Ast Cards

[Ari_Calithiel]

The is a weaker but also slightly better Synastry, it's weaker in that it's only 10% but it's also slightly better in that it's all healing received rather than just your single target GCDs. That said, I still hold this is better than EW but worse than what I hear about SB.

This is something I don't understand. There are so very many people that have never played Stormblood and yet many of these people crave the card system from back then. Squenix basically gave us SB cards back with each card having a different effect and everyone hates it. Everything I have heard about Stormblood cards was that it was one of the worst iterations. Let me lay out why.

Here are what the cards did:
Balance: 10% damage for 30 seconds - this is nutty and what every AST fished for.
Bole: 20% DR 20 seconds - I guess this is okay, but tanks have their own mit and my argument about gear causing the usefulness of this to fall off still stands.
Spear: 10% crit 30 seconds - It's not bad, it just isn't as good as flat damage.
Arrow: 10% haste (basically) 30 seconds - If you want to piss off a DPS, give this to them. It will make all of their abilities drift outside of the 2 minute burst window.
Spire: Restores TP 15 seconds - This is useless now as we don't have TP. Even if we changed this to MP regen or a HP regen, it is still not an amazing card.
Ewer: MP restore 15 seconds - Why? We have Lucid dreaming, SCH have Aether drain, SGE their stacks, WHM thin air, and AST their cards that give mana. It could be funny to give this to a DRK during burst, but it is pointless in any other setting. We have Super-ethers if we truly need mana.

Now the abilities that EFFECTED the cards, that I can understand wanting back. That sounds like a ton of fun. But the cards themselves? Actual crap. I believe the reason they changed cards to be flat damage increases is because of the fact that most AST's fished for the Balance. What dps would want a 10% crit card where you MIGHT crit and hit really hard over a 30% dps increase on every attack? I guarantee you, a dps would ask for the flat damage over a 10% crit card in our current tier.


As I said in my initial post, FFXIV encounters are focused on the motto of everyone doing dps. The damage received is all scripted, so you only need to heal when the timer in the fight reaches that point and the rest of the time, everyone should be dpsing. This is why every card being a dps card works so well because that is the focus on combat in this MMO. It is not like WoW where damage goes out at random and constantly (ESO is even more similar to FFXIV in that you dps when nothing is happening) and you need a healer to be constantly healing.

While I could get completely off topic with how healing works here, I won't since the focus of this post is the cards. And honestly, the best iteration of the CARDS (not the abilities that effect the cards) was ShB and EW. People who think it was boring did not utilize the cards as they were meant to be used. Being a good AST in ShB and EW required knowledge of every dps and how their burst worked as well as a quick mind to adjust to the RNG you were dealt. AST was like if you combined a WHM and a DNC and it was beautiful.

Now... It is just a pale version of SB that everyone has been screaming for. We have it now, is everyone happy?