The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

That's fair, and moving forward, I wouldn't want to just return to that format either. I've spent a lot of time trying to crack the code to the perfect card system because it's just an almost impossible concept to do well in this game's format. Trying to create 6 cards that are both randomized, feature different effects that aren't a burden on the player to remember, and are also somehow perfectly balanced is just a nightmare. I have examples of concepts that I think do well enough, but each features its own flaws.

Same.

Right now, probably the best I've got is simply to either...

• Return to a revitalized version of the Stormblood system (balancing both the Royal Roads effects and the Cards themselves, through uncapping the number of Card buffs active on a target, unnerfing Empower, splitting the power of Expand across recipient count, functional buffs to Bole, tuning buffs to Arrow and Spear, and replacements for Spire and Ewer),
  or
  
• Have every Card have a unique effect (that may synergize with others to create a degree of greater-than-sum value), with no Royal Road necessary.

In both cases, though, it seems like it might be a good idea to both have uncapped holding potential (such as per a no-CD Spread) and perhaps to split the potential outcomes (e.g., into a Northern and Southern deck, each of 3 choices).

Personally, I kind of like the Seal system, in that, per 90- or 120-second period, it gives us further reason to leverage otherwise less obviously useful Cards. It just needs a more decent pay-out, ideally capable of more than just raw damage.

[ASkellington]

Seals System can stay only if the combination of seals actually mean something other than refresh, damage and damage (because that's what haste boils down to) on self. As I've said before.

Bring back Ewer and Bole as an AOE option under w/e button it becomes (currently Astrodyne) and make Spire give a different affect. Cards are still meaningless outside of damage, and we can choose when to use Astrodyne's affect as we please. Don't need Refresh on the party, change the seals before you use Astrodyne.

Otherwise, reinstate the cards.

I'm not in favor of keeping the seals system because SE had two tries to make it worth while. I don't want to give them a third chance they honestly don't deserve.

[Shurrikhan]

Otherwise, reinstate the cards.

I'm not in favor of keeping the seals system because SE had two tries to make it worth while. I don't want to give them a third chance they honestly don't deserve.

Okay, but... Seals and the old Card system are synergetic, especially if you're going to leave some Cards with less direct rDPS influences, as it levels out their contribution so long as some of the Seals are provided only through otherwise those otherwise less often desirable (or, less easily leverageable) Cards.

They'll still be the worse Cards if spammed, but they're now still worth including at least once per Divination cycle, which then means ASTs have reason per cycle to find the best way they can to leverage those more effects of more situationally-varied value.

Yes, the reward still needs to be interesting and significant regardless, but the two systems do support each other by creating a second layer of Card value.

[ty_taurus]

Same.

Right now, probably the best I've got is simply to either...

• Return to a revitalized version of the Stormblood system (balancing both the Royal Roads effects and the Cards themselves, through uncapping the number of Card buffs active on a target, unnerfing Empower, splitting the power of Expand across recipient count, functional buffs to Bole, tuning buffs to Arrow and Spear, and replacements for Spire and Ewer),
  or
  
• Have every Card have a unique effect (that may synergize with others to create a degree of greater-than-sum value), with no Royal Road necessary.

In both cases, though, it seems like it might be a good idea to both have uncapped holding potential (such as per a no-CD Spread) and perhaps to split the potential outcomes (e.g., into a Northern and Southern deck, each of 3 choices).

Personally, I kind of like the Seal system, in that, per 90- or 120-second period, it gives us further reason to leverage otherwise less obviously useful Cards. It just needs a more decent pay-out, ideally capable of more than just raw damage.

The Northern/Southern aspect is something I've thought of before as well (though not with the same name choice. Yours is cooler)

My mind currently is dancing around this area...

