AST card system idea

[Almatiel]

So, 6% and 8% damage buffs for 15 sec feels super lame and boring (at least for me)
Even though I still prefer old card system I doubt its coming back
Here some ideas

(1)

The Balance - increases damage dealt by 5% and increases HP recovery via healing actions by 10% for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Solar Seal

The Bole - increases damage dealt by 5% and decreases damage taken by 10% for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Solar Seal

The Arrow - increases damage dealt by 5% and reduces weaponskill/spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 5% for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Lunar Seal

The Ewer - increases damage dealt by 5% and gradually restores mp over time (Potency: 25) for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Lunar Seal

The Spear - increases damage dealt by 5% and increases crit hit rate by 5% for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Celestial Seal

The Spire - increases damage dealt by 5% and increases direct hit rate by 8% for 30 sec
Additional Effect: Grants a Celestial Seal

(2)

Minor Arcana - converts currently drawn arcanum into the Lord of Crowns when Balance, Arrow, or Spear, or the Lady of Crowns when Bole, Ewer, or Spire

Lord of Crowns - increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 15% if target is melee DPS or tank, or 8% for all other roles.
Duration: 15s

Lady of Crowns - increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 15% if target is ranged DPS or healer, or 8% for all other roles.
Duration: 15s

(3)

Divination - increases damage dealt by 10%
- decreases damage taken by 10%
- increases HP recovery via healing actions by 10%
Can only be executed after obtaining three Seals of Arcana by playing at least three arcanum.
Effectiveness is determined by the number of different types of seals in play.
1 Seal Type: 2%
2 Seal Types: 5%
3 Seal Types: 10%
Duration: 20s

(4)

Redraw - 3 charges. After 30 sec recharge all 3 at once

(!)

I hope its not too op, but I think since ast is a buffer healer, his buffs should be strong AND different

[KDSilver]

I'd swap Balance and Spire effect.
Because Solar seal is purely support cards while Cestial is purely damage.

This way, for each seal, you have an additionnal support effect if needeed, and if not, you can just go for slighty better damage increase.


But there's a slight problem with that system. You can't use a card without messing your current loaded seal.
If we had to way to save seal so that any other cards used won't interfere with it, it could work.

15% damage for minor arcana cards is a bit too much.

Otherwise, I had almost the same idea as you, so i'd support reworking the card system in that way.
Same for Divination. Having multiple effect would justify this awfully long CD.

[Almatiel]

I'd swap Balance and Spire effect.
Because Solar seal is purely support cards while Cestial is purely damage.

This way, for each seal, you have an additionnal support effect if needeed, and if not, you can just go for slighty better damage increase.


But there's a slight problem with that system. You can't use a card without messing your current loaded seal.
If we had to way to save seal so that any other cards used won't interfere with it, it could work.

15% damage for minor arcana cards is a bit too much.

Otherwise, I had almost the same idea as you, so i'd support reworking the card system in that way.
Same for Divination. Having multiple effect would justify this awfully long CD.

Well, minor arcana lasts only 15 sec, but if its still too strong, we could make it 1 min cd or 1.30 min cd so people wont spam it
About seals
-maybe give different play button which will trigger the effect of drawn arcanum, but wont give a seal
-or once you got all 3 different seals, next cards wont change your current seals
-or create a new spell which would enhance drawn arcanum, but it wont give a seal. for example: Arrow - 5% damage +5% skill/spell speed (gives a seal) --> enhanced Arrow- 5% damage + 10% skill/spell speed (no seal)

[IanFrench]

I feel this might be too OP.

AST's main problems are
1. CU&CO are too weak. Extremely unacceptable comparing to its counterpart Sacred Soil/Asylum/Assize.
2. new card system is a trash (keep you busy for nothing), 15 secs card duration is like a joke to AST players, and divination is on 180s CD for 15s buff...
3. Mana management, both whm and sch have their unique ability for mana generation other than Lucid Dreaming, AST used to have Ewer (RNG, but can be extended if necessary). In ShB this has been removed without any compensation.

My suggestion:

1. Reverse the changes to CU and double the current CO potency,
2. Cards need to last at least 30s long, and some other changes need to be done as well, especially Sleeve Draw (immediately give 3 seals and restore divination CD maybe, but feels too OP again)
3. Give CO mana regeneration ability at least 10% since it has 120s CD (Scholar has 10% mp return on 60s CD, Whm has 5%mp return on 45s CD), that way AST still have the weakest MP return among the three healers which is exactly what the Dev desired (ironic)!!

[Sylve]

My suggestion:

1. Reverse the changes to CU and double the current CO potency,
2. Cards need to last at least 30s long, and some other changes need to be done as well, especially Sleeve Draw

While I absolutely agree CO needs to be stronger, another way to do that is reduce the Recast to match Intersection. Buffing the potency sounds nice on paper, but CI feels so good in its current state despite its low potencies because it has a short cooldown.

