AST Minor Arcana need to be changed back!

[Mantou]

Minor Arcana felt so good to use back in 5.0, where you have to take one "extra" step to convert whichever card to lady or Lord card, then execute. It was so impactful and feels good to do so. Now with that "extra" step been taken, most of the time I didn't even know which card I played and who did I gave the card to.
And that feels AWFUL!

Please bring back the 5.0 AST card draw system, it's just perfect and rewarding every time you draw and use a card, to be an Astrologian. Being able to convert the duplicate card to lady or lord and able to see the actual visual effect when doing so just added one extra layer to the gameplay. That one added layer, however, changes my whole game experience playing Astrologain.

I am begging you to have the 5.0 Minor Arcana back.
God bless.
Yours truly.

[Billythepancake]

While I still hate the current card system with the constant swapping, I'll take the small QoL change they did, and I'd much rather they didn't go back. The less I need to do with how much target swapping AST needs, the better. If they could make the cards not require you to constantly swap targets, then I'd be fine to going back to old minor arcana.

[Side-Eye]

Minor Arcana felt so good to use back in 5.0, where you have to take one "extra" step to convert whichever card to lady or Lord card, then execute. It was so impactful and feels good to do so. Now with that "extra" step been taken, most of the time I didn't even know which card I played and who did I gave the card to.
And that feels AWFUL!

Drugs are bad, mmkay

[NobleWinter]

I know this isn't meta but the party targeting needs to disappear altogether. It isn't friendly on mouse and keyboard or controller. Cards should automatically go to an appropriate Ranged or Melee within 20 yalms at random after you decide what to use. Then no one complains about not getting cards or lining up with burst windows because it's out of your control. Make the choice between Minor Arcana and Redraw for seals the meaningful part and add some beef to the effect for getting seals right on Divination. Then it wouldn't feel like such a chore targeting everyone but we could be "busy" with orchestrating what cards we allow to twist the parties destiny instead. Give back Time Dilation with multiple charges to give us a bit more control on the randomness. Then you can extend effects from Divination or cards for a dps burst window or Regens for more healing on a tank or maybe even extend Lucid Dreaming on ourself to give us an mp management tool that was multi purpose. Investing actions per minute into building a powerful divination makes more sense to me over expecting targeting majesty from players.

[Osmond]

snip

So, what you are saying is that you want SE to bring back the extra button to press over a ability that is already predicted what lord or lady card you going to get based on the card is drawn out. I guess there's a saying, "it's why people can't have nice things...."

[Brandedblade]

I know this isn't meta but the party targeting needs to disappear altogether. It isn't friendly on mouse and keyboard or controller. Cards should automatically go to an appropriate Ranged or Melee within 20 yalms at random after you decide what to use. Then no one complains about not getting cards or lining up with burst windows because it's out of your control. Make the choice between Minor Arcana and Redraw for seals the meaningful part and add some beef to the effect for getting seals right on Divination. Then it wouldn't feel like such a chore targeting everyone but we could be "busy" with orchestrating what cards we allow to twist the parties destiny instead. Give back Time Dilation with multiple charges to give us a bit more control on the randomness. Then you can extend effects from Divination or cards for a dps burst window or Regens for more healing on a tank or maybe even extend Lucid Dreaming on ourself to give us an mp management tool that was multi purpose. Investing actions per minute into building a powerful divination makes more sense to me over expecting targeting majesty from players.

They've already did so much to mitigate the RNG of the card system and now you want to add it back? How would this mechanic work if you have all melee or all ranged? Would it just mean the cards would be thrown onto the tank or healer that whole time? Making the cards randomly apply to nearby allies would ruin your ability to optimize them.

[HyoMinPark]

I’d rather have 4.0 Minor Arcana back, where unneeded/unwanted cards are turned either into a free heal or a free damage card. It’s ironic to me that the developers made all cards into crappier Balances despite Balance always being the problem card in AST’s arcana.

[Shurrikhan]

I’d rather have 4.0 Minor Arcana back, where unneeded/unwanted cards are turned either into a free heal or a free damage card. It’s ironic to me that the developers made all cards into crappier Balances despite Balance always being the problem card in AST’s arcana.

