What Do We Want to See? - AST

[Kissune]

I'm not in the camp of mixed util/dps cards but at the same time DPS cards need some sort of rework. I'd envision something along the theme of bard songs, with astrodyne reworked into a pure utility spell bc AST has never felt like a 'personal dps dealer' to me. Ideally, I'd like each draw to feel useful and not coming at the sacrifice of damage. If it were up to me I'd see two paths. Two seperate decks to draw from, one with a set of more varied DPS cards, and one with a set of pure utility cards with seperate charges or timers. Having random utility feels bad for me when it can't be relied on, and if it's sharing a space with DPS that always feels useful and satisfying to play. I like the class fantasy of someone who doesn't do much damage on their own, but gets to spread buffs around to make their DPS more useful, it's what pulled me to the class in 5.X/6.X. Or possibly a system where your deck has a flat number of draws before shuffling, with ways to adjust the order using tools to hold on to or destroy cards like sleeve draw and royal road. Ultimately speaking, I feel like mixed DPS/utility makes it so during prog you're going to be annoyed at drawing dps cards, and during anything else you're going to be annoyed at drawing utility cards. In current EW+ fight design they can't have a healer that has extremely inconcistent damage or utility. Minor arcana exemplified 10fold just fills me with a sense of dread hehe.

I agree with OP on the healing aspect. AST has always been about its set up and release/instant weak payoff vs delayed strong payoff style of healing. Keep that, lean more into it, make it the core identity of the healing kit. Getting Noct Sect back seems like wishful feeling, but it was a very fun aspect of ShB I'll always look at fondly. I still have it on my hotbar, even.


In response to OP's general healing points
- I agree. The fast paced, high APM method of EW cards was a decent enough distraction to me to ignore just how boring general healing filler was, and now that it's being taken away it'll once more be glaringly obvious. And an extra dps button tied to divination is, I'm sorry, not a suitable upgrade.
- Agreed, or if they are going to give us a bloated amount of healing tools... Make fights actually require it, even at easier difficulty levels. With all these mit changes, ST heal changes, and mit changes in 7.0 I better be seeing tanks and healers gasping for breath by the end of even a levelling dungeon. Otherwise I'm gonna keep asking... what was the point of all these tools? Giving AST 3 charges of ED, along with "cards" that also cure or mitigate... That seems a lot of junk for little need. I anticipate discarding most cards I draw or just using them for the sake of using it.
- I'm very bored of mit checks. SCH/SGE felt like the most optimal comp in EW fights, and I anticipate more of that. If you're going to seperate the healers into pure and shield categories, the former sitting around and pressing one button every 30s compared to the latter having to actually manage CDs and mitigate every raidwide.
- MP management would be nice, but tying it to an RNG card like OP wants just seems like a recipe in frustration. I'd tie it to a reworked astrodyne that forces you to choose between using dyne for MP management, a healing amp, or perhaps mobility. Something that isn't just 'press lucid on CD, press the DPS button to get mana', I'd like to see something akin to (old) scholar energy drain where gaining mana was at the cost of something else. I don't just wanna ED wholesale, that's SCH's thing, but the same philosophy would be there.

I'd like, ultimately, cards to be about making sure the one you drew goes to the right place and the right person. Reading the fates to find the best use of it in the window you have it for. I understand the appeal of RNG cards, but the feeling of drawing something and just having to throw it away or sigh as you know drawing it means losing out on damage for that window in fights that are getting tighter and tighter dps checks that need to balanced for the lowest common denominator. I had enough of 'why are you playing AST here, isn't WHM better?' and I don't want to go back to it.

EW/ShB cards were boring, but I felt like they worked. They do have room to grow, however. At the bare minimum they should be separated by 3 different types of DPS buffs, for melee and ranged. Crit up, DH up, and Flat% up. That's the minimum at least.

Here's the Astro that I would want personally. The goal would be to rework minor arcana into your "RNG non damage buff cards" While keeping the damage buff cards but changing some to crit chance ect. (I would like more interesting damage buffs like Haste but with how the game works currently that isn't possible).

