Ast Cards

[Ari_Calithiel]

You guys have no idea what you're talking about tbh, this is the best version of AST yet!

I like you.

[Pyth]

I actually prefer the new system of cards over its variation in EW. I find the extra mits and heals helpful, especially when there are back to back tankbusters such as in Valigarmanda. I do agree that outside of those circumstances however, some of the abilities seem a bit redundant. Maybe adjusting what some of the cards do could be a nice change! Now if raid design included more individual instances of damage, we'd fine more value in these other cards, but we'll have to wait and see what they're cooking up.

[Azurarok]

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.

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

Isn't... isn't this exactly why people aren't happy?? You're calling it a 'pale version' of SB so it's pretty clearly not the version everyone has been screaming for. I don't think you can pull out a core concept of the system and say we have it.

[Ari_Calithiel]

Isn't... isn't this exactly why people aren't happy?? You're calling it a 'pale version' of SB so it's pretty clearly not the version everyone has been screaming for. I don't think you can pull out a core concept of the system and say we have it.

People have been crying for cards to have different effects. Squenix gave it to us. And people still aren't happy. That is the point I'm making. The cards are redundant and mostly useless. I'm with most other people in wishing for abilities that affect the cards. However, that was not what the majority were screaming for. They wanted unique effects.

[Ari_Calithiel]

I actually prefer the new system of cards over its variation in EW. I find the extra mits and heals helpful, especially when there are back to back tankbusters such as in Valigarmanda. I do agree that outside of those circumstances however, some of the abilities seem a bit redundant. Maybe adjusting what some of the cards do could be a nice change! Now if raid design included more individual instances of damage, we'd fine more value in these other cards, but we'll have to wait and see what they're cooking up.

I and another poster (very sarcastically) explained the allure of ShB and EW cards. I would check page 2 of the comments as I cba to retype it.

[Azurarok]

People have been crying for cards to have different effects. Squenix gave it to us. And people still aren't happy. That is the point I'm making. The cards are redundant and mostly useless. I'm with most other people in wishing for abilities that affect the cards. However, that was not what the majority were screaming for. They wanted unique effects.

I agree I've seen more people ask for unique cards more than anything, but I feel that was under the assumption that it comes with the RNG and all the abilities to control it and affect the cards, because there doesn't seem to be much reason to have them if all the cards were either 'increase dps for melee' and 'increase dps for ranged'.

[Ari_Calithiel]

I agree I've seen more people ask for unique cards more than anything, but I feel that was under the assumption that it comes with the RNG and all the abilities to control it and affect the cards, because there doesn't seem to be much reason to have them if all the cards were either 'increase dps for melee' and 'increase dps for ranged'.

First off, assuming that the card rework would come with the extra bells and whistle that were not asked for is ridiculous. You don't get a hot fudge sundae with your burger if you don't order it. Why would Squenix go out of their way to give us things we did not claim to want?

Secondly, no one has been able to put forth any cards that make sense other than all dps cards. The utility cards are silly. The healing cards are bloat. The way the combat works in FFXIV is burst windows every 2 minutes with mini burst every 1 minute. So dps cards worked the best with the way combat works in this game. Unless Squenix changes the flow of combat so we are not bound to the 2 minute window, any other iteration of cards will be pointless at best, useless at worst. And the current ones are pretty useless.

I'm not really sure what card effects you think they could give that wouldn't be terrible other than buffing the dps. I will go so far as to list ones I've seen.
Healing: bloat, we have so many tools
Mitigation: pretty unnecessary currently, completely useless once people have gear
Heal pot increase: we have synestry if we need it, otherwise it is for scholar spreadlo and we may or may not have a SCH co healer and may or may not have the card available when they need it
Move speed: but why? We have sprint plus nearly every job has some form of movement capabilities now.
Mana regen: lucid dreaming, super-ethers (1.8k mana potion), plus each healer has their own kit for managing mana. If you are still oom after using all of this, you are playing wrong
Haste: If you want to piss your dps off, sure. It will drift their abilities so it no longer lines up with the 2 minute window.


So I ask again, what other buffing effect is available that actually provides aid to your party 100% of the time? I guess if the cards became another way for us to dps, but then we aren't really a support healer the way we are touted to be.

[Azurarok]

First off, assuming that the card rework would come with the extra bells and whistle that were not asked for is ridiculous. You don't get a hot fudge sundae with your burger if you don't order it. Why would Squenix go out of their way to give us things we did not claim to want?

This, fair enough. I've underestimated their lack of care seeing as how bad their decisions have been this expac for a lot of jobs.

Secondly, no one has been able to put forth any cards that make sense other than all dps cards. The utility cards are silly.

The effects on the non-dps cards themselves aren't really that useless imo, but it rarely feels like I get to make good use of them because I don't have any control over what cards are currently in my hand. We have no choice but to use or discard our entire hand every minute because of the way Draw works now.

