Solution to Astrologian problem

[PercibelTheren]

Well, we currently have no RNG, do you feel like you're just a White Mage with some card flavor?

Short answer: yes.
Long answer: I feel like a White Mage who is better at doing White Mage things than actual White Mage. AST is straight up a better healer but that was already the case before the DT changes.

I liked AST because the cards were something unrelated to my healing kit that I got to keep on track of beyond mindlessly spamming Malefic while waiting for the scheduled raidwide attack. It's also a good direction to go if you want to keep the skill floor low and the ceiling high - the newbies can straight up ignore the damage buff cards and be fine while the more experienced people have something to optimise.

I think removing all randomness from the cards is stupid because them being fully predetermined is just not how fortune telling works. If anything, they should lean harder into letting us manipulate the RNG (you know, like AST used to), time magic and delayed heals. A well-timed Macrocosmos and Earthly Star make you feel like a great strategist. I want more of that.

[Carighan]

I liked AST because the cards were something unrelated to my healing kit that I got to keep on track of beyond mindlessly spamming Malefic while waiting for the scheduled raidwide attack. It's also a good direction to go if you want to keep the skill floor low and the ceiling high - the newbies can straight up ignore the damage buff cards and be fine while the more experienced people have something to optimise.

Ah, I get it.

Yeah, I can see that perspective.

I would personally say that while I enjoy randomness in MMORPG class design, FFXIV first needs to solve a handful of underlying deeper issues with the combat and job design system that affect all jobs and how they interact in a fight (120s buff alignment, strict job design around static rotations - dancer excepted curiously, oGCD flooding of all jobs and GCD simplification in turn, GCD healing not being needed, tanking not being an active system, etc).

But assuming these are all solved or at least partially improved, I could see space for a random-based system on a healer that's supplementary. Supplementary on a gameplay level I mean.

I think one big issue holding this all back is that the overall issues I mention above kind of force the job design to all be equal: All based around a 120s burst (which has to be reliable), and all based on a reliable, static, gameplay loop. We have no proc-based combat jobs, we have no pet jobs (and even when we had them, they weren't stuff like a DAoC Necromancer or an old TBC WoW Demo Warlock), we have no true priority-system jobs, we have nothing like that really. We need the rigid combat design massively softened up to make space for "cool stuff", tbh.

[elioaiko]

I'm against making cards GCD because fitting them inbetween casts is what makes them fun.

Also the people who are saying that DT AST is proof SB AST wasn't ideal is mistaken. It's not just the effects that made them feel good to use. It's how it interacted with your kit, something current AST has completely detached from the cards.

For one, Royal Road was a fun minigame and vastly superior to whatever we have now. Being able to extend, enhance or spread the effects with what you had was a fun game you'd think about as you got cards.

Being able to make do with what you had was the challenge. But it kept you engaged to keep pulling for cards and deciding if waiting for the next one will be worth it or using the one you have now.

Not to mention the dopamine hit of Sleeve Draw.

On top of the royal effects, you also had Time Dilation which can extend durations of said buffs (even AST regens) on a single target. Then you had OG Celestial Opposition that extended the WHOLE parties AST buffs.

This is what made SB fun to me at least. It interacted with your entire kit in a way to where 1 spam/nuke didn't really feel dull because every run with the cards were never the same.

Sure it was inconsistent as hell when it came to raid buffs, but keep in mind that raid buffs weren't always strictly 2 min windows back then.

On top of that, utility in FFXIV is all but reduced to nothing. No aggro management, no assistance abilities outside of defensive CDs, and no real synergy between jobs.

No job with utilities is gonna feel good bc the combat design lacks meaningful ways of engaging the player that isn't just a dps timer.

Until we get some real depth back in the combat, whatever poor excuse the devs has for why AST isn't in a good place will not fly.

At first I liked the cards having utility back but then I saw the effects and that they're all ST with no ways of manipulate them, and my hopes went right back down..

[BabyYoda]

Cards as utility is the dumbest thing I ever seen

[Sylvain]

Except AST didn’t “didnt work” when you drew the wrong card because its entire minigame was around mitigation and playing around the RNG you got, if you were relying on drawing something in particular for a particular mechanic then you were playing AST wrong,

I mean.. sure but on the other hand, can we really say that "every draw but this one is useless" makes for an intertaining gameplay?

I agree that relying on something random for a specific mechanic would mean playing AST wrong. But because if I can't rely on a random utility then when it occurs its just useless because I learned to deal without it.

Lady vs King is a good example of the Lady being systematically useless because you'd simply learn to deal with a mechanic without it. It was also too weak to replace a gcd heal if you were doing one most of the time.
So in any scenario the heal from the lady would be wasted.

So if planning around a random event is wrong, but because the event is random I don't use it, the system might as well simply not exist because it serves no purpose. Wether I would draw a lady had 0 impact on performances.

If playing AST was about dealing with whatever random option the cards would offer you, than old AST was imo a failure because it didn't achieve that. You didn't deal with whatever the card would offer you, you would just do your best to mitigate the RNG to reach your goal which was to get more dps cards. Which resulted in 6 copy carbon cards for two expansions.

