AST cards ramble

[Raikai]

Honestly, work!

Even though all the buffs still translate just into damage, they are all flavored really differently and much better than just a flat increase. Also good thought about mixing the effects in a way that you'll see cards given to almost everyone in the party composition instead of just 2 set people. My only concern about the card design is that the Spear could also have an effect similar to the arrow when used on the AST themselves, just not to make it completely useless during solo activities.

I also take that given The Arrow having that unique instant cast design, Lightspeed could/should be reworked. I'd say make it just utility like a single target sprint buff castable on anyone.


You know what's the bad part about the OP's ideas? Now that they wrote them here, it will never have a chance to happen, lol.

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly, work!

Thank you, let me address your points, because I have nothing better to do atm (smithing cannonballs in runescape, it's slow and afk)

For buff variety, yeh, I feel that we cannot have a system that has damage competing with utility, as people choose damage pretty much every time, and complain when they're 'forced' into using the utility instead (look at Lady of Crowns for example). An idea that some put forth is to split the cards so that utility is separated from the damage, so the 'having to choose between the two' isn't a thing, but I instead elected to keep the 'Draw card' thing as just one system, to try and keep it from getting complex to play. Stuff like 'oh if I use this mit utility card, it gives me X seal, which screws my Astrodyne' could potentially come up, and I couldn't be bothered trying to resolve all that. But yes, I do feel that the whole thing we have now of 'pump all cards into your most geared DPS' is kinda bland. With this there can be room to do other, quirky things for optimization's sake, like the mentioned 'what if you could give PLD an extra Sheltron lmao'

For the Spear, I had thought this as well, I have the effect of the X of Irons temporarily convert the AST's damage to physical, similar to Steelsing from Bozja. Coincidentally, I was thinking it might be worded weird atm, but the idea would be that you'd be able to take advantage of the Spear's effect in some form, even though you're a magic user. I might go back and rewrite stuff or even change Spear to something else, but if the worst comes to the worst in solo play, we can consider the fact that Redraw cannot give you the same card, so having one 'dead' card for yourself is not actually an issue, as you can use any of the other five results just fine even in solo. Plus, Spear and Spire granting Celestial Seals, but being the exact opposite effect of each other (mag/phys damage) seemed fitting. I really, really, don't want to make Spear be 'lmao it gives crit rate' though, mostly because I don't want to do the maths to try and get it's raid-damage contribution to be roughly equal to the others (gear makes crit's effectiveness scale real weird mathematically). I might have an idea, and if it's balanceable enough I might add it in an edit at the end of this post (and in the OP)

Lightspeed would remain, however, due to the 'play cards in burst' changing to have Minor Arcana as an instant, and less Majors to play in raidbuffs (maybe 1, maybe 2 if I let people pool for 2min, not decided yet), Lightspeed's 'GCDs are instant so you can weave' is less pronouced, and so it gets to be used on Malefic as a mobility option, for those times where you want to DPS but the raid says 'run 45 miles to resolve this debuff'. Due to not being needed for the 2min window, I think it'd be fine staying at 90s (alignment is no longer an issue), and it probably wouldn't need a second charge (though I wouldn't say no to one). Arrow's instantcasts are actually not anything to do with Lightspeed, I just figure that if the GCD goes to 1.5 because of the card, you can't weave anything and that's not ideal, so instantcasts it is (plus it'd probably feel cooler to machinegun 5 spells in 8 seconds if they're instant rather than locking you down movementwise). But also remember, the effect of the instantcasts is actually only there for solo play, the intended use of the card is to throw on your melee or ranged

And we're playing the tail end of an expansion where 'the indomitable human spirit rejects the cruel indifference and apathy of the universe' is the name of the game, so even if it doesn't go anywhere beyond posting here, I think the fact you enjoyed reading it is a success on it's own. If SE want to take anything I've written and use it, I'd be delighted, so much so I don't care for credit or shoutouts, being able to play a more fun and engaging healer would be reward enough as it is. I write my rambling job redesigns because I guess I can't let go of what I went to uni for, to study games design and how to make them, it's in my blood. But also, I guess I write them to stand up and prove a certain crowd wrong, to show that it IS possible to make a design that adds something for hardcore players to optimize and have fun with, while keeping it super accessible and forgiving for someone who's still levelling it.

