haste effect on target (Faster GCD)
Spear: OGCD cooldown reduction on target
Ewer: MP Regen on target
Spire: TP Regen on target

But of course, simply throwing the vanilla card it self without "buffing" it first with another card using the skill "Royal Road" was something you rarely did. Instead, you would draw a card and "burn" it with Royal Road, which made the next card you play have an additional effect. Each card had its own separate "burn" buff:
Balance and Bole (Enhanced): Increased potency of next card played by 150%
Arrow and Spear (Extended): Increased duration of next card played by 200%
Ewer and Spire (Expanded): Made the next card play as an AoE for all party members, but potency reduced by 50%

So the main goal of course was to get AoE Balance, you would generally burn a Ewer or Spire then pray you got Balance. You'd live with AoE Arrow sometimes as a budget Balance when you couldn't get it. But the real fun was enhanced Arrows on BLMs. They'd cast Fire 4s like a race car, it was awesome. You'd throw it on a MNK and they'd hate you for ruining their rotation hahah, or make PLDs run out of TP even faster than they already did.

In Stormblood (I think), they changed Spear from OGCD cooldown reduction to increased crit chance. This was baller. You'd throw an Extended Spear on BRDs and they'd proc like crazy. They also added Minor and Major Arcana for those times you had too many cards and/or already had everyone with an AoE Balance. Lady of Crowns was a single target small heal, Lord of Crows was a single target damage spell. Kind of meh, but it was okay. The best thing was Sleeve Draw: you could now "store" a card in your deck for later, which meant if you drew Balance before having Royal Road set up, you could "hold" it for later, draw a new card, Royal Road that, then throw out that Balance. Mad fun.