- We have 2 "Draw" actions with separate cooldowns. Northern Draw and Southern Draw with using your naming scheme. Northern draws offensive cards and Southern draws defensive cards (or vice versa if I'm off base with the lore). Once you draw a card, that card is 'inactive' until you reshuffle the deck, meaning you can't draw it again.
- We have 3 "Play" actions with separate cooldowns. Solar Play, Lunar Play, and Celestial Play based on the signs. You play all cards to yourself and they do nothing initially when played. You can have up to 3 cards on yourself at a time and this is shown in your gauge UI. When drawing a card, it goes to the associated sign button.
- Celestial Opposition is changed to an action that applies your 3 stored cards to the party. Functionally, one way you might be able to create the concept of distributing these buffs based on recipient count is to have CO in this case apply 8 stacks of each buff divided equally among yourself and all party members in range. So in a light party, everyone would have 2 stacks of Balance.
- Reshuffle would have something like a 60 second cooldown with charges and replenishes your card supply and is essential to keep the card system going.
- After you use a card, a major arcana replaces it in the same associated "Play" action to be used. Which major arcana you get is based on the card you played. I'd like to actually dig into the lore more and have essentially....

Balance summons the Lord of Staves
Bole summons the Lord of Rings (that is a card in the AST's lore)
Arrow summons the Lady of Swords
Ewer summons the Lady of Cups
Spear summons the Knave of Irons
Spire summons the Knave of Crowns

Those are the suits in the AST's deck. That is a pretty complex list though, so I'm not sure how feasible it would be. But one idea is having both Lords be quite similar. Like Lord of Staves is AoE damage as it is currently and also decreases enemy magic damage dealt by 5% while Lord of Rings is the same but with physical damage. And so on so it's still quite easy to follow.

[Renathras]

Gonna clip this here and post these first and keep reading. Good discussion. (I still do think a healer should be left alone, but I like hammering out more specifically WHY some things are felt boring and, more specifically, what WOULD break that up vs what would NOT...and it's also interesting seeing that you guys are also not of the exact same mind on it, with some finding oGCDs interesting vs some not, and some noting it depends on the type and frequency and how they fit into the overall kit.)

That's a fair question.

So would it be fair to say it as...hm...god this is going to be a horrible comparison but...

Suppose you're walking at a slow pace in a straight line. Each footstep is Glare. Assize is like doing a studder step every 40 seconds. But if you're playing RDM, Jolt is taking a step, Fire is taking a step right, Stone is taking a step left, Aero is taking a jump left, Thunder is taking a jump right, and your melee combo is like breaking into a sprint.

In other words, Assize doesn't really break up what you're doing, since its CD is long enough you aren't using it super frequently, and so it doesn't really break up the monotony of taking one slow step after another slow step. Contrasted to RDM which is weaving and dodging and jumping and sprinting.

...maybe that's a bad way to explain it, but that kind of in the right ballpark?

[NOTE: In my reply to Askellington, I thought maybe of a metronome. Maybe that's the better way to explain it?]

Quick question:

If the icons for your DoTs/HoTs (without needing plugins) tracked the timer of their respective debuffs on your current target (last living target if none selected), would DoTs still annoy you, or would they just feel more like... soft-CDs?

They would still annoy me, but they would annoy me A LOT LESS. I still think DoTs without major interactions with the rest of one's kit are lazy and boring design. But I would be less antagonistic to them if that were so, I think. It would be less frustrating AND annoying and merely just annoying.

I think it honestly does have a lot to do with the icon/visual of it. As I've said, I don't mind NIN's damage upkeep buff (shows up as the fanblade/kunai fan ticking down and is apparent at a quick glance roughly how much is left by how much is lit up, and exactly how much is left by the big timer number) while I dislike WAR's (and DRG's) because it's a little buff icon with an even littlier number (I like DRG's the least because, in gameplay terms, it's also very [i]rigid[/] - WAR and NIN can stack theirs twice, which is both more flexible and, if under 30 seconds you use it a second time/early, it's not actually a DPS loss outside of buff windows as you simply have longer before needing to refresh it). In terms of player feedback, the interface doesn't give me the information I need to maintain it in a really usable way given the way I process data.