I'd like to believe that SE devs, should they choose to actually make changes, would choose that kind of design, so what I make would, I believe, have a higher chance of being implemented in some form. Also due to my studies I'm pretty cognizant of the dev pipeline, and the manhours required to do VFX stuff, so I try to keep my stuff grounded and 'able to reuse old animations', to keep the dev time down to a minimum. A full rework to some classes is cool, like SMN 'looks' cool at least (gameplay is subject to personal taste), same with MCH, the multitools look cool. But I do wonder how long it took to make those new animations and VFX, and so I try to avoid that pitfall. Like my pride and joy, my WHM redesign, would require, I think, one spell effect to be designed, that of the heal skill Blessing of the Elementals. Banish, Quake, Tornado, Flood, all of those while new, also have spell VFX in the files already that can be adapted

Anyway thank you again for taking the time to read (and for giving me something to do while these cannonballs smelt)

edit: the idea is not balanceable, most likely. I was gonna try to find a way to make Spear be 'the target melee/ranged can use a specific CD, with no regard to it's cooldown or cost'. So eg, Monk gets a free use of Riddle of Wind, DRG gets a free Wyrmwind Thrust, BRD gets a free Barrage, etc. But the potencies and gear differences and all that would make it insanely busted for certain classes, I think. Like how do I balance 'gear stacked SAM with Dance Partner gets a free Shoha' versus 'struggling DNC with no gear gets a free Fan Dance 4', it's cool in theory but the maths is a nightmare, especially when considering that not only do the chosen skills have to be balanced against each other, but also against the other cards effects

edit 2: might have found a way to get it to work, I'll put it in, and have 'if this is imbalanced, do 10% physical damage as a safe boring option' in brackets

[Aravell]

edit: the idea is not balanceable, most likely. I was gonna try to find a way to make Spear be 'the target melee/ranged can use a specific CD, with no regard to it's cooldown or cost'. So eg, Monk gets a free use of Riddle of Wind, DRG gets a free Wyrmwind Thrust, BRD gets a free Barrage, etc. But the potencies and gear differences and all that would make it insanely busted for certain classes, I think. Like how do I balance 'gear stacked SAM with Dance Partner gets a free Shoha' versus 'struggling DNC with no gear gets a free Fan Dance 4', it's cool in theory but the maths is a nightmare, especially when considering that not only do the chosen skills have to be balanced against each other, but also against the other cards effects

If you want a support card that functions differently for every job, why not have it interact with the job gauges? For example:

PLD: Grants 50 oath gauge
WAR: Grants 50 beast gauge
DRK: Grants 50 blood gauge
GNB: Grants a cartridge
WHM: Grants a lily
SCH: Grants an aetherflow stack
AST: Redraws and buffs the next card
SGE: Grants an addersting
MNK: Grants 5 chakras
DRG: Grants 1 firstmind's focus
NIN: Grants 50 ninki
SAM: Grants 1 meditate stack
RPR: Grants 50 soul gauge
BRD: Grants 1 free use of Empyreal Arrow
MCH: Grants 50 battery gauge
DNC: Grants 50 esprit gauge
BLM: Grants 1 polyglot
SMN: Grants 1 free use of Energy Drain
RDM: Grants 50 black and white mana

I didn't run the math on any of these, they're just examples for each job, could be imbalanced for most of them. (Also I don't know how they plan to fit all this into the tooltip)

[ForsakenRoe]

