Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Putting Play on the GCD gives disincentives to ever make the Card effects themselves any more interesting or in need of responsiveness.

Putting Draw on the GCD is fine, as that would give room for Redraw (even if it was returned to multiple charges independent of Draw beyond needing a Card to currently be held), and even a returned Royal Road, etc. You'd just have to roughly double the Card's current strength for it not to be skipped over in favor of Malefic.

You don't need to copy over a Misery/Toxicon mechanic to compensate for the lost ppm of dropped Malefic casts; you just have to make the Cards strong enough to compensate in themselves.
This is kind of what I have been thinking in regards to my past AST ideas as well... I haven't really sat down to think it out yet, but I've had this mindset of making Draw a GCD that generates DPS passively while setting you up to use cards in some fashion. The only thing about having the card effects themselves worth the loss of Malefic is it makes it really difficult to make the cards appealing to a solo AST. Ideally, you'd want something that has the flexibility to be both effective in groups and while playing alone, because there is solo content in this game and there are people who would like to have fun while using AST solo.

What I've said before is having cards and other support-oriented GCD tools generate a star that orbits the AST and can deal Malefic-potency damage either when you attack a target (as a second attack from you) or that your allies can detonate for you. But I'll reserve that for the next time I feel interested enough to really think through my more recent ideas.