Redoing AST Card System

[LariaKirin]

The way it's going to be played is that you will go for spread Balance + spread Spear in every Divination window.

The fact that you cycle through all cards at least once means that either Ewer or Spire is automatic fodder for Royal Road in order to spread either Balance or Spear. So two cards are already decided. They will be played at the end and stacked with the next Divination.

Your thought process will be to ignore Bole and Arrow and look at: Spear, Ewer, Balance, Spire.
You want them in a permutation where Balance and Spear are not next to each other. This is a 1/3 chance of a favorable permutation. That's pretty bad, so using Shuffle here is not the best.

Your safest bet becomes to wait for one of the four cards and put it into the appropriate slot. Say you draw Ewer - which you Royal Road. Then if Spire comes up, you Shuffle, otherwise you lose your 2nd spread.
Your chance now is 2/3 for a favorable permutation of the other three cards.
Considering Divination + 2 Shuffles, you have three shots to get that favorable permutation. The probability for that is around 96%.

Everything else is "whatever" because the spread dps cards are simply too powerful.

Time Dilation, you just hold and use 2 charges for each spread card.
Minor Arcana is worthless.
Sleeve Draw is a more of a detriment. The only possible benefit is that you can get a spread dps card + Divination in the opener, but the chances are not good enough to make it worthwhile in normal play. Every other Divination is stacked and you'll want to delay your first spread dps card for buff windows rather than speed it up.

I ignored Arrow as a dps card because it's annoying and everyone rightfully hates it for causing misalignment. It also makes probabilities easier to understand. That said, it's probably still better than a single spread in that window.

So my question is, what is the goal behind this system?
Because if your intention was to encourage people to use Support cards, it's not going to work. My current opinion about Support cards is that they have to be completely divorced from DPS cards in order to create a healthy system.

[YusiKha]

snip

I’ve taken your feedback and made the following changes:
Expanded RR 50%->35
Enhanced RR 150%->200
So all Royal Road effects approximately double the potency of a card.

Time Dilation has a longer recast so it can’t be used twice in a row on the existing cards.

Divination removes active RR status, so nothing (except for active arcanum) is carried over into the next Divination.

I’m not happy with Sleeve draw either, it realistically the problem stems from RR using non-damaging cards to buff damaging ones. I’m considering making RR be a sidegrade effect (like 50% power but you can place 2 cards, or half duration for double power) and having Sleeve draw refund the RR’d card.

Minor arcana is supposed to be (near) useless, it’s a consolation for losing cards to transitions/you messing up.
Arrow is good and only SMN/MCH could really complain about itself effects, it was better than Spear for everyone else.

And I do want all cards to be equally viable. I appreciate your feedback.

[LariaKirin]

snip

That brings the Royal Road effects closer together. The changes will make it a more complex thought process (e.g. double potency on a 15k single target can give you more than spread on 80k total raid dps).
So in this case, you'll likely be happy with either effect because you'd risk more by shuffling (unless you have to RR Balance). So this does make it less mandatory that Ewer and Spire be in RR because RR Bole is good enough.

The adjustment to Divination doesn't really change much. It's not so much about RR carrying over, because your goal was to hold on to your last pair until the next Divination window. You simply play your stored pair before going into the next Divination. There are cases in the initial design where you wanted to carry over the RR effect, but the odds were so favorable that you'd only rarely have to deal with that.

I hesitate to look at probabilities right now because it's harder and there are more factors to consider. Maybe in a future post. Also because your main goal remains to manipulate the RNG so that you get pairs of Royal Road Support card + Spread/Play DPS card.

I don't really see how you can make it worthwhile to use one of the Support cards when they compete with DPS cards.

[YusiKha]

I don't really see how you can make it worthwhile to use one of the Support cards when they compete with DPS cards.

If Royal Road only decreased the power of a card rather than discarding it - that would allow them to be played as well as RR fodder.
That system could be worked as Sleeve Draw’s purpose. Salvaging Royal Roaded cards (like the ‘bottom draw’ card trick, to match Spread’s ‘second draw’ card cheat). Sort of like a second spread, it would let you save mitigation for exactly when you wanted it.

What are your thoughts?

[LariaKirin]

If Royal Road only decreased the power of a card rather than discarding it - that would allow them to be played as well as RR fodder.
That system could be worked as Sleeve Draw’s purpose. Salvaging Royal Roaded cards (like the ‘bottom draw’ card trick, to match Spread’s ‘second draw’ card cheat). Sort of like a second spread, it would let you save mitigation for exactly when you wanted it.

What are your thoughts?

If you do not discard it, then yes, it will be played or left to expire. But the system itself revolves around making the most out of your DPS cards and whatever support you get is secondary.

I think you need a system where the DPS side is separate from the Support side. You can put the randomization in the DPS side, but I think it's crucial that the Support side be reliable.

I've toyed with this idea of an "activator slot" for Divination in a different thread. This slot would allow you to bank one card and access Divination. You could Sleeve Draw to gain access to this card, but lose access to Divination until you played another Support card. It's mostly just a quick brainstorm, not a thoroughly defined system, but maybe you can use some of the ideas. Quoted below:

I've said this in a different thread as well and I agree that dps increase and support cards should be separated because support cards cannot compete with dps cards.

I'm not a fan of different DPS cards because the direct damage increase will always be better. Meanwhile, a direct hit or a crit card can be either great or useless for a given target.

So here's a quick brainstorm:

Draw/Play (DPS): 2 DPS cards, one for melee, one for ranged.
Draw/Play (Support): up to 4 support cards - pick your favorites (e.g: mitigation, SB lady, self ewer, next cast is free).

Redraw:
- If used after drawing a DPS card, give the opposite card (details below).
- If used after drawing a Support card, give another support card.

Divination:
- Base 4% for example.
- 4 slots for DPS cards: 1% better divination for each card, going up to 8% (details below).
- 1 slot for a Support card: functions as the activator. Fill this seal (use any one support card) and you can cast Divination.

Some details:

Divination could give an additional 1% for each pair of different cards: 3 melee + 1 ranged (9%), 2 melee + 2 ranged (10%). Maintain the Balance, if you'll pardon the pun. But if this is the case, you'll want to Redraw to ensure that 10% Divination, in which case you're giving up reliability on the Support side and can cause reluctance to use Support cards.

Redraw on Support cards needs to be reliable. So if you've drawn Card 1, then Redraw will give 2,3 or 4. If you don't want the 2 you've redrawn, the second redraw will pick between 3 and 4. Draw resets your pool of cards and Redraw shrinks it to the point where you're guaranteed to get the one you want.

If both statements above are the case, then we need a lower cooldown on Redraw (or just deal with the randomness on the support side, because 2 Redraws will be saved for the worst case DPS draws in favor of 10% divination). If Support redraw is on 1 min cd, we might not. Gotta think about this some more.

Minor Arcana and Sleeve Draw can disappear in the interest of having fewer buttons.
If you want even more interaction, you can have the Support seal in Divination function as Spread did in SB. This will seal the card and give you access to Divination, essentially banking one support card for later use, giving you access to two support cards at any one time. But you'd have to make sure a Support card is sacrificed so that Divination is usable when it goes off-cooldown.