Ast cards 6.0 rework

[Crushnight]

Then remove damage buffs from the hit and miss lottery system.

As long as damage buffs exist there, we aren't going to see the previous system as per the devs own words.

Please link where they said it can never return.

All they've said since expansion launch is the current system will stay for the foreseeable future which is vague to be be any period of time so I am very interested to see this hard no you have heard about.

[Rai_Takara]

Please link where they said it can never return.

All they've said since expansion launch is the current system will stay for the foreseeable future which is vague to be be any period of time so I am very interested to see this hard no you have heard about.

Just the quote from expansion launch as you're familiar with.

Regarding card effects, they were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." While the current iteration does indeed reduce the excitement of drawing a "good card", if we were to add various different card effects, then we would just return to fishing for the most favorable one, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with the current iteration for now.

The x.2 patches are usually major patches for FFXIV and even there, SE did not mention anything about AST, even after all this feedback. To me it's clear that they aren't planning to change it anytime in the near future and they are happy with where AST is currently, as well as most jobs.

I don’t want the previous system, that was a keep spamming until you get ‘the’ card then start over.
None of these skills should be lucky dips. Either they are good enough to use regularly or are bypassed. This isn’t proper class design.
The whole card system needs scrapping, replacing with skills that you choose to use when needed like other classes.
It needs more ingenuity from SE to truly separate it from its too cloned WHM roots.

I think the current system could add more use with seals and make it less tied to damage and more tied to the other effects people want. Maybe if you get 3 blue seals you get MP refresh as well as the 6% damage buff? No matter what combination of seals you get, you always get the 6% damage buff, but what differs is the bonus effect you get. I think that is a good direction. I also think making sleeve draw do something else like maybe filling up the seal guage or something would be better than what we have with rapid fire card throwing.

[dinnertime]

I think the current system could add more use with seals and make it less tied to damage and more tied to the other effects people want. Maybe if you get 3 blue seals you get MP refresh as well as the 6% damage buff? No matter what combination of seals you get, you always get the 6% damage buff, but what differs is the bonus effect you get. I think that is a good direction.

This would be great but at the same time... Depending on their approach, it might also cause the problem of fishing for the best seal combination, which is the very thing the devs are trying to avoid with the cards themselves. As long as the additional buffs benefit non-offensively, then I don't see much of an issue.

[Rai_Takara]

This would be great but at the same time... Depending on their approach, it might also cause the problem of fishing for the best seal combination, which is the very thing the devs are trying to avoid with the cards themselves. As long as the additional buffs benefit non-offensively, then I don't see much of an issue.

Right. The idea is that the additional buff would be non-offensive in nature so that even if there is a best non offensive buff, it won't come at the cost of offense.

[Teraluna]

Then remove damage buffs from the hit and miss lottery system.

As long as damage buffs exist there, we aren't going to see the previous system as per the devs own words.

I don’t want the previous system, that was a keep spamming until you get ‘the’ card then start over.
None of these skills should be lucky dips. Either they are good enough to use regularly or are bypassed. This isn’t proper class design.
The whole card system needs scrapping, replacing with skills that you choose to use when needed like other classes.
It needs more ingenuity from SE to truly separate it from its too cloned WHM roots.

[dinnertime]

Personally, I think what they should've done is give every card a damage buff like it is currently but also an additional effect which are the effects they had pre-5.0. Balance, Ewer and Spire will need to have new effects, though. They should also remove the Melee/Ranged percentages from them. Lord and Lady could probably stay as it is, though.
Other than that, to prevent the "fishing for the best card" issue, just make Divination worth using so there's an incentive to prioritize the right seals than the best cards.

[ShinShimon]

Give us back the old card system, with a few changes:
Spire and Ewer give physical and magic damage buffs instead of useless shit. Even with unbalanced DPS jobs in Duty Finder, you or the tank can always use one.
Return bole to some non-damage buff. You can always re-roll to get something useful for damage, but having one non-damage card gives variety and utility when you're progging or in shit groups.
No extended RR. All RR is single-target. This removes 90% of the balance problems with the old card system.
Give a 5-minute cooldown ability to stack the deck with double balance and RR, so that world-first and speedkill groups don't have to sit around waiting for a perfect pre-fight deck.

That would solve all of the old balance issues, and restore an interesting and unique class system that no longer exists in any MMORPG. If there are enough nu-AST diehards, then give the new healer job a similar mechanic.

Ideally we would also get back the old buff extensions, so we can once again go hogwild with 20 seconds of instant-cast Gravity on dungeon pulls. But I can get over that if we get our cards back. The great days of old are already being forgotten, and they must be reclaimed before all memory is lost. My poor Canopus is growing rusty...