So it's part the visual and part the inflexibility - Dia should be used once every 30 seconds, no more, no less, so it's not as flexible as Storm's Eye or Armor Crush, which are both more flexible AND more forgiving, somehow making a lower and higher skill ceiling at the same time.

So a much more usable/visually informative interface showing it would probably be a lot nicer, yes. Hell, I'd settle for my DoT icon being 2x sized under the boss bar where I MIGHT see when it falls off out of the corner of my eye (a big thing disappearing might stand out vs something the same size as everything else disappearing).

I still would prefer buttons that just do direct damage, though, but if my DoTs were better visually communicated to me as a player, I would probably dislike them less. I still think it'd be nice if at least one healer didn't have them. Pre-6.0, one reason I liked RDM of the casters was that it was the one that didn't have a DoT while the other two did. I thought ShB Casters had a nice diversity of playstyles and none of the three played the same, and I think that's something every role should shoot for.

Assize, Macrocosmos and Earthly Star are not dps buttons. They heal and do damage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but optimal WHM play is to use Assize on CD for damage, right? "If it lines up with healing, that's just a happy coincidence" or something like that. Right? That is, it's used in high end play as a damage spell, not for the heal. If you can get useful healing by delaying it slightly, that's a gain, but only if it doesn't cost you an Assize use at the end of the fight (e.g. you can't delay more than a cumulative 40 seconds across an entire fight or it's a DPS loss). Do I not understand that correctly?

You may be right about Macrocosmos and Earthly Star (and Pneuma), as those are used for the healing. At least Pneuma is (it's damage neutral to Dosis, so there's no reason to use it NOT for the healing other than just a different button/visual/boredom)

So, only things that interrupt GCD spam count as buttons? Basically, Glare is being used as a metronome, and Assize doesn't interrupt the metronome, it just slides in during the swing and doesn't change the period in any way? Something like that?

How is Continuation different? It doesn't interrupt Gnashing Fang. Or is it more because Gnashing Fang itself is a separate button from 1-2-3? That is, pressing Continuation isn't the fun part, pressing Gnashing Fang instead of Keen/Brutal/Solid is the fun part?

Not disagreeing that those don't exactly feel like offensive "rotational kit" or the like, but...

One thing I've wondered is if giving Assize a 2 charge system would help. Granted, some people would use that as an optimization excuse to put it into buff windows, but I'm more thinking it then gives you the flexibility to put off using it for 10-20 seconds (39, actually) so you could intelligently hold it short periods to maximize its use (not overhealing but getting useful healing) while still not losing a cast over a fight as long as you prevent overcapping. Similarly to gap closers being used for damage, but because of having 2/3 charges, one charge can always be held for disengage/reengage uptime, which feels good to players. Choice often feels like a good thing. If it's not optimal but is NEARLY optimal (that is, not a big loss), choice can still feel good. "use on CD" is often not really fun because it's not really a choice. You're either doing it right or you're doing it wrong.

Phlegma breaks my Dosis spams however super brief that moment is, Assize do not stop me from Glare spams. ... Which is a gross simplification from my end, but everybody else already added the relevant points.

Basically, breaking up the metronome? Yeah, makes sense.

Short answer would be: yes.

Huh. That's so weird to me. This would mean, for example, say WHM had Continuation (of some kind) every 3 Glare GCDs as a weave as well as Bow Shock and Blasting Zone (basically just two more oGCDs, one on a 30 sec and one a 60 sec timer), such that game play was 245-1-1-13-1-1-135-1-1-13-1-1-13-25-1-1-13-1-1-135-1-1-13-1-1-13-245repeat
(Basically, like PLD's 1-2-3 generating a HS cast, just here as oGCDs)

...that that wouldn't be more fun than 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1.