Draw CD: 30 (2 Stacks)
Note: if card is used on the "wrong target" the effect(s) will be halved like current, Also "%" should be adjusted if too weak/strong, they should roughly be around each other.
The Balance - 6% Damage to target if Melee/Tank | The Arrow 10% Crit buff to target if Melee/Tank | The Spear 18% DH buff to target if Melee/Tank
The Spire - 6% Damage to target if Ranged/Healer | The Bole 10% Crit buff to target if Ranged/Healer | The Ewer 18% DH buff to target if Ranged/Healer

Minor Arcana (Reworked) CD: 30s (2 Stacks)
Minor Arcana now act as separate "non damage buff" cards for utility.
Examples of Minor arcana cards would be, Regen/healing, Mitigation, barrier, movement speed. (more possible that i can't think of)

Royal Road CD: 90s
Changes the effect of your current drawn Minor Arcana card to be a AOE effect.

Added actions: Play Arcana, Royal Road
Removed actions: Astrodyne, Synastry, Undraw, Celestial Intersection.

How to improve healing?
1. Reduce tanks baseline defensive value, this doesn't mean remove Mitigation tools, just remove how much damage they can withstand in baseline, also up auto attacks.
2. No AOE, Per enemy hit healing on tanks (looking at you warrior).
3. Add more AOE Damage, even sometimes having aoe autos or debuffs that will require more healing resources

This also has to bonus of making utility from non healers more impactful but doesn't overwrite the healers job.

@Rithy255, This is exactly what I'd want! I like your version a lot more than my scattered collection of ideas. I'd also suggest DPS on single target dps (stuff like natural alignment) to be more common, to give them a reason to use their personals and us a reason to not just macro our ST top ups onto the two tanks :P

[Rithy255]

@Rithy255, This is exactly what I'd want! I like your version a lot more than my scattered collection of ideas. I'd also suggest DPS on single target dps (stuff like natural alignment) to be more common, to give them a reason to use their personals and us a reason to not just macro our ST top ups onto the two tanks :P

Ast is a role I think about too much T_T Glad you like it! I'm still iffy on Crit/Dh cards personally but the only other effect I could think of was haste (which has issues with current design) so i decided to forgo it, I think another Idea was one I had long ago which was healer/dps/tank card buffs instead of the ranged/melee split we currently have, But that would need more work imo x).

This is more a rough idea of what I'd want, my main basis is that I'd want minor arcana to become our "utility rng" cards while having a ability (royal road lol) to make that said utility effect AOE ^^ I still need to think more of what the "ideal" astro could be too.

Just glad you like it eitherway, I think the 7.0 rework misses what made astro interesting/unique in the first place :/ I come from a place of wanting both damage buff cards and utility cards but they should be split.

[ASkellington]

I'm not in the camp of mixed util/dps cards but at the same time DPS cards need some sort of rework. I'd envision something along the theme of bard songs, with astrodyne reworked into a pure utility spell bc AST has never felt like a 'personal dps dealer' to me. Ideally, I'd like each draw to feel useful and not coming at the sacrifice of damage. If it were up to me I'd see two paths. Two seperate decks to draw from, one with a set of more varied DPS cards, and one with a set of pure utility cards with seperate charges or timers. Having random utility feels bad for me when it can't be relied on, and if it's sharing a space with DPS that always feels useful and satisfying to play. I like the class fantasy of someone who doesn't do much damage on their own, but gets to spread buffs around to make their DPS more useful, it's what pulled me to the class in 5.X/6.X. Or possibly a system where your deck has a flat number of draws before shuffling, with ways to adjust the order using tools to hold on to or destroy cards like sleeve draw and royal road. Ultimately speaking, I feel like mixed DPS/utility makes it so during prog you're going to be annoyed at drawing dps cards, and during anything else you're going to be annoyed at drawing utility cards. In current EW+ fight design they can't have a healer that has extremely inconcistent damage or utility. Minor arcana exemplified 10fold just fills me with a sense of dread hehe.

I already mentioned for the Seals system to be the utility side for AST and that's what I was wanting when we got Astrodyne in EW and that what we SHOULD have gotten in Shb. After 2 expansions I don't want it anymore because its clear the dev team can't be bothered to do so. No seals system, no Astrodyne, no buffing Divination to being 4/5/6%. I want the cards themselves to have the effects.

