Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

[ASkellington]

The problem with designing cards to do something other than damage, is that increasing damage output will always be king and the card which gives the most DPS, will be selected every time. Make all the cards not buff DMG and do a different effect? You'll still find little use for most of them, as current healer toolkits are bloated beyond belief and a card which gives damage reduction, will just be overshadowed by exaltation or celetial intersection anyway, for example.

Conceptually giving cards different effects is interesting, and maybe it can be done well. But looking back at SB, I think the best state of cards is if they're all the same (i.e balance). Is it interesting? No, but in practice and gameplay you're always using them. I'd rather have buttons which are less interesting, but find use every time, than interesting buttons which are never pulled out or see the time of day.

The best state of the cards is not having them all the same. If that's the case delete 5 of them because there's no point in drawing all but one. Divination currently exists as the AOE Balance buff everyone wanted and it can stay for more consistency in AST's kit.

Now I don't disagree that utility cards are going to be niche due to what is in AST's kit but it isn't as if they're going to be dead (I can always substitute Lady over Celestial Opposition if I have it) and it isn't as if we can't make RNG mitigation options instead. One idea I had back when we had Nocturnal for instance was splitting the deck into 3 with damage being drawn under one sect and utility under the other while AST stance danced for instance.

And again, if you're going to talk about "damage cards" being the only thing we are allowed to get, I still stand by no % up buffs. That is what Divination was for. Give me things like Haste, or shorter cast times (Lightspeed for the party?), reflective damage, double cast. Give me things to interact with party's kit instead of just a blatant buff they can pretty much place on themselves. <---That's pretty much what I want out of diverse cards.

[Kissune]

Because part of the people who liked SB AST having differing card effects liked the fact that not all of them were damage.

Making them deal damage differently doesn't change the fact that they're all doing damage. And with the effects you listed specifically, these aren't in fun ways either imo. I understand why Haste is an issue in this game and why people don't want it, but that would be more fun for me to give to some one than a blatant 10% physical/magical damage up.

If I'm forced to give nothing but stupid damage then I'd like them to be fun effects - Haste, Freecasts, the counter you mentioned, no blatant % damage up. That's what Divination is for. The cards can do something else.

The problem is that in current EW design, fights are designed around each class having not only X amount of mit, but X amount of predictable mit. If you make the cards all utility, it doesn't matter what they do bc you can't plan around them. They just end up being cute little bonuses on a static healplan. If you make them all damage, then all cards are useful even if they're boring, and each one has to be played. If you make them a mix of both damage and utility... well, the utility cards will be for lack of a better term 'fucking useless' because you can't rely on them, and drawing one of them means not drawing a dps card. This was well and good with how the rest of the game functioned back in stormblood, but nowadays that's impossible to balance. (It was impossible to balance back then too, they just cared less). Minor arcana is a terrible enough button as it is, and I think people who look at StB with rose tinted glasses don't realize that minor arcana is essentially the distilled version of the stormblood card system in its essence. You either drew damage, or you drew not damage. Yeah you could do some funky stuff with royal road but at the end of the day you basically just wanted to aoe the balance as much as possible because relying on RNG utility to handle incoming damage meant either playing like you're never going to draw the bole, or getting used to dying. A lot.

Like idk about you but I'd rather each card do something I can rely on (doing more damage), with variance on where those cards go and in what order than having to roll the dice on whether or not I'm rolling my eyes and pressing undraw on my third ewer. If you understand why haste in this game is an issue, you should understand why RNG utility is also an issue.

The best state of the cards is not having them all the same. If that's the case delete 5 of them because there's no point in drawing all but one. Divination currently exists as the AOE Balance buff everyone wanted and it can stay for more consistency in AST's kit.

Now I don't disagree that utility cards are going to be niche due to what is in AST's kit but it isn't as if they're going to be dead (I can always substitute Lady over Celestial Opposition if I have it) and it isn't as if we can't make RNG mitigation options instead. One idea I had back when we had Nocturnal for instance was splitting the deck into 3 with damage being drawn under one sect and utility under the other while AST stance danced for instance.

And again, if you're going to talk about "damage cards" being the only thing we are allowed to get, I still stand by no % up buffs. That is what Divination was for. Give me things like Haste, or shorter cast times (Lightspeed for the party?), reflective damage, double cast. Give me things to interact with party's kit instead of just a blatant buff they can pretty much place on themselves. <---That's pretty much what I want out of diverse cards.

