AST: Card rework alternative

[Roy_M]

AST was only inconsistent if you were desperate for balance.

I think what she meant is that we will need to worry about seals while the RNG of the Ast is ok as long you manage it except spire but other than that if they allow spire to be direct hit should fix the problem. Just hoping they give RRoad and Spread + CO(EXTENDO) back.

[AvenoMatt]

Personally I'm okay with RR and Spread being gone as they fed into ASTs issues. You'd get an Ewer or Spire and RR just so you could aoe Balance, Spear or even Arrow which gave AST a lot of party utility that they obviously want to nerf. Now you can only get the aoe Balance in the form of Divination that is on a 3min cooldown so I'd say that AST is still a strong job. Spread on the other hand was useful especially if you knew you may need a Bole or Ewer soon but not soon enough that you'd need to use it now and still had time to try to get expanded RR but it also helped players prep before they started a fight to get expanded Balance and hold onto a Balance while they tried to get an expanded RR. As for extending buff effects again just fed into ASTs issues by allows us to keep our buff up longer.

[Capulse]

The current Shadowbringers cards are ok but boring.

The whole thing i wanted to project in my original post was that AST could have card options that allow them to plan or prepare for future actions.
I know that people want to push the most dps, which is why the entire card system can be ignored even in current shadowbringer design. Because you can always push minor arcana for a damage boost. Edit: If we want max dps and already have seals all cards would be pushed to minor arcana, as the current tooltips stands it gives higher %damage

So i felt this bypasses the fishing for dps cards because they could all be dps cards, but you could also add to the spread for a tank buster or to give yourself a healing or mana boost in the future.

Glad to see people care to talk about the subject.
I plan on playing AST as my main, despite current opinions on balance. Cant wait to play it and have a gameplay experience to help develop my thoughts on AST and the other healers.

[Pbuckley818]

Oh, I like this thread! Very constructive.

I like the idea of relegating the flat DPS buff to the big AoE buff triggered by the seals. That way Balance isn't removed for all the Balance fiends, and Astro doesn't get entirely lobotomized for the sake of streamlining. The issue is this leaves is with two cards without an effect. The Spire, and the Balance, some people have suggested things like Magic Defense and Direct Hit Rate that the later MIGHT be a good idea, but the former I disagree with. Bole already gives you a flat defensive buff against all damage, all Magic Defense would do is split that buff in two nerfing the bole, and making it and it's counterpart both far to situational. (Not to mention Magic Defense has been all but removed from the game, and for good reason).

Solar
Balance: +10% Direct hit Rate. (The Balance is all about imparting strength so this either had to be a damage buff or a healing received buff, but I made this decision for a reason I will state at the end.)
Bole: Reduces Damage Taken by 10%

Celestial
Spire: +10 to all Healing Potency on Target (The Spire is supposed to be a great Mechanical tower assailed by the god of destruction, it absorbs his lightning to fuel itself. Before this translated into TP over time, now to being better able to absorb "energy" via Healing.)
Spear: +10% Critical Hit Rate.

Lunar
Ewer: MP Refresh
Arrow: +10% Speed

This way every seal has one Support Buff, and One Indirect Damage Buff. If Damage buffs need to be entirely removed, I am not sure I could come up with enough different ideas, though I am sure someone could. Feel free to add onto or take apart this list of effects. Of course Minor Arcanum will have to be redone AGAIN, if we are going to push for these changes. As if we can always just swap these out for a damage what's the point. One Idea's is to make the Lord and the Lady do what they do right now (Though that might end in fishing for the lord), though I don't have any better ideas.

[Alfric]

I haven’t seen anyone mention this so I’m sorry if they did! What about having three cards be debuffs and three be party buffs. Like maybe Balance is a slashing debuff to target, arrow is a slow to the target(like cast times?), and Arrow is.. increased rate at which the target takes critical hits? Not that those have to be the exact effects, but does this sound like a good idea?

I’m not veteran but it’s just a thought ^^’

[RayThrust]

I'm not against the new card changes, but removing Balance and only keeping it for the AoE every 90 seconds (and maybe for Crown/Lady) seems like an even better idea. Make it 1 dps (that's not Balance) and one support card for every seal.
We gotta stop with the "I love to give crit to Bards argument" though, because they will not be as dependent on crit anymore.

[Rahspdoy]

I'm not against the new card changes, but removing Balance and only keeping it for the AoE every 90 seconds (and maybe for Crown/Lady) seems like an even better idea. Make it 1 dps (that's not Balance) and one support card for every seal.
We gotta stop with the "I love to give crit to Bards argument" though, because they will not be as dependent on crit anymore.

The "I love to give crit to bards argument" is valid till the 5.0 change take effect, and serves as a valid counter-argument against the "the only card worth useing is Balance" bs that is being spouted by the meta-players who 'only' care about eeking out every last 0.000001% of dps they possibly can.