I guess if it's not, it's not - I fully accept what people find fun is a lot like asking what someone's favorite ice cream flavor is, and there's not a "wrong" answer to what you find fun (as long as it's not illegal, I guess, lol), it just might be different than someone else's favorite flavor/fun - but I can't mentally see how those two would feel like identical gameplay to someone. I guess if they do to you, they do. I'm just confused as to the why.

OGCD elements can supplement GCD rotations to some level. Look at BRD, a DPS with a GCD rotation that's really not much more deep than the healers even. You've got:

Found this post pretty interesting all around.

So to you, oGCDs...can feel interesting (and even overwhelm people) if they have short-ish CDs, variable timers (the ones that can refresh faster; MCH also does this with Hypercharge/Heated Shot), and shifting around through its oGCD kit depending on what part of the rotation it's on?

Also interesting on AST. I didn't really mess with it much until ShB other than unlocking it and leveling it a bit in HW and SB (I think I had it to level 50 or whenever you get all the cards before ShB, anyway; definitely remember the old cards and having to rebuild my hotbars after 5.0). I guess I always thought it had a second DoT. Didn't realize it was only EVER Malific/Combust. o.O

[glamazon]

Same.

Right now, probably the best I've got is simply to either...

• Return to a revitalized version of the Stormblood system (balancing both the Royal Roads effects and the Cards themselves, through uncapping the number of Card buffs active on a target, unnerfing Empower, splitting the power of Expand across recipient count, functional buffs to Bole, tuning buffs to Arrow and Spear, and replacements for Spire and Ewer),
  or
  
• Have every Card have a unique effect (that may synergize with others to create a degree of greater-than-sum value), with no Royal Road necessary.

In both cases, though, it seems like it might be a good idea to both have uncapped holding potential (such as per a no-CD Spread) and perhaps to split the potential outcomes (e.g., into a Northern and Southern deck, each of 3 choices).

Personally, I kind of like the Seal system, in that, per 90- or 120-second period, it gives us further reason to leverage otherwise less obviously useful Cards. It just needs a more decent pay-out, ideally capable of more than just raw damage.

I don't get why people don't like his ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNJGY9B7VW4&t=139s it seems he has a well thought out plan to make ast work

[Renathras]

As a person who actually went through Shb and EW as an AST though, I'll respectfully disagree. Its by far the worst of the three healers considering half your cards don't benefit you and you do the lowest damage because buffing healer.

That's fair, and moving forward, I wouldn't want to just return to that format either. I've spent a lot of time trying to crack the code to the perfect card system

Not that this is a good idea (it's literally a "just popped into my head" idea), but I'm curious what you'd think about either of these:

1) Making Cards (Draw and Play) GCDs. If you have a hostile target (not friendly), Draw deals damage equal to a Malific (more or less) to the targeted enemy. (If we want to make things wild, we could make it do a Benefic's healing to a friendly if targeting a friendly, but it could also just do nothing. Play grants the card buff to the targeted ally and grants the AST "High Malific Ready" where their next Malific is upgraded to High Malific, identical to Malific in cast time and MP cost (and takes up the Malific button on your hotbar), but does 2x damage (damage neutral for Play being a GCD) and has a more explody/grand/pretty visual effect.

This would break up Malific spam with two buttons every 20 seconds, Draw and Play, with Draw dealing damage and Play boosting the effect of your following Malific as well as making it have a different VFX to change up the monotony some. I'm not sure this would break things up a ton, but it would make juggling cards in buff windows slightly less insane, and since Draw does damage and Play grants High Malific, you could take some time to consider who you want to apply them to (that is, you wouldn't need to Draw and only have 2.5 sec to think of and target the party member you want to apply to, you could put a Combust or Malific or two in between if you really felt you needed to and still be damage neutral). Would that make solo things a smidge more interesting and/or group play a little more fun and less clunky in burst?