Because then AST becomes highly volatile in terms of how much it actually contributes to specific comps, and they are trying to avoid more situations where one class is excluded due to how niche it is. Haste fucks over how a lot of jobs play. Shorter cast times is literally only relevant for exactly black mage. Reflective damage is a dead card 90% of the time. Double cast is again, highly comp restrictive. You might think flat % is boring, but short of adding crit or DH buffs to the mix it's really the only thing that actually functions without feeling like absolute ass to draw sometimes. You might want crazy, wild effects, but I want cards that I don't have to toss in the trash half the time. I still want to have to think about where I'm putting them, but I don't want that thought to amount to 'oh, this card is worthless. Cool.' And if they add in utility cards, they need to strip a lot of AST's kit or it'll be overloaded and the cards will be pointless half the time. And if they do that, it'll mean that if it doesn't draw the right cards it's just an ineffective healer. DPS cards always do something. % DPS cards are always relevant. You can't have super inconsistent jobs anymore, not with how tight everything is. And if AST is inconsistent as hell and the other jobs aren't, then AST is just playing dice with your odds of clearing any content harder than an extreme. Or every fight is made easier just to account for it.

Also, if you can substitute lady for opposition, why not just use opposition? Now oppo is just sitting there, bc I'm hoping you would plan around the next raidwide as if you didn't draw lady here. All lady is, and all it would ever be, is just... an extra 400 potency overheal on top of what you were already doing. Maybe it could replace a helios, yeah, but I'm gonna be real I can't remember the last time I pressed helios in literally any content and I do ultimates and criterion.

[MascheRano]

The best state of the cards is not having them all the same. If that's the case delete 5 of them because there's no point in drawing all but one. Divination currently exists as the AOE Balance buff everyone wanted and it can stay for more consistency in AST's kit.

Now I don't disagree that utility cards are going to be niche due to what is in AST's kit but it isn't as if they're going to be dead (I can always substitute Lady over Celestial Opposition if I have it) and it isn't as if we can't make RNG mitigation options instead. One idea I had back when we had Nocturnal for instance was splitting the deck into 3 with damage being drawn under one sect and utility under the other while AST stance danced for instance.

And again, if you're going to talk about "damage cards" being the only thing we are allowed to get, I still stand by no % up buffs. That is what Divination was for. Give me things like Haste, or shorter cast times (Lightspeed for the party?), reflective damage, double cast. Give me things to interact with party's kit instead of just a blatant buff they can pretty much place on themselves. <---That's pretty much what I want out of diverse cards.

Disagree. Imagine having that one PF AST griefing you by giving you a haste "buff", which throws off your entire rotation for the rest of the fight. No.

At least with damage cards it is always useful. Since I play AST on a controller, I've accidentally handed out cards to the wrong people before, but I don't have to worry about misaligning people's rotations.

[Zaytex]

The best state of the cards is not having them all the same. If that's the case delete 5 of them because there's no point in drawing all but one. Divination currently exists as the AOE Balance buff everyone wanted and it can stay for more consistency in AST's kit.

Now I don't disagree that utility cards are going to be niche due to what is in AST's kit but it isn't as if they're going to be dead (I can always substitute Lady over Celestial Opposition if I have it) and it isn't as if we can't make RNG mitigation options instead. One idea I had back when we had Nocturnal for instance was splitting the deck into 3 with damage being drawn under one sect and utility under the other while AST stance danced for instance.

And again, if you're going to talk about "damage cards" being the only thing we are allowed to get, I still stand by no % up buffs. That is what Divination was for. Give me things like Haste, or shorter cast times (Lightspeed for the party?), reflective damage, double cast. Give me things to interact with party's kit instead of just a blatant buff they can pretty much place on themselves. <---That's pretty much what I want out of diverse cards.

The stance dancing wouldn't even happen since AST's would just stay in the damage stance and ignore the utility-based one, since yet again we have an abundance of mitigation and healing tools right now.

I don't think you're understanding the point either. Just because a card buff can be ''reflective damage'' or ''double cast'', or ''shorter cast times'' doesn't mean those things aren't DPS buffs in a sense, it's just in an indirect version of a DPS increase by %. Whatever card gives the player the most amount of damage increased or dealt will always be selected the most, and everything else ignored. Unless you make every card never interact with damage dealt in this game, then you will always run into the problem of one card dominating and all others being ignored. Now let's say you make every card never interact with damage - so let's say, damage reduced, healing increased, movement increased, or whatever. Then all of those utilities become very niche and unusable in most fights.

No matter how you slice it, a card system where every card is unique and different to each other, whether damage-based or not will result in either all of the cards being niche and useless, or one card dominating and every other card being niche or useless.

Every card being balance was the best way to go.