I have to rant about AST cards

[ty_taurus]

Then we hit 4.0 and for some reason square enix decided to introduce the lily system, I’m not going to go into detail again about the lily system in stormblood other than to say I legit have no idea who the hell ever signed off on that trash fire but otherwise the other main skill WHM got was the incredibly unwieldy old plenary indulgence which used to be a nightmare to use

Benison was also added during SB, which wasn't bad inherently, but was confusing why they gave White Mage a barrier.

[Supersnow845]

Someone around here once said that WHM's biggest problem was that its design is an expansion behind. I'd say by this point it's almost two. If WHM were at this point in Stormblood (plus Aero 3), it'd be...ehhh, alright. I still hate how backasswards lilies are designed, but alright. We've had two expansions worth of tools added to healers since then, catch up.

That’s a very fair point; WHM with its current toolkit would have actually been good in SB, but in SB it was bad and EW WHM in EW is also bad

[ForsakenRoe]

That’s a very fair point; WHM with its current toolkit would have actually been good in SB, but in SB it was bad and EW WHM in EW is also bad

How I feel with current SMN, I had the idea of something similar to what we have now as early as 'late HW' but using the systems at the time (summon an egi, it lasts for X seconds, use it's enkindle to get Aethertrail, get 3 Aethertrails to Dreadwyrm). But the difference is, that was THEN. EW SMN would have fit super cleanly with the rest of SB's designs, like look at how 'basic' RDM was in SB. Balance two gauges, do 3 hits of a melee combo, use the big finisher. Effective, flashy final hit, simple to get into for casual players (and starts at 50 even better). As it stands though, EW SMN does feel like it's missing 4 years of additions

[vetch]

Because the sad truth is that dmg is the only thing that matters.

All those other choices would just be worse options compared to getting dmg card.

It's worth pointing out that even if they don't challenge the 'DPS > all' paradigm, you can make each card do damage but feel different and want different decision-making.

For example, if we stipulate that each card has to be able to do 1000 potency to a primary target, one card might have a damage aura that hits adjacent targets over a 15s duration, another might add 250-potency multi-hits to the next four auto-attacks, while a third card might cause the next 10 enemy auto-attacks against its bearer to receive 100 potency in thorns damage.

These all deal damage, but want to go on different targets in different situations. It's pretty easy to come up with six of them. The UI can pop the numbers up on the buff target's screen too, so that they get the awe factor of seeing their buffer bless them with more number. They're also all more useful when soloing than the current 3/6% buff cards are when applied to Astro's appalling personal damage.

[elioaiko]

What AST has become is nothing short of depressing.

The devs can tell to dress up AST with all the sfx all they want but AST is so void of thematic connection.

I remember when AST felt like it had cool ideas put into it but now it's just a Frankenstein of every healer combined.

[ForsakenRoe]

It's worth pointing out that even if they don't challenge the 'DPS > all' paradigm, you can make each card do damage but feel different and want different decision-making.

For example, if we stipulate that each card has to be able to do 1000 potency to a primary target, one card might have a damage aura that hits adjacent targets over a 15s duration, another might add 250-potency multi-hits to the next four auto-attacks, while a third card might cause the next 10 enemy auto-attacks against its bearer to receive 100 potency in thorns damage.

These all deal damage, but want to go on different targets in different situations. It's pretty easy to come up with six of them. The UI can pop the numbers up on the buff target's screen too, so that they get the awe factor of seeing their buffer bless them with more number. They're also all more useful when soloing than the current 3/6% buff cards are when applied to Astro's appalling personal damage.

Sounds familiar /s

But on a serious note, yes exactly. In the above, I had looked at one of the top speedkills at the time, and seen that the SAM in the group pulled 18k damage (not DPS, not potency, 18k 'points of damage removed from the boss' HP bar'), attributed to the card itself (ie, it wasn't because card + div + embolden + litany + dragon sight). So, with '18k because of 6%' being the value, it can be refactored to 'each 1% from the card is giving him 3000 extra points of damage'. So then I worked around having the cards be 10% (like ye olde days), and used 30000 damage as the metric by which to balance them.

All of which is to say, if all the cards contribute the same amount of damage, but in unique ways, then we can have unique card effects as the 'bonus' on top. For example, you say 'reflect damage' as one of the sources. So do I! In fact, we can stick it on Bole, the card that used to go to tanks for being damage mitigation, and balance it's damage output such that it's equal with the other cards despite being on a tank. Then, 'as a bonus', we can have the Mit effect return, so it feels good for the AST to use it on the tank. Some people will view it as 'I put it on the tank for the damage, the mit is just a bonus' and some will view it as 'the mit was the main goal, the damage is just a bonus'. Either way, the player is incentivized to consider how the card functions, and play it on the role that it's most relevant to.