And while it was fun to throw a bunch of cards every 2 mins and you'd never really knew who would get the cards (and boy was it an exciting moment every 2 minutes when some players would litterally be purring hoping to get a card because I'd draw 3melee in a row or 2 range or whatever)

From all the flaw the new card system may have, this isn't one. No matter how useless you believe the cards to be, you can plan around them and use them.
Sure they are no longer proper cards per say. They're not random, they're just cycling buff/heal on a 1min cd. But I don't see that as worse than a system with 6 random buff from which 5 will be ignored.

The card system has never achieved what you portrayed as correctly playing AST, "dealing with the RNG". In SB we never dealt with it, we just waited to get what we wanted. And then we just threw whatever was available in ShB/EW because they were all the same anyway and the gain from having 3 seals over 2 was just.. "there" I guess.

So again, not saying the new system is amazing or anything but I really don't see the old one as especially better. I don't see fishing for an AoE balance more intertaining than fishing for 3 seals over no rng. Unless you're very into fishes.

[Valence]

Minor Arcana is not comparable in the slightest with the major arcana deck in the HW/SB system. Minor Arcana had no way to manage bad hands, while the Major Arcana did.

[Sylvain]

Minor Arcana is not comparable in the slightest with the major arcana deck in the HW/SB system. Minor Arcana had no way to manage bad hands, while the Major Arcana did.

So?

Does it invalidate the premis?

We say that AST should be about managing the RNG element. But on the other hand, we don't use unwanted RNG element because we learn to deal without them. (So the Lady for the minor arcana).

Let's take SB cards, which many consider to be the paramount of best of the design but instead let's swap the 3 DPS cards for 3 support effect, like HoT, Heal Receive and Shield let say.
Would you still consider the system to be a good system?
Because which effect you get is random, you cannot plan around. So you'd need a healing strategy which does not involve any specific card draw.

The only reason SB cards worked was because there would always be one useful option and since we were doing 1 draw every 30s with the ability to store reroll royal-road the odds of getting a "DPS Spread" card was decently high.
But all the supportive aspect of cards was mostly useless.

Really imagine SB with only supportive effects on cards. It would have turned to "Throw wathever AoE buff you get here to help healing". But perhaps we would have actually been dealing with cards this way trying to make the most out of them instead of just throwing anything that wasn't serving the AoE+Balance combo.

[Supersnow845]

So?

Does it invalidate the premis?

We say that AST should be about managing the RNG element. But on the other hand, we don't use unwanted RNG element because we learn to deal without them. (So the Lady for the minor arcana).

Let's take SB cards, which many consider to be the paramount of best of the design but instead let's swap the 3 DPS cards for 3 support effect, like HoT, Heal Receive and Shield let say.
Would you still consider the system to be a good system?
Because which effect you get is random, you cannot plan around. So you'd need a healing strategy which does not involve any specific card draw.

The only reason SB cards worked was because there would always be one useful option and since we were doing 1 draw every 30s with the ability to store reroll royal-road the odds of getting a "DPS Spread" card was decently high.
But all the supportive aspect of cards was mostly useless.

Really imagine SB with only supportive effects on cards. It would have turned to "Throw wathever AoE buff you get here to help healing". But perhaps we would have actually been dealing with cards this way trying to make the most out of them instead of just throwing anything that wasn't serving the AoE+Balance combo.

And that’s that point, it worked because 3 cards were DPS cards (depending on who you gave them to)

Removing the damage options and giving 6 support cards when you can’t plan around any of them I agree would make the SB system useless………but that’s basically exactly what we have now. All of the cards are useless except the DPS cards. You can plan around them but you don’t need them in the first place so planning around them is pointless

The SB system worked because the goal was DPS but if a situation arose where a card you didn’t plan around came up at the right time it could be used, but if it wasn’t needed you could protect against the bad RNG. Old Bole generally you’d redraw it or minor arcana it, but if you set up a spread with royal road hoping for a balance but bole came up at the right time you could spread bole to great effect. Modern bole you can plan around but you never need it in the first place so it’s just useless fluff

Playing to RNG didn’t mean “always use the card you got” it meant “all cards but balance and spear are in service to balance and spear in an optimal scenario but there was a large degree of optimisation in controlling which bad luck protection you used on each card and if you randomly were presented with a scenario in which a card you would have burned for balance or spear you can instead apply as the card it currently is”

[BabyYoda]

After futher testing on the job I feel like we have many less important skills with the kit.

like 5% defense increase? why??? it doesn't feel rewarding.

also adding that damage buffs doesn't feel impactful enough, I don't see numbers and I don't see how much that buff is done to X party member.

[Rithy255]

I feel like the Issue with stormblood cards wasn't the RNG nor was it having utility cards, it was that damage buff cards and utility cards were mixed together in the same system.

Almost like they could have made minor arcana your damage buff system of rng cards (where you still get a ranged or melee card), they could have also done more with this, then theirs the utility cards, the reason why they feel flat and uninteresting is because the effects feel really boring like woo 10% mit, also the fact theirs no RNG element of trying to fit that card into everything else (you usually just put defensive/healing cards on tank)


I think if they rework ast again they should.
1. Minor arcana becomes your damage buff cards
2. Draw becomes support/utility cards, these are random again with 6 different effects.
3. a cooldown that will Spread your current drawn Support/utility card on a longer cooldown

Maybe then astro cards would actually feel interesting and unique to astro, though I miss having pure or barrier stance on astro even more personally, but likely will have to wait for the 5th healer (if they do one) to get that back lol.