Potential AST Rework: Cards = Heals

[Vitreus]

I haven't seen every live letter, did they ever state why the cards were reduced from 30 to 15 seconds? I'm guessing it's because of divination but it really makes them feel weak. Especially after they were all homogenized into small balances already and with royal road removed.

[MPNZ]

Making them all damage boosts is overall healthier for the design of the game in the long run. Knowing that AST will contribute X-Y% damage means that the dev team can far easily balance its output to be more in line with the rest of the classes within its role. With the old rng you ran the risk of said X-Y% being too drastic to properly quantify. Like I said in an earlier post, it does however, seem the devs intentionally made the support dps have INCREDIBLY low pdps out of fear of their buffs being too powerful, and the live letter did mention that alot of these classes, such as AST and DNC, are getting damage boosts in 5.1

Its biggest issue, however, is that it had support options tied into the system when in this game, playing optimally means optimal damage. Yes, pulling that prime Bole felt amazing when you happen to have a tank on the verge of death, but what if the tank wasnt struggling? Bole would be useless then, and what if you drew a Balance at that time, sure the extra damage might help but the tank might be dead without the extra mitigation.

That's why they had redundant lesser versions of balance that were like arguably better for certain classes like brd with spear and BLM with arrow, one total dud for burning, redraw, and two defensive cards that were really great in like stone vigil because some tanks will just refuse to gear up (which makes the modern system useless, and will be mitigated a bit by the 5.1 tnk changes). Basically, AST is too consistant with very little flexibility outside of perfect or upper-middle good conditions, and the card system is the result of literally no reading the room. It's not fun. It's cold and boring with zero depth, or ability to change situations or even adapt when mistakes happen. It's perform perfectly or suffer. Especially in pugs, which used to be total lol from 2.0-3.0

[Reynhart]

Making them all damage boosts is overall healthier for the design of the game in the long run.

For me, reducing the amount of strategic decision you have to make on any job in bad in the long run, because it's makes the game boring-er.

I have more vivid memories of duties where something uncommon happened to save a dire situation than the number of times I farmed the same content with mathematically better completion time. That's, for me, when the "game" changes into being a "task".

[LariaKirin]

The problem of knowing "when" is now you have to memorize every other class rotation in the game, and having 4 DPS to choose from, not only knowing their rotation, but knowing where they are in their rotation so you can give them the card seems honestly absurd. That's a level of tedium that should not be required, your main mechanic should not require you to memorize every DPS class rotation just to make the best decisions on when to use it.

I'm replying to a post which said that the old system required more thought and involvement for optimal benefit. My point is not that you have to put this much thought into optimal card usage, it is that you can put this much thought into it. More than you ever could with the old system.

Saying you need to memorize every DPS rotation is a bit of an overstatement. I too would argue that knowing who is your best target at any point, in real-time, is too much effort.
However, all you need to know about MCH is that it has the massive wildfire burst starting with the opener and repeating every 2 minutes - this alone will give you better results. If you want to go farther than this, you definitely can. Up to you.

I only wrote that reply because the old system is put on such a pedestal of decision making and complexity, while the new system is characterized as a simplified version of Balance. This is not true, as I think I've demonstrated.

Now, just because you can introduce so much complexity in the new system, does not mean you will. Reality is different from theory.
But that is equally true of the old system. You can list all the options you had in the old system, but it does not change the fact that it was unreliable (RNG) in both of its functions - dps and support - which in turn forced you into a playstyle that simplified its decision process and nullified its diversity.

[LariaKirin]

Yes, exactly like giving the old Balance to a BLM when he wasn't on Leylines...or giving it to the MCH at a bad time and losing 1/3rd of its uptime when Gauss Barrel is off for 10s...when was already a criteria for giving cards, that's why it had a skill to keep a card in its sleeve.

Did you chose to ignore these nuanced aspects before ?

What are you talking about?

The way Play worked meant that you had to play the card as soon as possible, otherwise you risked losing cards over the entire encounter.

You held cards in Spread and waited for Expanded Royal Road, you did not use it to delay card usage. The only time you would even consider using Spread to delay a card is when you had absolutely no choice. Can you even give me an example where such usage is optimal?