2) Introduce the ability "Offensive Play". The AST inverts their Arcana card, playing it as a curse rather than a blessing. This outright turns cards into damage spells. Could also make it where doing so doesn't generate a seal (like old Minor Arcana use in ShB if you were fishing for your 3rd seal or were sitting on 3 and didn't want to muck that up before the burst window) if that would be nice, but could still generate a seal. Not sure which ASTs would like more. Either way, This would let the AST break up their rotation a bit with Draw and Play/Offensive Play being GCDs, and in solo play, the AST has another DPS button to press. Once you've buffed yourself, you could burn the other cards for offense instead. They could be designed to do more damage than Malific (a DPS gain) without changing group play since buffing a DPS (even with 3%) would always be worth more than, say, 2x or 3x Malifics. But in solo play, Offensive Play being 2x Malific worth of damage (or even 3x) would help speed solo encounters, where AST suffers from low DPS while also breaking up their rotation and giving the Job a niche (solo play only) optimization of using Offensive Play intelligently in buff windows.

Might something like that be useful?

Again, these were literally "just popped into my head", so I fully anticipate they could be really horrible ideas. Just curious your takes on them. If we actually had cards with different effects, Offensive Play could work differently, but even just being an attack would help AST kill things faster in solo and break up the monotony of the rotation, and Draw/Play (with or without Offensive Play) being GCD would break up the Malificspam metronome. Even if oGCD, Offensive Play would reduce the time to kill in solo encounters.

I dunno, it was just a thought...

Oh, and on Gravity - with a 5% damage reduction, how would you prevent this from just being kept up entire fights? Is there falloff/immunity on damage downs on bosses like how Stun works? I was thinking there wasn't because of the way Feint/Addle/Reprisal/Dismantle work and can be stacked/chained. Which is why they all have lengthy CDs to prevent just keeping the boss damage down-ed doing 5% less damage for entire fights. Didn't think there was an immunity to that...is there?

Not to mention the one thing I like about AST (my least favorite healer by a mile) is that it's the only one that doesn't have to stand in the center of the enemy pack in order to AOE. I like that Gravity doesn't require that. I wish SCH or SGE had a ranged option just to make them not identical with a different visual being the only distinction...

.

The reason the cards were all changed to boring damage is because people only fished for Balance before ShB, with a few exceptions if Royal Road (I think the name was) was up.

One possible solution I've seen before is if all cards did the same damage buff (so no matter which is used, they all confer that "optimal" benefit), but they have some secondary effects (things like MP refresh) to make them distinct while not trading damage for those other effects. Granted, I'm not sure what the effects would be now that the 2 min window exists and so Spell Speed and Skill Speed buffs are bad, and TP no longer exists, etc.

[Shurrikhan]

Gonna clip this here and post these first and keep reading. Good discussion. (I still do think a healer should be left alone, but I like hammering out more specifically WHY some things are felt boring and, more specifically, what WOULD break that up vs what would NOT...and it's also interesting seeing that you guys are also not of the exact same mind on it, with some finding oGCDs interesting vs some not, and some noting it depends on the type and frequency and how they fit into the overall kit.)

Yeah, this is seeming a lot more productive. Taking a bend towards the concrete definitely has seemed helpful.

A couple notes, from snippets of yours above.

In my reply to Askellington, I thought maybe of a metronome. Maybe that's the better way to explain it?

I... think that's a decent analogy, yeah. To me it's the difference between [A] and [B] vs. the difference between [A] and just [A+], but that's not a particularly precise analogy either, so... /shrug.

One thing I've wondered is if giving Assize a 2 charge system would help.

A quick rule of thumb, to me, is that charges only at best free up whatever number of casts per cycle necessarily cannot be buffed by the raid cycle anyways, because, as you said, "people would... put it into buff windows." For a 40s CD like Assize, a second charge offers 40s of freedom.

However, that freedom will also detract from rewards for skillful variance (e.g., for specifically wasting uptime on Assize in order to, to greater net effect, avoid GCD healing), so there's a balance even there. Because this isn't the only way to fill a function (healing), compared to a second charge on a sole gap-closer, a second charge here grants far less to accessibility compared to what it takes from skill ceiling.