The Meta players insist that no other card 'but' Balance was worth using, and every time one of us comes up with a "well i used this card in this situation" its gets waved away as "well it doesnt matter, that doesnt exist in 5.0". Well of course it doesnt work in 5.0, because those of you in the meta-field WANTED it to not exist anymore.

What we want is our card system back in a way that works WITH the changes in 5.0.

Not some gimicy UI system thats used as smoke-n-mirrors to hide the fact that Astro's core mechanic has been reduced to 2 single skills that both do the exact same thing. Only ones a slightly more powerfull version in AOE form.

[Sylve]

Not some gimicy UI system thats used as smoke-n-mirrors to hide the fact that Astro's core mechanic has been reduced to 2 single skills that both do the exact same thing. Only ones a slightly more powerfull version in AOE form.

As of right now, AST cards are a coin flip.
I have a 50/50 chance to draw a damage buff of varying degrees of strength or draw burn fodder.

That's it. That's the sum total of the gameplay involved in those cards.
Did I draw a Damage buff? If yes, cool, throw it on someone.
If no, Redraw it. Still no? RR it so the next damage buff is better. Or dump it for a Lord/Lady. Either way, I want to burn it as fast as possible so Draw comes back faster.

Has Spire been useful sometimes? Sure. Same with Ewer. Somewhere, at some point, I drew a non damage card and it was 'useful' in the moment I drew it. But the vast majority of the time, I drew garbage that I dumped or burned.

And something that happens frequently and is oh so fun, is constantly drawing Spires and Ewers and Boles with a RR prepped. That's garbage. That's minutes worth of Draws wasted.

The new system blows all that garbage RNG out the window. Every card I draw is useful now. Rather than fishing for useful cards, I'll fish for the proper Seals to get the most out of Divination. Even drawing badly and not getting the right seals is less negatively impactful to my party than it is currently.
That sounds a lot more useful than wasting 5 Draws in a row getting Boles and Ewers before finally drawing an Arrow with a Monk and a NIN in my party.

[Pbuckley818]

Ok, I am about to say something to any and all none Astro Healers in this thread, that I hope you will see before complaining about Astro's wanting their card mechanic back. We know that we have a more flexible playstyle with more instant casts. (Which we got in order to give us more time to use the Card system mind you). Most of us know that other healers (Or a t least white Mages specifically) really should be given similar mechanics. Frankly I would LOVE it if the White Mage attack spells +cure functioned the same as Astro spells, (I don't feel Scholar needs it, as it has it's own alternative in the forms of Bio and Ruin 2, though I would like to have my other DoT's back... but that's another conversation entirely). The fact of the matter is that we shouldn't be attacking one another (Hell we shouldn't be attacking SE), we need to be constructive and try to facilitate a conversation about how much we as a community don't like the Healer changes, and that means creating threads and discussing every issue or complaint we have about said changes.

This Thread is about the Astro Card system and how many Astro's feel dissatisfied with seeing their ICONIC mechanic get lobotomized. Unless you are an Astro player who does not want them to change the system back, why the heck are you arguing about this? If anything you shouldn't want Astro to become the Balance bank as that is only going to make it MORE META, not less. So please be respectful of others and their desire for the class that they play. Furthermore I want to see more threads discussing more specific issues with he different classes, scholar's DPS being oversimplified and made incredibly boring, and White Mages time resource issues (They made Holy a freaking cast bar spell!) just to name a couple. SE won't know where they went wrong unless we try to communicate are opinions to them.

[brahesTheorem]

If we're sharing ideas for how an AST card rework could have worked, I personally would have liked to see a change that struck a middle-ground between the flavor of the current system and the consistent homogeneity of the 5.0 system.

I think a solid approach would have been to simply give all cards two effects- one consistent DPS increase, and another, more flavorful secondary effect.
I.E.

Balance: 3% damage increase + 5% Direct Hit Rate increase
Bole: 3% damage increase + 5(-10)% Damage Reduction
Arrow: 3% damage increase + 3(-5)% Attack Speed increase
Spear: 3% damage increase + 5% Critical Hit Rate increase
Ewer: 3% damage increase + Refresh
Spire: 3% damage increase + 5(-10)% Healing received

Lord/Lady: 5(-8)% damage increase for Melee/Ranged, respectively.
Divination/Seals: Keep As-Is

Though I can't speak for how the exact numbers would play out, I think that dialing back the potency increases to justify secondary, more situation effects would go a long way towards inflating the feeling of player choice as to how cards are used.
As a final note, I'm actually pretty excited for how new AST will play, particularly for its new emphasis on DPS boosting, but I do think I'll miss the flavor that came with the original six-buff system.