Also I do in fact like movement speed up. It and cast time reduction cards instead would be wonderful to have over some of the others, maybe the mitigation and shield ones.

Unless Squenix changes the flow of combat so we are not bound to the 2 minute window, any other iteration of cards will be pointless at best, useless at worst. And the current ones are pretty useless.

And yes, please. I've come to hate the 2 min meta and wish they'd get rid of every raid buff that's not BRD's constant 3 songs. I think it's getting in the way of many design choices they could be making.

[PyurBlue]

I agree, multiple mitigation isn't terrible. But it is only truly useful at the beginning of a tier. Once people start to gather gear, it becomes entirely useless. The healing increase on target card only works with GCD heals and more often than not, your scholar is sprealo-ing on times when you won't have the card available and you typically don't need to spam GCD heals. And if you do, you would use Synastry, not the card. The HOT and shield cards are so entirely useless. I know the official forums hate using 3rd party tools and sites, but if you were to go on FFLogs and look at the actual healing done in fights from those cards, it is a miniscule fraction of your actual healing. It is so little I honestly won't be bothered using it unless I have no other buttons I need to press in my oGCD.

Healing will always be secondary to DPS in FF14 unless there are drastic changes made, but the cards never become entirely useless. People do make mistakes and even late in a tier you might encounter new players, unless you never play outside of a static. I consider the separation of DPS and support cards to be a fair solution. The DPS cards are the main cards and always will be while the support cards don't feel like a hindrance since they don't cost you a DPS card.

Optimizing the DPS cards gave them some extra depth but even with that they didn't feel all that significant to me. The gains stood out the most if you're going for a speedkill but otherwise they'd be hard to spot. This is absolutely a case of differing opinions but the support cards feel more meaningful, outside of the role wide issues with healing which are external to the cards themselves.

People have been crying for cards to have different effects. Squenix gave it to us. And people still aren't happy. That is the point I'm making. The cards are redundant and mostly useless. I'm with most other people in wishing for abilities that affect the cards. However, that was not what the majority were screaming for. They wanted unique effects.

The powercreep of tank healing and healer abilities happened while people we asking for the card effects. I think that contributed to what we ended up getting. When people were originally asking for the varied cards it was with the idea that tanks wouldn't be self sufficient and heals didn't have such an overabundance of heals. This can be fixed by scaling back healing abilities.

[RhiaCeallach]

Healing will always be secondary to DPS in FF14 unless there are drastic changes made, but the cards never become entirely useless. People do make mistakes and even late in a tier you might encounter new players, unless you never play outside of a static. I consider the separation of DPS and support cards to be a fair solution. The DPS cards are the main cards and always will be while the support cards don't feel like a hindrance since they don't cost you a DPS card.

They do cost you dps cards though since they made 4/6 cards utility. As people have said in the last few pages, the utility cards COMBINED might give you 200-250k healing during the course of a 9 minute fight. Celestial Intersection on its own does 500k healing with its shield + heal.

Unless they massively buff the utility cards or give abilities that let you buff them during the fight, they are useless and will continue to be useless. You brought up an example of people making mistakes or having new players in your group but a random 400 pot shield or 15s regen isn't going to save them nor is it going to be your first choice when trying to save them considering how many better tools you have at your disposal. If you're so desperate that you need to use the cards to save them, you are most likely out of everything and about to wipe considering even a benefic II would do more healing.

Optimizing the DPS cards gave them some extra depth but even with that they didn't feel all that significant to me. The gains stood out the most if you're going for a speedkill but otherwise they'd be hard to spot. This is absolutely a case of differing opinions but the support cards feel more meaningful, outside of the role wide issues with healing which are external to the cards themselves.

It doesn't need to be a speed kill/ parsing group for the DPS increase from the cards to matter or feel significant. A freestyle samurai might do more than enough damage to clear a fight but someone doing their rotation properly would still help you clear faster and help you avoid later mechanics.
Randomly throwing out cards isn't going to feel impactful but if you know how many cards you're supposed to give out at the 1/2 minutes and time them with when people start their burst, it will add up and help you kill it faster, which in turn helps you avoid mechanics during prog/ reclears.

Even if we're talking about doing your last reclears and everyone having almost all the gear they need so you'd end up skipping mechanics anyway, what sounds more fun: i) Learning to spot when people do their burst so you can buff them and use your cards at the right time or ii) Have two cards that you play every two times that you always put on the same people every single pull?

Lastly, this is slightly off-topic but everyone complains about how easy healers are to play and asking for more buttons, which is fair, but Astro was the last played healer in Endwalker even though it was (arguably) the busiest and most complicated one until you learned when you're supposed to give out the cards. Is it a replacement for more dots/ dps abilites? No, but it sure is more interesting than spamming 1 and giving out a whooping 2 cards every two minutes.