As such, I'd really, really like to see oGCD healing tuned down first (which doesn't even necessarily make healing any harder so much as just reduce Glare casts over time --which can be compensated for anyways with bonus potency on offensive casts-- and make MP a little bit less of just a rez meter) such that holding Assize would be rewarded, more so than to simply embrace that "there's no point in holding CDs anyways" failing of context by jumping straight to a second charge and 1 in 3 Assize casts being freely timeable.

If there's something that fails just because of context and a fix for that context would help other areas too and isn't that far a reach, I feel like we should deal with the failing in context first and then see what feels best for each individual skill.

I don't get why people don't like his [Sariex's] ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNJGY9B7VW4&t=139s it seems he has a well thought out plan to make ast work

Not sure why this was given in response to my defense of the Seal system, but... my concerns (8 or 9 of them, iirc) were already listed out right at the top of the comments page.

[ty_taurus]

So to you, oGCDs...can feel interesting (and even overwhelm people) if they have short-ish CDs, variable timers (the ones that can refresh faster; MCH also does this with Hypercharge/Heated Shot), and shifting around through its oGCD kit depending on what part of the rotation it's on?

Also interesting on AST. I didn't really mess with it much until ShB other than unlocking it and leveling it a bit in HW and SB (I think I had it to level 50 or whenever you get all the cards before ShB, anyway; definitely remember the old cards and having to rebuild my hotbars after 5.0). I guess I always thought it had a second DoT. Didn't realize it was only EVER Malific/Combust. o.O

I'd say Hypercharge/Heated Shot/Ricochet is very easy to perform because it's a specific structure that works exactly one way. It's fast-paced, and latency used to create some issues, but actually performing it is easy. I would say it's satisfying though. You have a rapid GCD timer and you're alternating between two OGCDs, and it's nice that Heated Shot and Ricochet are also maintained outside of Hypercharge and are not just buttons that exist for Hypercharge.

On BRD, it's the fact that the use of the OGCDs is not structured. There are procs for several things both on and off the GCD, and the cooldowns are short. I don't think BRD is that great at the moment, like I feel like having 2 selfish buffs and 2 party buffs all with the same 2 minute cooldown just feels kind of cluttered when it could be cleaned up, and Army's Paeon is kind of a dull phase where the job slows down considerably, but I'm also not a BRD main so I wouldn't take my opinions on it too seriously.

I'm not sure if this is necessarily the angle you were going for when you initially brought up the question, but I don't really think having a healer that has a 2-3 button GCD rotation with a small handful of OGCDs would feel great to the casual healer. Being able to keep the GCD rolling while weaving OGCDs is a skill that I don't think many newer, casual, or less experienced players are all that good at performing, at least not from let's play videos I've seen of players experiencing the story for the first time. It could also be in part the focus on being entertaining and engaging with their audience at the same time, though.

This is also why when I talk about wanting depth from WHM, I mention that it should stay low APM. A job can be fun without many OGCDs and can offer room for skill development, such as BLM, and it can also be simple while allowing for more actions to work with consistently throughout an encounter. And if this were accomplished, WHM could still feel easy to approach, just with more room for development from the more experience WHM players.

1) Making Cards (Draw and Play) GCDs.

I'm all in favor of making the cards GCDs. Not everyone is on my side with that one, but besides the theorycrafting I've been posting today on here, my current iteration looks like this:
You have Solar Draw and Lunar Draw, two GCD actions with cooldowns. Solar is offensive cards, Lunar is defensive. They don't share a cooldown. Both drawing and playing cards are separate GCDs. The cards do not activate on your target immediately when you play them. Any party member can have a Solar card and a Lunar card, but not more than 1 of either. Celestial Opposition is another GCD that activates all Lunar cards on all nearby party members, activating their effects all at once, such as Bole's 10% mitigation. Celestial Fate is a GCD that activates all Solar cards. Celestial Intersection is a light GCD heal that activates both on a single target (good for tankbusters essentially). All of these GCD actions grant the AST a lodestar which orbits around them (both the drawing and playing of the cards). Stargazer is an OGCD action you weave that grants 2 stacks that allow your next spell or weapon skill to detonate one of the Lodestars, which deals malefic potency damage to the first target struck by the spell or weaponskill and 50% less for remaining enemies. Using Stargazer on another party member will cause them to detonate your stars for you, allowing you to spend considerably less time attacking enemies and having your party apply your DPS for you, though it can still be used on yourself for soloing.

