GCD AST Cards, why not?

[Shurrikhan]

My personal (and perhaps spicy) take is that Seals go against what I think the cards should represent. If I can get some value from dumping cards that don't fit my exact criteria into seals then IMO that defeats the purpose of the system. I'd argue that even Royal Road is kind of a stretch of what's acceptable tbh. The beauty of HW's card play was that I had to build plans on the fly to adapt to what RNGesus handed down to me and it was immensely satisfying when I found uses for sequences that would otherwise be considered bad pulls (Eg Bole on the Warrior during A12S final adds to allow them to stay out of tank stance and save CDs).

Weighting RNG is purely there to stop variance making or breaking runs ala what we've sometimes seen with Crit variance during prog in some tiers.

This doesn't particularly make sense to me.

Having an overarching mechanic doesn't remove the reward for individual card usage or even reduce in any way the considerations that go into that. It's similar to how an AoE having some rare situational use in single-target combat, or vice-versa doesn't degrade the actions you'd normally perform, but merely adds use cases and reduces the sense of button/ability-bloat.

With it, you want to find an optimal use case for each among, say, Bole/Balance, Spear/Arrow, and Ewer/Spire at some point within each 90s --if prioritizing your own output and able to get an extra self-buff within the fight by fulfilling it per 90s-- or per 120s.

That doesn't reduce the cognitive load of individual decisions made (what cards can I best find use for in the next 60s). It just makes that decision a bit more complicated while also adding a couple extra layers of decision making that shift your priorities over the course of your gauge fulfilment.

It doesn't prevent the likes of Spread or having multiple charges on Draw or even of Royal Road (though unless balanced, RR is a poor mechanic, and even when balanced it's mostly made redundant by a second charge of Draw or any more interesting Card effects). It precludes nothing except keeping things far more simple (and yes, Old Cards w/o RR would be even simpler than New Cards with Seals).

There's no loss to including Seals or any other overarching mechanic besides just not wanting any extra cognitive load.

[Sebazy]

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It's probably my pretty dated perspective on AST skewing my view tbh. I played AST a *LOT* in HW and loved it post 3.2. I had a pretty brief fling with it in early SB but couldn't get past how clunky Draw/Play/Undraw felt and never really touched it again until the first tier of EW where I realised there were 'means' to make the card hotkeys work like HW again. I'd probably have gelled better with the job but my old hands struggled with the burst window APM requirements over the course of an evening's worth of prog.

Perhaps I didn't give seals a fair shake but I'm going to play the cantankerous old Seb card and stand by my opinion that they were a lazy cop out of a system that added complexity for the sake of complexity without actually bringing enough to the table to justify their existence. Also get off my lawn

I can defo agree with the difficulties of RR though, you're absolutely right that old cards without RR would be overly simplistic and IMO spending GCDs to single target buff the group for a burst window probably isn't going to feel all that great. The old cards were great not so much because of the cards themselves, but because of how not only Spread and RR worked, but also the interactions with time extensions and other AST buffs such as Shroud and Regens.

That does make me think though, what about the idea of having Seals grant a targetable 'totem' that we can place and AoE cards off? I'd much rather get that than a minuscule buff tbh.

[Shurrikhan]

It's probably my pretty dated perspective on AST skewing my view tbh. I played AST a *LOT* in HW and loved it post 3.2. I had a pretty brief fling with it in early SB but couldn't get past how clunky Draw/Play/Undraw felt.

HW was identical to SB, except in that you didn't have to use your mouse to click off cards that would otherwise waste your loaded RR (and you were no longer punished for holding a card --for up to 30s-- if I recall that part correctly, as I'm pretty sure that's why they split them in the first place).

Well, that and, if you really needed an emergency heal or the DPS in your party were truly, truly awful, you could then just sac a card for a spare oGCD heal or a new oGCD direct attack. And Spread's CD was made less obnoxious. And you got Sleeve Draw.

SB AST was just... better/smoother/more fleshed out HW AST.

I can defo agree with the difficulties of RR though, you're absolutely right that old cards without RR would be overly simplistic and IMO spending GCDs to single target buff the group for a burst window probably isn't going to feel all that great. The old cards were great not so much because of the cards themselves, but because of how not only Spread and RR worked, but also the interactions with time extensions and other AST buffs such as Shroud and Regens.

I never really felt like the "synergies" there were anything more than a reward for pacing that obliged an AoE Balance (or Arrow, at worst) per CelOpp, since anything else was a waste of a mass-duration-extension.

I'd have preferred that Expand doubled the potency and duration, both, of the given card, before splitting it among self and all allies, with CelOpp then extending the Card effects by a portion of their granted duration. Else, it ends up being just one more thing imbalancing the whole setup towards AoE damage buffs, since mitigation tends to complete its use too soon and 10s more to 8 people will be worth so much more than to 1 person.

That does make me think though, what about the idea of having Seals grant a targetable 'totem' that we can place and AoE cards off? I'd much rather get that than a minuscule buff tbh.

I'm not perfectly sure what you mean by this.

But, what from what I can imagine... Wouldn't that just be a CD that we save our cards for to burn as many charges we have on its CD, and --by being damage, which is wasted on none (instead of MP, mitigation, etc., which are wasted on all but 1 or 2 people each)--- further favor just plain damage?

At that point you may as well again just have a Divination accepting 1 to 3 built gauge-thingies from which you get AoE effects based on Cards used earlier.

[Sebazy]

HW was identical to SB, except in that you didn't have to use your mouse to click off cards that would otherwise waste your loaded RR

Was it Shadowbringers that split Draw and Play into 2 separate keys? I could be misremembering the timeline!

I never really felt like the "synergies" there were anything more than a reward for pacing that obliged an AoE Balance (or Arrow, at worst) per CelOpp, since anything else was a waste of a mass-duration-extension.

Getting extra ticks out of Shroud and multiple sources of regen as well as a spread balance was a huge pay off in fights like A6S and A12S. I guess it's fair to say it diminished in importance as AST's power gradually went up through HW.

I'm not perfectly sure what you mean by this.

Remember using the fairy to spread adlo if you couldn't use yourself as the spread target and the warrior wasn't convenient? Basically that.

It's not perfect, but I'd take something like that over a dull as dishwater self only 5% buff anyday.

Coming up with novel ideas that tick both the 'Is actually worth using' and 'isn't just more damage' boxes is tough!