AST Suggestion: Giving it the BRD 5.1 Treatment

[Pyitoechito]

• Lunar and Celestial Seal cards give critical hit and direct hit buffs respectively. Solar seal card effects unchanged.
• Divination gives damage, critical hit, and/or direct hit buffs depending on the seals in play (having multiple of the same seal does not increase effectiveness).
• Minor Arcana card effects unchanged.

It doesn't bring back old AST, but it's hopefully an easy enough change (since it's not adding or removing any abilities or reworking the job) and adds just a bit more variety back into AST's kit. At least until the next major expansion is released where they can make larger changes to satisfy players (if needed).

[Silver-Strider]

Well, if we're giving it the BRD treatment, it'll come a substantial cut to your DPS.

[MitsukiKimura]

Well, if we're giving it the BRD treatment, it'll come a substantial cut to your DPS.

We're the utility healer, we're not suppose to be pulling off DPS near to SCH or WHM. That's what we make up for in our support. I rather have the old card system back with a simple hot fix to the shire card becoming a Direct hit buff increase instead.
They can nerf balance to 5% instead of what it used to be 10% but keep the original card effects in play. I just want it to be fun again, right now it's stale and depressing.

[Saefinn]

Well, if we're giving it the BRD treatment, it'll come a substantial cut to your DPS.

If it meant improvement to how AST players as a support healer and makes it feel more meaningful, then it's not a problem. AST was never really the DPSy one of the 3 healers. But in fairness, I think the OP's idea is not a bad hold-over change that'd make things feel a little more meaningful to use and may affect some level of choice too without changing anything mechanically.

[CrimsonGunner]

i actually made a AST rework idea based on the bard song theme they added ,you can check it out if you want ^^.
i agree with that idea ,it could help solve/reduce a few problems AST have until the next expansion.

[Side-Eye]

If I had to settle for one "quick" change before Squeenix is able to come up with a decent re-work the card system, my wish would be that individual cards would yield an effect based upon the class of the person buffed, so that you never have to feel like half your cards are wasted if your group has two ranged DPS or two melee.

My second wish would be that instead of having to fish for three different seals, Divination's effect would simply be variable based upon the seal combination, with each seal buffing 4% of a stat (so for example if you had 3 lunar, it would be 12% crit; 2 lunar 1 solar could be 8% crit 4% DH, etc.)... or if necessary to keep the current system entirely, give us some means to extend buff duration.

[MOZZYSTAR]

I... think more to the cards needs improvement than just effects, because the play system right now is clunky and not really worthwhile. I haven't gotten my AST to 80, mind you so I don't know everything about it, but at the moment I find the fact that the draw and play button are separate buttons/commands to be really clunky and inefficient (I can't wrap my head around why they made them separate buttons), and that I know of at the moment is that one can no longer do spread one card among an entire party. Needing to individually select each individual to give a card, that, too is tedious and inefficient.

Right now, what's preventing me playing AST the most is that ^ as opposed to the effects. Mind you, the effects as they are now aren't great. I could rant about it all night (but I won't).

I do love bard, and I actually picked up bard because it felt similar to AST to me (before 5.0). So, on topic, I don't think OP's suggestion is bad by any means. I get where it's coming from and I do think it's an improvement from the current syste, but... It still isn't ideal. It's a little too similar to Bard. We don't want to homogenise classes, we want to make them more individualised, you know? Unfortunately, I don't have any constructive suggestions to counter. At this point, I think I'm a little too cynical.

[Lodi]

Cards need to change, yeah. Six cards that all do the same thing, who thought this was a good idea? At this point, turning Draw into "Increase damage dealt by target by 6% for 15s" while playing a random card animation and giving you a random seal wouldn't change much.

The current card system just made fishing worse and killed what made AST, well, AST.