As for cards … I strongly disagree that they need to be longer duration. Lets assume our AST is feeding just one person.
Take for example, a Bard with Raging strikes on a fight that lasts for 8 minutes. RS is usable 6 times for a total duration of 120 seconds.
In contrast, an AST uses Draw (Without SD) 16 times in the same fight. 13 times the Bard received an 8% damage up, 3 times for 6% for Seals. So our theoretical Bard had an 8% Damage Up effect for 195 seconds, with a further 45 seconds of 6% for a grand total of 240 seconds worth of bonus damage.

Now double those durations. Do you see the problem? Someone with better Maths than I could tell you the average bonus damage RS provides vs Cards. This isn't even counting the party wide effects of Div which would happen twice each for a total of 30 seconds of further boosted damage nor Sleeve Draw which can provide even more uptime.

The old 30 second durations made total sense, since Balance was a 1 in 6 draw. You also needed to hold that Balance you did draw in order to burn a Spire/Ewer on AoE RR. So in practice, the best the old cards could do was 5% to the party at best, once per minute. But RNG was never kind enough to provide you with that perfect scenario for an entire fight.
Even were you pushing cards to singular players every 30 seconds for 30 seconds, You had a 3 in 6 chance to draw a DPS card. Averaged over the course of a fight … That's 50% uptime. No different to what we have now.
As a final note, Not all DPS cards were made equal. 10% Haste was not equal to 10% Crit or 10% raw Damage.
This fluctuation in damage yields and uptime is quite likely the reason all cards are now 6% at 50% uptime.

[Cyrocco]

Giving Astrologian massive +% Damage is a surefire way to repeat the previous meta of AST being the mandatory healer. Stacking with Sleeve Draw, we'd be looking at a possible +15% Damage with additional effects on each DPS, or 25% flat DPS gain, being the strongest damage buff Astrologian would have to date, as well as exceeding whatever damage any other healer could personally contribute, and vastly superior to any other buff in the entire game.

Your Redraw changes are essentially "Let's just remove the RNG entirely." Allowing for four cards to be decided on within a 30 second window, you may as well have removed the Seal requirement from your Divination.

If I were to line up my buffs perfectly I could achieve:

+25% Damage
+20% Healing Potency
+10% HP Recovery
+20% Damage Reduction

Which part of this is supposed to be fair to the other healers?

[Almatiel]

Giving Astrologian massive +% Damage is a surefire way to repeat the previous meta of AST being the mandatory healer. Stacking with Sleeve Draw, we'd be looking at a possible +15% Damage with additional effects on each DPS, or 25% flat DPS gain, being the strongest damage buff Astrologian would have to date, as well as exceeding whatever damage any other healer could personally contribute, and vastly superior to any other buff in the entire game.

Your Redraw changes are essentially "Let's just remove the RNG entirely." Allowing for four cards to be decided on within a 30 second window, you may as well have removed the Seal requirement from your Divination.

If I were to line up my buffs perfectly I could achieve:

+25% Damage
+20% Healing Potency
+10% HP Recovery
+20% Damage Reduction

Which part of this is supposed to be fair to the other healers?

well i never said it was 100% fair and balanced
its just an idea
also other healers could get some huge buffs as well, its always better when everyone is op then all are equally underwhelming

I dont know how you calaculated those values if minor arcana and normal cards cant stack with each other. It can with divination, but it still wont look like that
more like 25% damage, 10% healing and 10%reduction
and if 25% is too much, then minor arcana shouldnt stack with divination

[Cyrocco]

well i never said it was 100% fair and balanced
its just an idea
also other healers could get some huge buffs as well, its always better when everyone is op then all are equally underwhelming

I dont know how you calaculated those values if minor arcana and normal cards cant stack with each other. It can with divination, but it still wont look like that
more like 25% damage, 10% healing and 10%reduction
and if 25% is too much, then minor arcana shouldnt stack with divination

Neutral Sect increasing healing potency by 20% and Collective Unconscious applies a 10% damage reduction. I could easily stack all of these buffs, stand there in my little bubble, and still contribute more than other healers. It's lazy.

Also, I'd just cast four Minor Arcana cards using Sleeve Draw, and stack Divination. So I can turn all four of my draws into Lord/Lady, and cast Divination, which would be +25% for 20 seconds, and +15% for the remaining 10s.

[CrazyAce]

Honestly? Give back the old effects. I don't see what was wrong with the old card effects, other than the Spire being kind of useless (though it was excellent as a burn card). The 5.0 AST changes are just Squeenix trying to fix what isn't broken... and breaking it.