Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

[Carighan]

Sleeve Draw: Am I a joke to you?!

Not an ability.

Also I made a mistake, of course you'd hold the 60s card for 60s, and use it right as burst starts, to then immediately draw again and use the other buff card. Bit weird to not just have one buff card for everyone then on a 120s cooldo... oh, we could call it, I dunno, Divination?

[Carighan]

The two minute burst window should go anyway so that suggestion being hampered by the burst window is probably a null point

Opposite.

Yes it should go, but until that is done all such suggestions about job redesigns comparing the current design are moot as no job would look like it does right now in a post-120s-burst world, anyways.

[Connor]

Not an ability.

Also I made a mistake, of course you'd hold the 60s card for 60s, and use it right as burst starts, to then immediately draw again and use the other buff card. Bit weird to not just have one buff card for everyone then on a 120s cooldo... oh, we could call it, I dunno, Divination?

What relevance does that have lol? They’ve proven many times they can easily reinstate any old ability they want; Energy Drain being a prime example. Unless you’re going to tell me the Astrologian ability Sleeve Draw literally did not exist as an FFXIV ability which is…an extremely bizarre attitude to take over something so easily googled lol.

Your bottom part doesn’t make any sense either because Astrologian literally already works like that. With Divination lol. You throw a card then cycle to Umbral to throw a card and then you use Divination. It’s practically always worked like that, we just had Spread before instead of a second Draw button lol. So you don’t want Astrologian to be in a situation that it’s effectively been in since it came out in Heavensward? It kinda comes across like you just really don’t like the job tbh. It’s like asking why Bard still has two DoTs (‘because it always has’). Not to mention how it also funnels healer design in general back to current design (why add more buttons when we can just put the entirety of their potency into one spammable? No more bloat!)

[Rithy255]

You mean Divination is dropped, and instead we alternatingly buff melees and ranged every 60 seconds? This has a weird side-effect in that only tanks and melee DPS are buffed during the main bursts, you are aware of that, yes?

1. Lord/lady would go back to being rng, so it would benefit whoever you draw for that.
2. I said nothing about it staying on a 60s cooldown. (a smaller one like 40 or 30 would also be nice, depending on what you put draw on)
3. It's obvious that this can be solved by having two stacks??

I also think burst meta should go but thats another issue

[Carighan]

Yeah that's sadly where the class design is headed, more than ever. And a non-trivial portion of the playerbase loudly celebrate any homogenization and ask for more. Just look at reapers wanting to remove their gauge-negativity, as if that isn't the only actual gameplay identity they have compared to other melee DPS.

[ForsakenRoe]

The irony is, AST still has RNG, but now, you have no control over it. Previously you could control the Card RNG with Spread, Redraw etc. Now, it's got Oracle, but you can't control Oracle deciding to crit/DHit or not

If the problem with older versions of cards were as follows:

SB: unique effects (good), but some effects were damage and some not so you alawys fished for damage (bad)
SHB/EW: every card is damage so they're equally useful (good), but every card is damage so they're no longer unique (bad)

Then isn't a potential solution to just... use the good half of both, and make the damage the unique thing about all of the cards, while having the additional effect (Bole mit, Ewer MP regen etc) as a nice bonus on top?

There's 6 cards. Assuming one (say, Balance) is a 'wildcard', then that leaves one card for each remaining role. Playing cards on everyone fairly evenly was one of the cool things about older AST that we've lost over time due to the whole 'focus on damage only' mentality, so bringing that back would be cool. Here's an example of what I mean, from the thread in my signature:

- Balance: 10% damage, 15s

- Bole: 20% damage mitigation, 15s. Additionally, grants 2 stacks of Bole's Bulwark, causing the enemy that strikes the bearer of this buff to take 20% of that ally's Max HP as damage and consuming one stack.

- Arrow: Grants 12 stacks of 'Arrow's Assault' (16 if the target is Ranged), increasing Autoattack rate by 400%.
One stack is consumed for each Autoattack dealt under it's effect, and upon consuming all stacks, the Autoattack rate returns to normal.
Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, grants 4 stacks of Arrow's Assault, speeding up the recast time of the AST to 1.0s for the next 4 GCD attacks, and making cast times of those spells instant.

- Ewer: Grants 1000mp over 15s. Additionally, if the target is a Healer, grants 4 stacks of Ewer Overflowing, causing the next 4 casts of Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis dealt by said Healer to strike a second time for 100% of the spell's potency. This second strike cannot be Critical, or a Direct Hit.