- MP management would be nice, but tying it to an RNG card like OP wants just seems like a recipe in frustration. I'd tie it to a reworked astrodyne that forces you to choose between using dyne for MP management, a healing amp, or perhaps mobility. Something that isn't just 'press lucid on CD, press the DPS button to get mana', I'd like to see something akin to (old) scholar energy drain where gaining mana was at the cost of something else. I don't just wanna ED wholesale, that's SCH's thing, but the same philosophy would be there.

Ewer isn't supposed to be AST's way of managing MP. Its supposed to be there for the AST to give to the party and if the AST happens to need it themselves, they can have it. Gaining MP at the cost of something else wasn't my idea of MP management either. Its more to reward the AST for using their healing tools properly. In an ideal world our oGCDs would be on longer CDs for how powerful they are, and/or more limited, making us lean more on our GCD heals both to break up the single button DPS spam and actually use the mana we have. Good ASTs would save their stronger oGCD heals when needed so they wouldn't have to spam their GCDs... but the chances of a less skilled AST (or any healer for that matter) going OOM is high... which is why I say I don't see it happening. Getting it back isn't gonna make or break healer for me as long as I have something else to occupy me. I have other hills to die on over whether or not things like MP/TP should make a return.

EW/ShB cards were boring, but I felt like they worked. They do have room to grow, however. At the bare minimum they should be separated by 3 different types of DPS buffs, for melee and ranged. Crit up, DH up, and Flat% up. That's the minimum at least.

I didn't even feel like they worked. They relied too heavily upon knowing the rotation of other classes, which they ended up standardizing anyway so what was the point there, in a game where its not immediately clear for some classes WHERE EXACTLY they are in their rotation. As you said, they should have been 3 different types of DPS (no to Flat % damage btw; Divination can have that) at least and the seals system should have been where our utility went, but noooo.

Ultimately what I want out of a diverse card set is for cards to be worthwhile to be placed on classes OTHER than DPS. An increase on DPS for tank/healer is lackluster by comparison to an actual dps class in pretty much every senario.

Draw CD: 30 (2 Stacks)
Note: if card is used on the "wrong target" the effect(s) will be halved like current, Also "%" should be adjusted if too weak/strong, they should roughly be around each other.
The Balance - 6% Damage to target if Melee/Tank | The Arrow 10% Crit buff to target if Melee/Tank | The Spear 18% DH buff to target if Melee/Tank
The Spire - 6% Damage to target if Ranged/Healer | The Bole 10% Crit buff to target if Ranged/Healer | The Ewer 18% DH buff to target if Ranged/Healer

Minor Arcana (Reworked) CD: 30s (2 Stacks)
Minor Arcana now act as separate "non damage buff" cards for utility.
Examples of Minor arcana cards would be, Regen/healing, Mitigation, barrier, movement speed. (more possible that i can't think of)

I feel like it'd just be better if Balance/Arrow/Spear were damage, Spire/Bole/Ewer were utility and the latter 3 replaced Minor Arcana here instead. 3 cards for damage to be placed on whomever, 3 cards for utility to be placed on whomever with separate draws for each of them.

1. There are two "Draw" actions, one that draws your offensive cards while the other draws your utility cards. Both have a 60 second cooldown that is not shared. Utility card usage does not come at the cost of offensive cards.

Kinda like that. Perhaps I'm too picky.

Either way both are leagues better than what we're getting.

I have listed mine in one of previous healer megathread, so I'm just gonna copy paste them over with few changes here and there:

There... is a lot to unpack here I ain gonna lie. Some of the chances I like (good BYE Neutral; come back home Noct) and others are... ones I'm not too excited about. Either way its an improvement over DT and EW. I'll take it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]There... is a lot to unpack here I ain gonna lie. Some of the chances I like (good BYE Neutral; come back home Noct) and others are... ones I'm not too excited about. Either way its an improvement over DT and EW. I'll take it.

Oh I admit they're pretty unpolished in general as they were initially conceived from a "I enjoyed ShB AST but it wasn't really my main"-lens. I also didn't cared much about card balances because that never really struck to me as game breaking outside being able to AoE-fy cards (hence the tweak to Royal Road).

Could do better... but the DT change is just around the corner at this point I don't see much reason to tap any of my healer sloppy theorycraft until the new tooltip comes out then back to roasting we go lmao.

