AST gameplay adjustment

[GeekMatt]

AST is in a pretty solid place right now, and while it doesn't need to be made "stronger" I still think there's some things that could improve it's gameplay.

Earthly Star/job gauge
Firstly, I've found sometimes in hectic moments I forget if I've placed my Earthly Star and/or get distracted by a mechanic and lose track of whether or not it's been upgraded to Giant Dominance. Pre-4.0 I likely wouldn't have this happen because looking at my status effects through out the fight was standard for maintaining my cards, but now that we have a job gauge my focus has shifted and looking at status effects is done more for raid mechanics rather than a constant monitoring, and seeing the ability active in the arena among everything else going on can be too difficult. Obviously player ability and experience will impact this, but I think if our new UI gauge helped to track Earthly Star it would improve the feel of the spell and help the average player be a little more aware.

I was thinking it would be nice to have the 2 stars icon on the right side of the job gauge slowly light up from bottom to top—as a gauge being filled—when Earthly Star is placed. Once filled, it begins refilling again in another colour, signifying that it's been upgraded to Giant Dominance. Filling completely a second time would mean the timer has completed and so the spell auto-detonates. This doesn't mean we have to get rid of the status effect, I think it would work better as an in addition to, rather than a replacement.

Undraw
Another change I'd be interested in seeing is a rework to Undraw. The new description would be something like; *"Allows you to select Spread, Royal Road, or Draw, returning that arcanum back to the deck". *

The reason that I like this change is due to AST losing a degree of strategy in gameplay with the implementation of both the job gauge and the new Sleeve Draw ability. In general the RNG nature of the cards is fun to navigate, but the opportunity to try and work that RNG to your advantage through strategy is what makes it such a great job mechanic. The benefit to the current 4.0 system is that it forces you to utilize cards which most players traditionally use as fodder, but while i am a big fan of encouraging the use of more of our cards, this is certainly the wrong way to go about it. To get the most power out of Sleeve Draw, we want to keep it on CD as often as possible and ideally use it when all Arcanum slots have been emptied for the most possible gains. However, this usually means expending all of your cards immediately before using Sleeve Draw, which means everyone's now buffed and you're likely hanging onto cards which if applied to an already buffed player, would ruin a better buff. Unfortunately in the case of Spread cards and RR buffs, we have no way to remove them.

Because of the nature of this mechanic and how it works against Astrologian card management, many players now refuse to use Sleeve Draw unless they have a Spread card held to avoid unnecessary complications, which is essentially self-nerfing in terms of card usage for fear of RNG. I embrace the RNG aspects of AST but the ability to think, adapt, and make good decisions while keeping our valued cards flowing is what makes the job feel fluid and strong. Being forced to accept the situationally lame and the useless in those situations makes the job feel just a little clunkier, and can even cause friction between players who wonder why their AST is throwing out unneeded Spires instead of The Balance, The Arrow, or even The Bole.

Balance
Reduce potency to 14% (7% on Expanded). Still a plenty powerful skill that'll keep AST in favour. Making it "weaker" isn't the goal here though, the goal ultimately is to make it hurt less to use something other than Balance. The fact that it would likely balance value with the other healers is just an added bonus.

Spear
I'd like to rework Spear to be more than fodder. Currently, using Spear can actually mess up a persons rotation and hinder DPS because players work to build muscle memory and become comfortable with their timers and their rotations, and having an ability come off CD sooner than expected can cause confusion.

I'd like the new Spear description to be something like; "Increases ability duration for self or party member by 4s". This sounds terribly weak, right? 4s will allow one more GCD skill inside your favourite buffs, big deal? But what if I burnt a Bole and then played this card on a PLD right before he used Hallowed Ground on a big trash pull? An additional 8s to your favourite buff could fit up to 3 GCDs or global ticks, this would be a powerful card when used correctly, and weak when used poorly. Any greater of a duration increase I think would be too powerful in certain situations.

I feel that this coupled with the Balance adjustment could add further value to Astrologian in a raid (or any group coordinated)-environment and edge us out of being valued for just a single buff.

[inhaledcorn]

I like all of these changes, and something I want to add to Earthly Star as it currently exists:

Earthly Star is considered a bar-buff. When the first stage buff fully counts down, it gets the second stage. Because of this, it actually has bad compatibility with another one of AST's very powerful tools: Celestial Opposition. If you use CO during the first stage buff, you're actually delaying the secondary buff by 10s. If it was changed to being a function of the gauge, then this problem would no longer exist.

Minor thing, but I would like to see the damage come up slightly, and the target ring be the actual size of the used effect.

[WayofTime]

I like all of these changes, and something I want to add to Earthly Star as it currently exists:

Earthly Star is considered a bar-buff. When the first stage buff fully counts down, it gets the second stage. Because of this, it actually has bad compatibility with another one of AST's very powerful tools: Celestial Opposition. If you use CO during the first stage buff, you're actually delaying the secondary buff by 10s. If it was changed to being a function of the gauge, then this problem would no longer exist.

Minor thing, but I would like to see the damage come up slightly, and the target ring be the actual size of the used effect.

Hmm, I'd mildly disagree with the bad compatibility comment. I'd argue it has an interesting synergy. For instance, if you place Earthly Star too early, or you realize that more damage is going to come and you need to delay your detonation, you can weave in CO to reset the buff to 10s. It doesn't add 10s, it just resets it to 10s (which is interesting, really... wonder why it is capped). Could it be annoying in the wrong circumstances? Yes, but I've gotten used to delaying my CO so that it doesn't mess up my Star if I don't want it to.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I like all of these changes, and something I want to add to Earthly Star as it currently exists:

Earthly Star is considered a bar-buff. When the first stage buff fully counts down, it gets the second stage. Because of this, it actually has bad compatibility with another one of AST's very powerful tools: Celestial Opposition. If you use CO during the first stage buff, you're actually delaying the secondary buff by 10s.

Minor thing, but I would like to see the damage come up slightly, and the target ring be the actual size of the used effect.

It works both ways. For an AST who accidentally uses this, it delays the heal.
For an AST that plans around it, they can put it down early to have it's CD working back up, and simply extend it so it lands when AOE damage comes out.
As for buffing it's damage....Please no lol. It's heal already puts everything WHM and SCH can do to shame.

[xNewbx]

Making spear increase ability duration actually sounds super cool. Maybe I would actually use something other than balance for once.

[Caduagm]

Give us combust I back. It's annoying spamming Malefic III all the time

[GeekMatt]

Give us combust I back. It's annoying spamming Malefic III all the time

I'd totally be pro-anything that makes our DPS more interesting, but I don't see that happening.