Good call on the UI showing the source of the bonus damage. Let me MSPaint out a theoretical solution (which could be disabled/customized via options, if implemented):

As we can see in the above picture, there are 4 'streams' of floating text (I turned off the purple 'DOT ticks and all party members' one because it's unreadable). We could have an option, then, which allows the player to have AST's cards be considered a separate number. The question is, where would it be best to place said text? I believe it best to put in the 'healing received' stream of text, along with 'Brutal Shell 3900', as a different color, customizeable in options (or turned off). Additionally, we don't need to have the text telling us the name of the effect, we could instead just have the buff icon to the side of the number. So it'd be more like...:



Fonts are enlarged for visual clarity in the example, they're smaller/not bolded in game. Customization options for the UI element added (the purple text here) would be color of the text, whether to show the icons or not (if not, just a regular number appears. Like an autoattack, with no damage typing symbol next to it), or to disable the values from appearing entirely. For ASTs, when the damage due to their cards is triggered, the effect would appear in their floating text at the same time as the card target's, in the same place, but respecting the AST's UI options (meaning, if the GNB has their 'buff numbers' turned off, and the AST has them on, the GNB won't see them, but the AST will).

Alternatively, the 'purple text' could go in the 'damage dealt' text stream, along with the Brutal Shell crit we're dealing to the enemy in this example. Might get a bit cluttered up there during burst windows, though, and obscure gameplay/hide boss model (so you can't see a model-based telegraph like 'it raised it's left hand for a slam' for example). Especially, for example, as a Monk, who would have GCDs, Autoattacks, extra Autoattacks from Riddle of Wind, and even more Autoattacks from a reworked Arrow

The AST's card effect is split from the rest of the buffs (div, litany, step) on purpose, because it's more like an attack than a standard buff. Perhaps options could be deep enough so that you could eg 'show only AST card effects, but not all other buffs'

[ty_taurus]

Good call on the UI showing the source of the bonus damage. Let me MSPaint out a theoretical solution (which could be disabled/customized via options, if implemented):

While we're on this topic, I would really appreciate a revamping of the combat UI. The numbers font is very unflattering and difficult to parse at a glance. Having something more clean would help make adding more detail and information to that UI easier to process if the numbers didn't have a bunch of different heights for each integer.

[ForsakenRoe]

While we're on this topic, I would really appreciate a revamping of the combat UI. The numbers font is very unflattering and difficult to parse at a glance. Having something more clean would help make adding more detail and information to that UI easier to process if the numbers didn't have a bunch of different heights for each integer.

I think that stems from them doing like, what we do with letters. The 3 in the picture hangs down like a 'g' and the 6 sticks up off the top like a 'P'. If they equalized the position of all the numbers to be equal to how the 6 currently lies, then elongated certain numbers so the height matched (turning o into 0 for example, or lengthening the... I, why is that an I and not a 1), maybe that'd help. You can see in the MSPaint example, all of the digits are of equal height. We can still have a non-Calibri font to keep the 'style' or 'flair' of the game though, and doing this would also give a standardized height in pixels for the 'buff icon' to match with, and a relative position to align to

Related, I'm not actually sure if we can move the 'text streams' position on the screen. I looked, but couldn't find anything that'd let me move them about, which is rather annoying

[AmiableApkallu]

I think that stems from them doing like, what we do with letters. The 3 in the picture hangs down like a 'g' and the 6 sticks up off the top like a 'P'. If they equalized the position of all the numbers to be equal to how the 6 currently lies, then elongated certain numbers so the height matched (turning o into 0 for example, or lengthening the... I, why is that an I and not a 1), maybe that'd help.

Text figures vs. lining figures, for the typographically curious.

(Another fun thing you can look for is whether numerals have the same width, independent of whether the font is monospaced.)

[ty_taurus]

I think that stems from them doing like, what we do with letters. The 3 in the picture hangs down like a 'g' and the 6 sticks up off the top like a 'P'. If they equalized the position of all the numbers to be equal to how the 6 currently lies, then elongated certain numbers so the height matched (turning o into 0 for example, or lengthening the... I, why is that an I and not a 1), maybe that'd help. You can see in the MSPaint example, all of the digits are of equal height. We can still have a non-Calibri font to keep the 'style' or 'flair' of the game though, and doing this would also give a standardized height in pixels for the 'buff icon' to match with, and a relative position to align to

Related, I'm not actually sure if we can move the 'text streams' position on the screen. I looked, but couldn't find anything that'd let me move them about, which is rather annoying

You can't, I tried before. "Flying Text" can be turned off I believe, but you just lose it altogether.