[Kissune]

I already mentioned for the Seals system to be the utility side for AST and that's what I was wanting when we got Astrodyne in EW and that what we SHOULD have gotten in Shb. After 2 expansions I don't want it anymore because its clear the dev team can't be bothered to do so. No seals system, no Astrodyne, no buffing Divination to being 4/5/6%. I want the cards themselves to have the effects.

Ewer isn't supposed to be AST's way of managing MP. Its supposed to be there for the AST to give to the party and if the AST happens to need it themselves, they can have it. Gaining MP at the cost of something else wasn't my idea of MP management either. Its more to reward the AST for using their healing tools properly. In an ideal world our oGCDs would be on longer CDs for how powerful they are, and/or more limited, making us lean more on our GCD heals both to break up the single button DPS spam and actually use the mana we have. Good ASTs would save their stronger oGCD heals when needed so they wouldn't have to spam their GCDs... but the chances of a less skilled AST (or any healer for that matter) going OOM is high... which is why I say I don't see it happening. Getting it back isn't gonna make or break healer for me as long as I have something else to occupy me. I have other hills to die on over whether or not things like MP/TP should make a return.

Give to the party to do... what? It's only useful for being a DPS gain on DRK/BLM or restoring mana to a caster after a death, since each class needs to be able to stand on its own mana economy as if an AST isn't in the party (or if it is, it could just have really bad luck). Back in the days of miasma 2 and every class using resource it might have mattered more but like, having an AST card that has a use case that is extremely niche (yes yes rez mage could use it but it's extremely rare for A. A red mage to rez more than 4 in a row. B. The AST also being alive.) for only 3 of the 20+ classes in the game is... pretty bad design, I'm afraid.

Like I might be fixating on the mana card being bad but it's like... kinda a statement on why I dislike ALL utility cards. But inspiring a debate over it is pointless, since you've said 'I'd take it or leave it' anyways, so w/e.

I didn't even feel like they worked. They relied too heavily upon knowing the rotation of other classes, which they ended up standardizing anyway so what was the point there, in a game where its not immediately clear for some classes WHERE EXACTLY they are in their rotation. As you said, they should have been 3 different types of DPS (no to Flat % damage btw; Divination can have that) at least and the seals system should have been where our utility went, but noooo.

I'd argue knowing how other classes work has always been an important element of skill expression in the job, since the early days. Just bc it became more of a focus point in ShB/EW doesn't mean it was a new feature. And idk. I never had an issue telling when people bursted, but that's just me. I think a flat% dps buff is fine, but we're clearly not gonna agree on that :P I think there's room for jobs to have two sources of the same buff (bard, for example) and AST is no exception.

Ultimately what I want out of a diverse card set is for cards to be worthwhile to be placed on classes OTHER than DPS. An increase on DPS for tank/healer is lackluster by comparison to an actual dps class in pretty much every senario.

Unfortunately, the problem is that putting damage on DPS dealers is always going to be more useful than mit/healing on tanks, a heal amp buff on healers, or a mana restore on anyone that isn't a DRK or BLM or whatever utility thing you can think of. Bc at the end of the day damage is the only thing that isn't situational. Doing more damage is always an impactful positive, no matter what, which makes it a card that never feels 'bad' to play (by bad I mean, playing something that doesn't actually do anything to complete the fight). Unless you're gunning for a weird killtime for parses but that's so niche it's irrelevant. As much as I can appreciate the idea of wanting unique effects and using cards on not damage dealers it's always going to come down to a roll of the dice that is either a dps card or an opportunity cost. Unreliable mit/healing is pointless, unreliable buffs are pointless, and a mana restore is so situational bc it's either a dps gain or its giving to a healer/caster who just died, which like... is super niche. I don't want a bloated kit full of super niche abilities that I'm just going to end up not using 90% of the time bc I either don't need them period, or if there was a situation where they would be nice to have I just play around not using them at all.

My ideal would be a system that allows for RNG damage and RNG utility but to not let them conflict with eachother. Bc otherwise one is always gonna win out in terms of usefulness and satisfaction, and it ain't gonna be healing buttons that only feel useful 1/10th of the time.