I too would like back some iteration of the old cards and of Minor Arcana, but I have to admit I don't much see of the irony, exactly. Every influencer harked on and on about the card systems being literally nothing more than fishing for Balance, and most players were happy to bandwagon that thought to the exclusion of any idea for balancing the other cards against Balance. (Only a few others I saw were even willing to insist that such a fatalistic, reductive take on the cards would inevitably have a... reductive effect on our variety therein. And each of us were quickly dismissed.) So what did we get? Balance 24/7, diluted to make up for its removal of RNG in getting a +%Damage (as opposed to indirect damage) effect at all. Disappointing, sure, but not exactly unexpected nor even counterintuitive given the opinions thrust in the devs' direction.

Within the design they've taken, MA makes sense, too. It's a 33% stronger card than the regular ones that you can use as a spare Redraw or after having already completed your Seals as not to ruin them, and until 5.1 was another way to bank yet another ST buff into your Divination period. It has (and had even better) good synergy with the systems presented by Divination, Redraw, and Sleeve Draw.

It might not be ideal on the whole, but it's sensible design in its context.

[HyoMinPark]

I too would like back some iteration of the old cards and of Minor Arcana, but I have to admit I don't much see of the irony, exactly. Every influencer harked on and on about the card systems being literally nothing more than fishing for Balance, and most players were happy to bandwagon that thought to the exclusion of any idea for balancing the other cards against Balance. (Only a few others I saw were even willing to insist that such a fatalistic, reductive take on the cards would inevitably have a... reductive effect on our variety therein. And each of us were quickly dismissed.) So what did we get? Balance 24/7, diluted to make up for its removal of RNG in getting a +%Damage (as opposed to indirect damage) effect at all. Disappointing, sure, but not exactly unexpected nor even counterintuitive given the opinions thrust in the devs' direction.

Within the design they've taken, MA makes sense, too. It's a 33% stronger card than the regular ones that you can use as a spare Redraw or after having already completed your Seals as not to ruin them, and until 5.1 was another way to bank yet another ST buff into your Divination period. It has (and had even better) good synergy with the systems presented by Divination, Redraw, and Sleeve Draw.

It might not be ideal on the whole, but it's sensible design in its context.

Obsessions with Balance fishing aside, Balance was the single card that really pushed AST to be superior to WHM in every way, despite WHM having higher personal damage and better raw healing (at least, pre-3.3 Malefic buffs, which boosted AST’s personal damage significantly) because WHM did not have an answer to it. Balance was the card many proposed be changed into a different effect (e.g., % Direct Hit was often thrown around in the healer discussions) to try and lower how influential AST was compared to a WHM, especially if the developers were not going to provide WHM with buff utility akin to something like Bravery. Giving Balance a % D.Hit effect would not have negatively affected the variety of the cards—it would have still been present: 6 different cards, 6 different effects; 3 offensive, 3 defensive/resource management. Obviously with the TP removal, Spire would have also had to be changed, but people had been acknowledging that alongside changing Balance into something not direct damage %.

Balance was what made AST so unbalanced—and now every card is a crappier version of it. That’s where the irony comes from.

[Shurrikhan]

Balance was what made AST so unbalanced—and now every card is a crappier version of it. That’s where the irony comes from.

It wasn't, though, or at least no more so than 5.0 Repertoire makes Bard unbalanced. Its RNG-based rDPS; that's all. It alone did not make AST unbalanced, the surrounding toolkit did.

Yes, so long as so much of its rDPS was RNG based, just as with Deep Meditation or Repertoire, there was going to be significant deviation between its runs, but that doesn't make its average parse impossible to balance. At worst you end up with an inflated presence in top 10 or top 20 fflogs ranks because of the sheer number of times they can run the encounter to get up there, but that's not fundamentally different from any other compositions rerunning an already perfected fight until they get their highest possible crit rates on their strongest possible skills and so forth, by sheer luck.

Again, you're preaching to the choir here in regards to wanting varied card effects back, but it's in no way ironic that when the lead complaint was too much RNG variance and too much waste, they then removed what both the JP and NA communities (idk about EU, as I can't read French or German with any real proficiency) declared "non-optimal" or "trap" card effects and gave more means by which to control that RNG. That is a sensible solution, given the complaints. We could perhaps call it "malicious" acquiescence, but it was at the very least in keeping with what was requested.