There's more support for this system, such as Divination giving a solar card to the party as your buff window button, but that's the crux of the job concept. In addition, I also removed Combust in this concept for Asterism, a 2 charge GCD spell with a 30 second cooldown that generates 2 Lodestars on use. This means AST has no DoT, but has an equivalent that doesn't require a target and further supports their "attack through my allies" nature.

Oh, and on Gravity - with a 5% damage reduction, how would you prevent this from just being kept up entire fights? Is there falloff/immunity on damage downs on bosses like how Stun works? I was thinking there wasn't because of the way Feint/Addle/Reprisal/Dismantle work and can be stacked/chained. Which is why they all have lengthy CDs to prevent just keeping the boss damage down-ed doing 5% less damage for entire fights. Didn't think there was an immunity to that...is there?

Currently, the limiting factor is the higher MP cost and the short 5 second duration. You wouldn't want to keep it up indefinitely because even in savage fights, you'll still have large breaks where no damage is being dealt, and trying to would just kill your MP. That said, it's entirely possible it needs more restriction than that and more structure. Perhaps that Premonition skill I mentioned, the 2 minute AoE burst attack could also apply 3 stacks of an effect that, when casting Gravity on that target, that's what gets you the 5% mitigation and consumes the stack, so you have 3 instances of light mitigation per 2 minutes. Or something like that could work.

One possible solution I've seen before is if all cards did the same damage buff (so no matter which is used, they all confer that "optimal" benefit), but they have some secondary effects (things like MP refresh) to make them distinct while not trading damage for those other effects. Granted, I'm not sure what the effects would be now that the 2 min window exists and so Spell Speed and Skill Speed buffs are bad, and TP no longer exists, etc.

Because Damage is king in this game, utility cards wouldn't be played on Tanks or Healers, so those effects would get ignored outside of the absolute most tragic scenarios. Because sure, Bole being a 6% DPS buff with an added 10% mitigation seems equal to every other effect, but putting that on the tank (unless it's DRK during their burst window) is just not nearly as valuable as ignoring the mitigation and putting it on the DPS anyway. You'd end up in almost the same predicament that the old cards were in.

[ForsakenRoe]

Some people like the business of AST weaving, some people think it's gone too far. I don't know if GCD cards is the solution, but maybe half-GCD like DNC steps or NIN mudras would retain some of the business, while still being a bit more lenient (you don't have to doubleweave like a madman, and can just go like, card, malefic, card, malefic, card, to give breathing room to see who to throw the card on)

I've said in the past that we can have thematic unique buffs, they just have to be balanced correctly. That relies on SE actually being competent enough to do so. I said Balance as flat damage, Spire as Physical damage, Ewer as Magic damage, Spear as Crit bonus, Arrow as 'autoattack speed' (so it doesn't throw off people's GCD/2min alignment), and Bole as Damage Mit, plus a reflect effect that counters for X potency when the Bole'd target is hit. If this were a game where people weren't so... obsessed? with 'perfect balance' in the card effects, one idea I had was to have a way, probably by moving Phys damage to Spear and putting this on Spire, to give a job a way to use a skill when they normally couldn't. For example, throwing it on a DRG so they can get a Stardiver, even outside of Life. Or a RPR getting a free Gluttony (without the soul reaver stacks, so it doesnt change the rotation, just extra OGCD damage). That definitely couldnt be balanced though, so it's staying on the cutting room floor. Don't see why the other stuff couldn't be in though.