That was the original idea, yes, just adding gauge. But when you look at, for example, a free Energy Drain on SMN vs one Firstminds Focus, it's like 500p (cos of the two festers it gives too) vs effectively 220 or so potency. So I moved to trying to balance a specific OGCD from each job, but it's not really possible for melee, because Monk only has the one (TFC) and so that'd have to be the benchmark to work off of, at 340p. So here we are with it being 'ranged focused', as weird as that might be thematically (spears aren't known for being ranged), but at least it's kinda balanceable this way

idk when MCH's Gauss Round changed from 150 to 130, or I'd have used 'one Gauss and one Ricochet', though it's still an alternative (just it'd be 260 instead of 300). I was also thinking about making MCH's be 'free reassemble', or 'a free Wildfire, that detonates at 2 stacks instead of 6'

[Aravell]

That was the original idea, yes, just adding gauge. But when you look at, for example, a free Energy Drain on SMN vs one Firstminds Focus, it's like 500p (cos of the two festers it gives too) vs effectively 220 or so potency. So I moved to trying to balance a specific OGCD from each job, but it's not really possible for melee, because Monk only has the one (TFC) and so that'd have to be the benchmark to work off of, at 340p. So here we are with it being 'ranged focused', as weird as that might be thematically (spears aren't known for being ranged), but at least it's kinda balanceable this way

idk when MCH's Gauss Round changed from 150 to 130, or I'd have used 'one Gauss and one Ricochet', though it's still an alternative (just it'd be 260 instead of 300). I was also thinking about making MCH's be 'free reassemble', or 'a free Wildfire, that detonates at 2 stacks instead of 6'

I don't know the extent of their technical architecture, but if it was possible, MNK's effect could be to turn SSS into a regular gcd, that would be 550 without the drawbacks of a longer gcd refresh. As for MCH, what about a free Drill that's half potency but always crits? That would be a 300 potency guaranteed crit, so not that far off.

EDIT: Although now that I think about it, granting free cooldowns like this would throw off the rotations of quite a few jobs. So maybe it being a physical ranged card exclusively would be better since they don't have any rigid rotation to speak of (other than BRD songs).

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeh. This next part, I want to clarify that I'm not trying to be nasty/offend, just for the sake of explaining my thought process (hooray for neurodivergence), but for example, certain things that seem to be a potential solution at first glance, have additional issues when I consider them further. When you say Drill, for example, my mind thinks 'okay, but that free Drill is still a GCD, and so has to be compared vs Heated SlugSplitClean potencies', or 'BRD getting a free Empyreal, which leads to a free proc, which leads to an extra Pitch Perfect stack potentially', stuff like that. Same with the 'throwing off rotations', like if we gave RPR a free Bloodstalk, then they overcap too soon. Stuff like that. The easiest way around this is to only use OGCDs that are just 'this does damage' I think.

Hmm, another issue that I just thought of: You don't learn these skills at the same time as getting the card. Using a Spear on a level 70 DNC wouldn't do anything with this effect, because they don't actually know Fan Dance 4. Unless we made it so 'they can use the skill even if they don't know it yet', which would be pretty cool but who's binding FD4 as a pre-EW DNC?

edit: Another idea just came to me, but I cba building on it so I'll just drop it here. What if Spear's effect was basically 'next (specific GCD) is augmented, dealing 300p as a second strike', and the augmentation changes the animation to a lost/nostalgic old animation everyone misses? IE, if you Spear a DRK, their next Souleater becomes Power Slash, or Scourge? WAR's Storm's Path becomes Butcher's Block, DRG's Raiden Thrust becomes Phlebotomize (or Ring of Thorns for the memes), a NIN's Aeolian becomes Dancing Edge, a MNK's Snap Punch becomes Haymaker/Touch of Death, etc? IDK what to do for RPR though

[Aravell]

Yeh. This next part, I want to clarify that I'm not trying to be nasty/offend, just for the sake of explaining my thought process (hooray for neurodivergence), but for example, certain things that seem to be a potential solution at first glance, have additional issues when I consider them further. When you say Drill, for example, my mind thinks 'okay, but that free Drill is still a GCD, and so has to be compared vs Heated SlugSplitClean potencies', or 'BRD getting a free Empyreal, which leads to a free proc, which leads to an extra Pitch Perfect stack potentially', stuff like that. Same with the 'throwing off rotations', like if we gave RPR a free Bloodstalk, then they overcap too soon. Stuff like that. The easiest way around this is to only use OGCDs that are just 'this does damage' I think.

