AST Ideas

[Starbirth]

AST is a weak job. Here's some ideas to hopefully remedy that.

Benefic -> 400 Pot

- Srsly why is this 380 when Physick and Cure are 400?
- Change the 15% mechanic to 15% chance next Benefic II will have 100% critical chance.

Light Speed -> Lets wait and see what SE does.

Spread -> Can use out of Combat, Change to keep the card in spread until shuffled back into deck. The card in the spread shares CD with Spread(40s). Reduce Spread CD to 40s.

- There was no need to make this only in combat. Apparently SE is thinking about reversing this.
- Holding onto the card of your choice until you remove it with shuffle gives you a certain play style with each card and makes the rng feel less punishing

Shuffle -> Shuffle drawn card back into the deck, if no card is drawn then shuffle your spread back into your deck. Reduce CD to 60s.




Side Notes

- Flame away.
- Will add more ideas later
- Fixed wording on Benefic notes.
- After some thought deleted ideas to Light Speed, Aspected Benefic and Ewer/Spire.
- Added rehaul ideas to the card system.

[loreleidiangelo]

Aspected Benefic is already 250 potency in Nocturnal Sect; if you buff Diurnal Aspected it will just become the Astrologian go-to Sect more than it already is, so if you buffed Diurnal Aspected than Nocturnal Aspected would need a LOT of love too.

The potency on regular Benefic is fine, I think; a guaranteed critical proc would certainly give ASTs more healing/speed run oomph with Benefic II (though overheal on AST would be crazy).

I'd prefer to keep the refreshes away from AST, tbh. Plenty of other jobs have TP restores and don't want to step on BRD/MCH toes any further, imo. Up the reductions on both to make them "feel" more useful, maybe, but keep their basic function the same.

[Starbirth]

Aspected Benefic is already 250 potency in Nocturnal Sect; if you buff Diurnal Aspected it will just become the Astrologian go-to Sect more than it already is, so if you buffed Diurnal Aspected than Nocturnal Aspected would need a LOT of love too.

I feel like this skill is missing something. Could be because the shield is lacking though.

The potency on regular Benefic is fine, I think; a guaranteed critical proc would certainly give ASTs more healing/speed run oomph with Benefic II (though overheal on AST would be crazy).

The 380 bugs the crap out of me. Such OCD (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I'd prefer to keep the refreshes away from AST, tbh. Plenty of other jobs have TP restores and don't want to step on BRD/MCH toes any further, imo. Up the reductions on both to make them "feel" more useful, maybe, but keep their basic function the same.

I could see increasing the effect.

[Akyio]

All those changes wouldnt do much still. The whole class is quite broken, most abilities need from tiny adjustments to complete rework(=collective consciousness). Also the mana issue is horrendous as soon as someone does some mistakes, due to lag or just not avoiding aoe time by time, im not even talking about ressing someone.
The whole card system is too random and not rewarding even in the best combination. For example 5% dmg buff for 8 people for 15 seconds sounds okay, but in reality with all aoes around and everything that's happening very rarely all those 15 seconds will be used to deal damage, most of the time with people scattered around you wont even be able to put that tiny buff on entire team of 8 people, so if you turn to cleric stance and throw combust + combust II you are basically doing already more damage than your whole level 30-45 skills set combination that you shuffled and saved and waited for, in the right moment to use.

[SuzakuCMX]

Aspected Benefic: Nocturnal Stance: Cure potency of 200 [210] with a shield of 150 [157.5] potency + 5% of target's maximum health.
Enhanced Benefic II: Instead of instant cast Diurnal Sect: Adds 12s to Aspected Benefic Regen Timer [+300 Potency total] Nocturnal Sect: Additionally restores 10% of the target's Maximum HP. Still has a 15% proc rate.
Lightspeed: Next 2 spells have no cast time and do not incur the global cooldown, but cost 25% more mana. 120s Recast.
Disable: Reduces target's damage by 10% for the next 10 seconds. 60s Recast.
Collective Unconscious: Diurnal Sect: Gives 20% Haste to all allies within range while channeled Nocturnal Sect: Increases potencies on all allies' skills by 10% while channeled Both Sects: 120s Recast, maximum 10s channel. Extends duration of all buffs placed by the caster while channeled. Shares a recast timer with Celestial Opposition.
Celestial Opposition: Stuns all enemies for 10s and restores 10% of self's mana. Doubles effect of cards on all targets 120s Recast. Shares a recast timer with Collective Unconscious.

