Question from a new player - can AST change back to what it was before ?

[TankHunter678]

If you remove the melee/ranged aspect, then it literally doesn't matter who you give the cards to.
Instead of changing one choice for a different choice, you've removed all choice.
That's even worse than what we have now, even by your standards.
So yeah, if you remove half the choices you cut your choices in half, that's not a revelation.

With the new system it never was a choice because the only thing we can do with the cards is play them or arcana them to a stronger version. With the old system even a card that does not mesh well with the classes in your party can be turned into something useful, be it an oGCD attack, oGCD heal, or burned to provide a better effect to another card you play. Which was an actual choice in addition to playing the card anyways.

That's literally overdramatising though.
"I don't like having to choose between A and B instead of choosing between 1 and 2, so may as well have no choices at all!"

When you have the choice of play it optimally or play it there is no choice at all. Especially when the whim of the matchmaker leaves you with no optimal target.

And 'it feels bad when you have two ranged or two melee'?
So what? It felt bad drawing an Arrow if you had a Bard, Ninja and/or Monk.
It felt bad drawing Spire after Spire at all times.

It's just different choices. You get the card you don't want, use one of your MANY redraws.
And in the end, if you have to use a Balance on a Bard, so what? That's still 3%, about as useful as using an old Arrow on a Bard.
Although technically it's more effective to use your melee cards on the Tank.

It's literally all just flavour. It might feel worse because it's not what you've been used to, but it's just different targets for different cards.

You got any combination of BRD, MNK, or NIN in your part and draw an Arrow? You had the option of playing it though it was not optimal, burn it to double the effect time of your next card played, or minor arcana it for a chance of a oGCD heal or oGCD attack. All of which were viable options and choices that could be made. Not to mention that Extend from burning the Arrow could lead to you throwing a really long lasting Spear/Balance on them or Bole on the Tank.

Even drawing spire after spire you could burn them for the aoe or minor arcana them for the oGCD attack/heal. Granted everyone agreed that Spire needed a rework. A common suggestion being to make it Det which would at least make it useful in all situations. My personal suggestion being to make it improve the gain/recovery rate of class gauge systems.

Oh and despite having up to 3 redraws... I have had plenty of times where I had only ranged DPS in my party and despite redraws got 70% melee cards.

Intersection isn't potent enough?
Then maybe POTENCIES need to change, you know, the thing they can and do regularly change.
AST suffers with MP more than other healers? LOWER ITS MP COSTS, or I dunno, reduce the cooldown on Lightspeed.
There are so many better options than 'give me back an rng MP card that I might draw once every 3 or 4 minutes if I don't use it for the AoE buff'.

You could give Intersection a 1000-2000 potency shield and it still wont compare to a 55 sec Enhanced Bole or a 85 sec Extended Bole in effective damage reduction. It is nice to have to let a diurnal sect AST put down a shield to help withstand a TB (as weak as it is) but that is it. The ability would be more or less fine if it sat at the potencies of an aspected benefic in conjunction with the old card system.

You could lower the MP costs of AST's spells... which would also mean that the potencies get lower to balance out the cheaper spells. You could reduce the cooldown of Lightspeed... which means the potencies of its healing and DPS get lower to balance it out. Give Ewer back its MP recovery? Well now it is in line with the other healers but provides more MP due to the RNG nature of the cards.