With the new Draw/Play, you can delay any single card up to 30 seconds with zero losses, which gives you ample opportunity to select a good timing.

[LariaKirin]

Since we're going through the futile exercise of talking about the old card system yet again (which is very likely never coming back), let's not forget about the biggest problem with it - it was not balance-able.

Perhaps it's time to move on and think of ways to improve what we have now instead?

[MPNZ]

I'm replying to a post which said that the old system required more thought and involvement for optimal benefit. My point is not that you have to put this much thought into optimal card usage, it is that you can put this much thought into it. More than you ever could with the old system.

Saying you need to memorize every DPS rotation is a bit of an overstatement. I too would argue that knowing who is your best target at any point, in real-time, is too much effort.
However, all you need to know about MCH is that it has the massive wildfire burst starting with the opener and repeating every 2 minutes - this alone will give you better results. If you want to go farther than this, you definitely can. Up to you.

I only wrote that reply because the old system is put on such a pedestal of decision making and complexity, while the new system is characterized as a simplified version of Balance. This is not true, as I think I've demonstrated.

Now, just because you can introduce so much complexity in the new system, does not mean you will. Reality is different from theory.
But that is equally true of the old system. You can list all the options you had in the old system, but it does not change the fact that it was unreliable (RNG) in both of its functions - dps and support - which in turn forced you into a playstyle that simplified its decision process and nullified its diversity.

No, it's more like you can put a lotof thought into, but recieve a 0.000000000198364% rdps increase. The new system makes it so that too much extra effort is wasted on negligible gains. Brand's hypothetical is just unnecessary effort when mastery of lightspeed+sleeve draw is all the plus-ultra needed, but still produces less rdps than a two-WHM-comp at the 90 percentile

That said, accomplishing the same feat in 4.0 would have jobs like BRD and BLM going totally berserk in their respective windows, mitigating consecutive aoe damage to negligible levels with aoe bole, or pulling a held aoe150%+balance during DPS checks and enrage timers when available

[Side-Eye]

You can list all the options you had in the old system, but it does not change the fact that it was unreliable (RNG) in both of its functions - dps and support - which in turn forced you into a playstyle that simplified its decision process and nullified its diversity.

Being able to set a card aside to use *precisely* when you need it, mitigated the RNG aspect of cards. Anticipating *which* card to hold onto was part of that engaging decision-making process that is largely absent in the new system.

You can keep saying the old card system was bad.. but there are lots of folks who feel very differently because they made the effort to learn how to play the job in a variety of ways depending on group makeup, fight mechanics, etc. From what I've seen and read, the people who simply fished for balance and paid little attention to other cards were a (vocal) minority.

[MitsukiKimura]

But that is equally true of the old system. You can list all the options you had in the old system, but it does not change the fact that it was unreliable (RNG) in both of its functions - dps and support - which in turn forced you into a playstyle that simplified its decision process and nullified its diversity.

There's still unreliable RNG to this day with what damage cards you draw and the seals you earn. Drawing 4 of the same seal? Well Guess you're only getting that 4% boost.. I've had draws where I've constantly drew nothing but melee cards and the same seal even with using all "3" of my redraw attempts. So trying to say only the old system had unreliable RNG is just unreal in itself. I've never hated the card system more than I do now. They destroyed all the fun of it. It would of been a lot better to just simplify and change a few cards than to redo the whole entire system, now that Whm literally just makes us feel incompetent.

[Ceasaria]

Since we're going through the futile exercise of talking about the old card system yet again (which is very likely never coming back), let's not forget about the biggest problem with it - it was not balance-able.

Perhaps it's time to move on and think of ways to improve what we have now instead?

You maybe don't have a creative imagination, but it's not our case.
Many of us have already suggest different things to how balance & adjust the old system, or even combine the old with the new system to please both side by keeping identity, fun and balance in the cards system.
SE took a wrong decision by listening non AST players, and erasing a great majority of his precedent AST community for this ShB version.

In the live letter, we have seen the songs BRD will be reverted.
It's nice to see him gaining back a bit of his support role lost and this is something who could happen on AST during this expansion (or next).

I really hope SE will be done at 5.2 or 5.3 with all the dps and tank role, so they can focus on healer role (even if reverting the card system late expansion seems unlikely, but combined old with new could still happen).