- Spear: 10% Physical damage, 15s. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, all magic damage dealt by the AST is instead considered physical for the duration, allowing them to benefit from this card's effect

- Spire: 10% Magic damage, 15s

I've had multiple instances of forumgoers/reddit users who'd insist 'it'd never work, we'd fish for the best one', only for me to give them an example 8man comp and ask them 'which card is the best for this comp, assuming equal skill and gear' and watch them get the answer wrong. There's too many factors that go into 'which card is best' when the values are closer like this, to make a definitive answer as to 'which card is the one to fish for' and so for the most part, people would not fish. Those that do anyway are the kind of players who would wall it after their first Oracle doesn't crit, anyway, so I don't think it's a good idea to design around such a small subset of players


I'll stand by this till the day the game goes offline: AOE Balance was not the problem in HW/SB. AOE Balance was the problem. If we had nerfed Balance, AOE Spear would have become the new thing to fish for. Rework the AOE effect into something else, keep Cards single-target, and it becomes FAR easier to balance their effects against one another

Also if anyone wants to try to work out 'which card is best' with the above values, your example party is WAR, DRK, AST, SGE, MNK, NIN, MCH, RDM, and the fight is a 100% uptime, pure single-target fight

[Azurarok]

Also if anyone wants to try to work out 'which card is best' with the above values, your example party is WAR, DRK, AST, SGE, MNK, NIN, MCH, RDM, and the fight is a 100% uptime, pure single-target fight

taking a shot in the dark without giving it too deep of a thought, I don't expect it to be right

Balance: MCH during raid buffs, NIN during off-minute burst assuming MNK is doing double Lunar opener
Bole: Whoever is your MT at the time, ideally WAR using Thrill of Battle
Arrow: WAR? Surprisingly has the highest auto-attack strength of the group, just at a slower rate which doesn't matter. MCH may have higher crit/dh rates though.
Ewer: SGE
Spear: MNK, ideally with Riddle of Wind
Spire: RDM

[ForsakenRoe]

taking a shot in the dark without giving it too deep of a thought, I don't expect it to be right

Balance: MCH during raid buffs, NIN during off-minute burst assuming MNK is doing double Lunar opener
Bole: Whoever is your MT at the time, ideally WAR using Thrill of Battle
Arrow: WAR? Surprisingly has the highest auto-attack strength of the group, just at a slower rate which doesn't matter. MCH may have higher crit/dh rates though.
Ewer: SGE
Spear: MNK, ideally with Riddle of Wind
Spire: RDM

I meant 'if you draw a card and you're intending to fish for the 'best damage' one as per how we played in HW/SB, which card is that 'best damage' card that you'd be trying to fish for (instead of just playing the hand Fate deals you)?', not 'who would you play each of these cards on', but I appreciate both the attempt, and the different approach

[Carighan]

I would love cards to be variable in use without having clear "use this on this person or hold it until the right time to do that", but I cannot see how that'd work given the current overall fight design, combat gameplay and class design paradigms.

It'd just be strictly worse than having fixed targets. And the moment you do have fixed targets, it's just an effort in rote button presses with no agency. And of course we know from before that devs don't want randomness on a level where you could end up with 0 +damage cards in a fight versus 50 damage cards in a fight, as that'd swing group DPS and they could "fish for a good draw" by pulling repeatedly, basically.

The only way I could see this work is if some card mechanic had both randomness that changes the ideal target in unpredictable ways and ways these cards "burn a hole in your pocket" if you try to keep them for some burst cycle. Like say if your nukes and heals were all instant to cast (=mobility, important), but only while you didn't hold any cards to use in the future. But then to make up for that these cards would need to be awfully strong and again if random means bringing an Astro just means getting the odd 0%-1% wipes that are down to random chance.

... and now that I think about it, maybe somewhere in there is the solution to our damage cards? What if our damage cards "flattened chance"? After all, we're diviners who try to interpret what the future brings, and as a gameplay mechanic we like chance, but what if it were inverted? We remove chance (for others).

Like on a draw you randomly get one of:

• For the next 60s, target cannot land critical hits. Instead each hit deals more damage based on the critical chance it would have had.
• For the next 60 seconds, target cannot land direct hits. Instead each hit deals more damage based on the direct hit chance it would had had.
• For the next 60 seconds, target executes skills and spells 15% faster but without any cooldown or global cooldown being affected.

One modifier makes this groupwide but drops duration by 75% (15s), one creates a Collective Unconsciousness like bubble at range that causes the effect (and 10% damage reduction) while inside but drops duration to 10s.

These would assume a 60s draw CD.

Of course the actual rDPS contribution would need to be done elsewhere, I'd still want a portion (a significant one ideally, make me an actual buffer!) of my raid damage to be done by others I buff. But I suspect from a balance perspective a flat +damage buff on the raid on a 120s CD like we had before would be easier, and then the cards cause "chance flattening" effects or so, including one working against random network lag induced weaving issues.

[Azurarok]

I meant 'if you draw a card and you're intending to fish for the 'best damage' one as per how we played in HW/SB, which card is that 'best damage' card that you'd be trying to fish for (instead of just playing the hand Fate deals you)?', not 'who would you play each of these cards on', but I appreciate both the attempt, and the different approach

oh, oops. I'm assuming as the ideal card to maximize damage, without the ability to turn it into an AoE?

I'd guess it's either Balance/Spear or Ewer. I did consider Bole but 4 hits of Dosis (~40k each, going by values from an M9S run) is quite a bit more than two hits of 20% of a BiS WAR (~65k each). Meanwhile autos only do like 6k and 9~12 extras of those from Arrow don't come even close. I think MCH has the strongest burst in this group (or in the game?) so Spear should be interchangeable with Balance since they buff the same amount for it. I can't tell just how much it gains from that to compare it to Ewer though.