Shuffle: Can't draw the same card, 60s Recast.
Royal Road: Burns current card to instantly draw a new card with an additional effect, but cannot draw the same card. 90s Recast. Enhanced Royal Road: Doubles effect of next card used | Expanded Royal Road: Spreads card to all nearby party members with 30% reduced effectiveness | Extended Royal Road: Doubles duration of next card used.
Spread: Can be used out of combat. 30s Recast after card is used.

Spear: Additionally reduces spells currently on recast timer by same amount of their maximum recast.
Spire/Ewer: Refresh/TP Equivalent over next 21s.

My suggestions from another thread.

[Roxas_Andrade]

IMO, AST needs an AOE before level 50. Ok, everyone who wanted to level AST must've leveled it so s/he has Gravity, but every class has a DOT, an AOE, a support skill, an attack skill before 50. So rearranging skills should not be a bad idea.

[Xikaz]

Most need to affect the card system. We currently waste so many job quests on new card abilities and they're all underwhelming. Here is a quick idea I had.

1. Lower all card related cooldowns
2. Make draw restore a small amount of mp each time it's used. Not enough to stay full all the time, but just enough to help with our current management.
3. Add secondary healing self buffs to each card. They can be varied per card or some cards can share the same like royal road effects. With well thought out self-buffs on each card it could both address our deficiencies and make some of the more questionable current cards more usable.

[Glasya]

I'm not interested in fiddling with potencies, but rather making the class feel more unique. To that end I've heard a few ideas, and come up with some of my own:

For one, Synastry should be a permanent buff you can change target at will to make AST a class oriented around synchronised healing. Collective Unconscious should be a something you can use at any time for free. Give the class a new ability which inverts the current card and lets you inflict a reversed effect on enemies (similar to the reversed arcana from Persona 4; Inverted Bole = damage susceptibility up etc). Stella should be similarly replaced with an aspected buff that increases shield or regen potency. And finally Gravity needs to lose the diminishing returns if it offers no form of mitigation like Holy's stun or Shadowflare's slow, because that is just dumb.

Besides that I think everything is more or less fine. The class needs a major overhaul in terms of both gameplay functionality and novelty.

[Elanshin]

I feel that they should carve AST a niche in the utility healer spot. Currently, the core healing spells are fine (they are all there and just need a relatively minor tweak to make nocturnal sect be up to par against diurnal). As such it is the utility spells that needs a bit of reworking.

I propose to reduce the RNG by combining card effects and reducing cards. Thus you now have 3 cards.

1. Bole + Balance
2. Arrow + Spear
3. Ewer + Spire: Restore TP/MP at a fixed rate (prehaps total 15%. That would be 150 TP and ~2000 MP)

Spread: 30s CD and Usable out of combat.
Royal Road: Honestly, you are always hoping for an expanded royal road most of the time and while I do not deny that extended or stronger are useful, it is much simpler just to make this Expanded only without dropping the power.
Shuffle: 60s CD and it'll be fine.

[Publius85]

So my idea with the cards to help combat RNG is this. So when you have your weapon drawn there is 12 cards that circle your globe. Assuming each card is in your deck twice for 12 cards, when you draw a card you pull it out of the deck. You either use it or spread. After use the card is placed in a discard pile. Once you've drawn through the whole deck all cards are shuffled back in and you start again. This way while you progress through dungeons and what not you can kind of beat the rng system by eliminating cards in the deck allowing more control over what cards you're using as the deck grows smaller. The shuffle ability can be used whenever to shuffle all cards in the discard pile back into the deck. I know its not entirely fleshed out but I'm off to work I can elaborate more when I come home. Make sense though? XD