Hmm, another issue that I just thought of: You don't learn these skills at the same time as getting the card. Using a Spear on a level 70 DNC wouldn't do anything with this effect, because they don't actually know Fan Dance 4. Unless we made it so 'they can use the skill even if they don't know it yet', which would be pretty cool but who's binding FD4 as a pre-EW DNC?

edit: Another idea just came to me, but I cba building on it so I'll just drop it here. What if Spear's effect was basically 'next (specific GCD) is augmented, dealing 300p as a second strike', and the augmentation changes the animation to a lost/nostalgic old animation everyone misses? IE, if you Spear a DRK, their next Souleater becomes Power Slash, or Scourge? WAR's Storm's Path becomes Butcher's Block, DRG's Raiden Thrust becomes Phlebotomize (or Ring of Thorns for the memes), a NIN's Aeolian becomes Dancing Edge, a MNK's Snap Punch becomes Haymaker/Touch of Death, etc? IDK what to do for RPR though

Given the current job design, I'd agree that giving them a free OGCD hit is the only way to implement such a thing as anything else would probably throw something out of whack somewhere.

As for the issue of unlearned spells, I think a possible fix would be for it to augment the lowest level OGCD with extra potency to make it equivalent to the free thing that you intend to grant. Like MCH learns Gauss Round at 15, so if you augment it by 170 potency, you get 300 potency, which is equivalent to your target potency. For DNC, you could augment Fan Dance (gained at 30) by 150 potency so it's equivalent to Fan Dance IV (but then you run into the unintended issue where they can get a Fan Dance III proc from this at later levels)

As for the other idea, it could work, but for some jobs, it might be awkward. Like for WAR, depending on the timing they get the card, they can go up to 8 GCDs without touching Storm's Path, which could end up delaying the augment out of the allotted buff window.

[SieyaM]

If you want a support card that functions differently for every job, why not have it interact with the job gauges? For example:

PLD: Grants 50 oath gauge
WAR: Grants 50 beast gauge
DRK: Grants 50 blood gauge
GNB: Grants a cartridge
WHM: Grants a lily
SCH: Grants an aetherflow stack
AST: Redraws and buffs the next card
SGE: Grants an addersting
MNK: Grants 5 chakras
DRG: Grants 1 firstmind's focus
NIN: Grants 50 ninki
SAM: Grants 1 meditate stack
RPR: Grants 50 soul gauge
BRD: Grants 1 free use of Empyreal Arrow
MCH: Grants 50 battery gauge
DNC: Grants 50 esprit gauge
BLM: Grants 1 polyglot
SMN: Grants 1 free use of Energy Drain
RDM: Grants 50 black and white mana

I didn't run the math on any of these, they're just examples for each job, could be imbalanced for most of them. (Also I don't know how they plan to fit all this into the tooltip)

I feel like this idea would really throw a wrench into some rotations and buff alignments for jobs. They could end up overcapping on gauge if they want to wait until the next buff window or they have buffs that are going to misalign with their burst if they initiate it now. We also cannot see other jobs gauges, so if you would give this card to a BLM who already for whatever reason had 2 polyglots it would be essentially useless, or if you give it to a RDM who is already at or slightly over 50/50 mana and is just hanging on for a bit to align with buff windows.

[ForsakenRoe]

I feel like this idea would really throw a wrench into some rotations and buff alignments for jobs. They could end up overcapping on gauge

Yeh it's a cool idea in theory but it's very hard to make it work in practice without several layers of jank to fight through, which is why the rather more boring option of 'just make it 'balance for physical damage' is there as a backup design to fall back on