Hypothetical ultimatum: Yoshi P comes to the forums

[Renathras]

Surely throwing AST under the bus is fine because it's not possible to make AST even worse than it is already in 7.0? Don't quote me on this.

<monkey's paw intensifies>

Instead we're going to get a third rework to cards, which still keeps the Seals system and it'll still feel super tacked on

As you know, I'm a self-described anti-expert on AST (that is, state often how little I know of it and its history); didn't they add the Seals in ShB to replace Cards having different effects being lost? I unlocked AST way earlier, but didn't actually level it until ShB.

I do think the idea someone had of having damage cards and defensive/healing/utility cards be on two separate things would be a good idea (like imagine if Minor Arcana Lady gave you Celestial Intersection and Lord gave you Exaltation), and though the old AST Cards wouldn't all work, things like MP Regen are still valid (e.g. RDM had to use some Verraises or you just raised yourself or the other Healer and Lucid isn't up), and we can see from BRD that you can have different buffs that are appreciably equal. Yes, some are a bit mathematically better, but 1% flat damage, 3% direct hit rate, 2% crit rate are not RIDICULOUSLY far apart in effectiveness. So AST cards doing something like X% damage, 1.5-2X% crit, and 3X% or so direct hit could be cards a bit different that are still useful and reward knowledge of which classes and at which part of their rotations find which ones the most useful. (Not saying those ratios, but saying it should be...possible, maybe?)

The Seal system just seems not to work. They tried it with Divination, and they've now tried it with Astrodyne, and in both cases, it just seems to be a flop. Seems to be one of those "sticking to their guns even when it's clearly not working" things.

[Aravell]

All we can do is hope they have enough common sense, and enough willpower to put their damn pride out of the way for once

Pride is what caused them to double down on all their terrible decisions lately, I highly doubt they'll ever swallow their pride and listen to the playerbase unless there's a unified outcry. But hey, maybe 7.0 AST will pleasantly surprise us and actually not be a total mess of disjointed systems tacked onto each other and are only vaguely related while also giving the player carpal tunnel every 2 minutes.

[ForsakenRoe]

As you know, I'm a self-described anti-expert on AST (that is, state often how little I know of it and its history); didn't they add the Seals in ShB to replace Cards having different effects being lost? I unlocked AST way earlier, but didn't actually level it until ShB.

I do think the idea someone had of having damage cards and defensive/healing/utility cards be on two separate things would be a good idea (like imagine if Minor Arcana Lady gave you Celestial Intersection and Lord gave you Exaltation), and though the old AST Cards wouldn't all work, things like MP Regen are still valid (e.g. RDM had to use some Verraises or you just raised yourself or the other Healer and Lucid isn't up), and we can see from BRD that you can have different buffs that are appreciably equal. Yes, some are a bit mathematically better, but 1% flat damage, 3% direct hit rate, 2% crit rate are not RIDICULOUSLY far apart in effectiveness. So AST cards doing something like X% damage, 1.5-2X% crit, and 3X% or so direct hit could be cards a bit different that are still useful and reward knowledge of which classes and at which part of their rotations find which ones the most useful. (Not saying those ratios, but saying it should be...possible, maybe?)

The Seal system just seems not to work. They tried it with Divination, and they've now tried it with Astrodyne, and in both cases, it just seems to be a flop. Seems to be one of those "sticking to their guns even when it's clearly not working" things.

Yep, it was added in SHB as a way to try and keep 'play cards that are not Balance, please' as a thing. Instead of making the cards have unique and interesting effects, and encouraging the player to partake of some non-Balance effects, instead we got 'all balances' and the encouragement was by making Divination scale in potency based on how much you played the Seal minigame. After they decided, for whatever reason, that tying 'the potency of the raidwide buff' to RNG was a bad idea, now we instead have it as 'it powers a selfbuff that contributes so little to your damage over the course of the fight, crit variance is a bigger threat to your barse'

For the second paragraph, I've given an example of how they could make unique, interesting effects for each card, while also keeping them relatively balanced between each other by making them singletarget only, as they are now. As I've harped on about before, AOE Balance was not the whole issue. AOE Balance was the issue. By keeping them singletarget, it'd give them room to tweak relative potencies easier. For example, say you have Balance as 5% damage for everyone, and Spire as X% magic damage for everyone. How do you work out what X should be? Is it going to be balanced around having 2 healers, one caster? What about if there's 2 casters, or what if there's PLD/DRK instead of WAR GNB and they get some extra mileage too?

So once again, my solution would be this:
Balance - 10% damage up (use on anyone, the 'wildcard' as it were)
Arrow - Massive autoattack speed increase (use on melee, ranged, maybe on PLD to give them an extra Sheltron for funny meme strats)
Spear - 10% Crit rate increase (with the changes to how Crit can overcap now, best used on 'guaranteed crit' type classes like SAM)
Bole - 20% mitigation, also applies a barrier which, when struck, counters with a damage of X potency (tune as needed, best used on tanks but still grants RDPS to the AST from the reflect)
Ewer - MP restoration, if used on a healer it also grants a 'spell reverberation' effect where using a GCD damage skill causes an additional hit of X potency (cannot crit/dhit for balance reasons)
Spire - 10% magic damage (balance but caster specific basically)

Now they have some flavour, some decision-making to do based on your comp/the role the card is best on, and you don't need to worry about the potential issue of 'oh what if you draw Ewer, Ewer, Ewer and cry' because Redraw doesn't let you get a card of the Seal type that the one you're binning is. So Redrawing a Ewer means you can't get another Ewer or an Arrow.

I do agree with their thinking, that if they're going to make the cards all be 'Balance in effect, but with different names' then there needs to be SOMEthing that makes you think about what cards you want to use. The Seals system seems to be that, in theory at least. But the issue with it is that in it's first incarnation, the punishment (lower raidbuff potency) was too strict to be governed by RNG, and in the second (Astrodyne) it feels like it's just not worth the effort. I would have to have a live version to test, but my hypothesis is that if the cards have unique, cool role-based effects to play around (such as being able to make a Monk autoattack once per second with Arrow+ROW) will make people enjoy the card minigame way more, and partaking in 'get the right seals too' would happen naturally from playing the class, rather than it being 'the system the AST player is focusing on'.

In this proposed system, I'm assuming the Seals still exist, and still contribute to Astrodyne. Which means, to 'optimize AST' and actually play into Astrodyne as a system, the AST would not be able to find 'the best card' and just fish for that. Instead, the cards would theoretically be balanced to be roughly equal amounts of RDPS contribution (eg, increase/decrease the value of X for the Bole reflect as needed), and thus the AST would have to play at least one of each pair still. They could still get Balance, Arrow, Spear and just throw everything on the DPS as with current, but if they get Ewer, Bole, Spire as their three draws during raidbuffs, then suddenly the 'optimal choice' for card targets is not necessarily to throw them all on DPS players. Instead, it'd be a healer (no seriously), a tank (yes really) and the caster (or if you're in some casual content like a 24man and have no caster somehow, a healer again lmao)

giving the player carpal tunnel every 2 minutes.

I hope there is no carpal tunnel involved, the ring/little finger on my right hand has been feeling weird since prog, and I imagine my doing blackjacking in OSRS is not helping it recover

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

For the same reason of you, Why are you ugly?

I'm going to assume you simply are having a terrible time in life right now, which explains why you are just here to stir up shit and look for a fight.

I wish you best in dealing with whatever is currently bothering you, consider consulting family members if you need people to talk to.