AST Card suggestion

[Seraphor]

This isn't another 'I can make the old cards work! bring back the bole!' topic, this is about valid suggestions to improve the current system. So I'd appreciate it if any discussion would forget about any of the old card utility, there are plenty of topics for that.

So what does this current system need and what are it's shortfalls?
Forgetting the old system, the current system is currently a lot of busy work for what feels like minimal gains. You're pumping out buffs as little as 3% for 15s, and constantly switching targets. It makes the job seem more hectic and clunky that it should be.

My suggestion, is that instead of cards giving a buff to a party member AND granting you a seal, it does one or the other. Basically reworking and reversing Minor Arcana.
To counter this, buff values or duration would increase respectively.

Cards would now be a 5%/10% buff for 15s, OR a 3%/6% buff for 30s, and would not grant you a seal.

Minor Arcana:
Lord of Crowns - Banks the associated Lunar/Solar/Celestial Seal and restores 500MP to self.
Lady of Crowns - Banks the associated Lunar/Solar/Celestial Seal and heals party for 100 potency.

Divination would therefore benefit from the same increase in buff value or duration to either; 6%/8%/10% over 15s, OR 4%/5%/6% over 30s

The result of this is that you're not necessarily targeting player characters every 30s to grant them a tiny buff, and you're making a choice between single target buffs and AoE buffs, similar to the old Royal Road. This choice is more valid than the choices you currently make, and restores some agency to the card system.

In 8 man content the choice is pretty obvious, as the AoE is worth more, and that's fine because it's the 8 man content where the objective superior choice is more important and ease of use is more useful.
In 4 man content, the content where there's room for subjective license, you have a valid choice between singling out your best dps every 30s, or buffing the party as a whole every 120s. Or you can mix the two, grab yourself an extra 500MP and bank a seal, then give a single target buff, then bank another seal for later, etc.

This also separates the signs of the cards, from their seals.
If you're single target buffing, then seals are inconsequential.
If you're banking seals for Divination, then the target, whether the card is melee/ranged, is inconsequential.
This eliminates the frustration of redrawing just to get the same seal, or same target, depending on what it is you want.

Then there's the added utility of Lord/Lady in the form of MP regen and extra healing. Neither are essential, but assist in maintaining healing out put. These would be constant in 8 man content as you're after those seals and thus getting on average, 500MP back and a free 100 pot heal every 60s.

The end result in terms of rDPS output should be pretty much the same, the action of drawing random cards for targeted buffs is still pretty much the same, but it's more streamlined and less clunky.

[Crushnight]

This isn't another 'I can make the old cards work! bring back the bole!' topic, this is about valid suggestions to improve the current system. So I'd appreciate it if any discussion would forget about any of the old card utility, there are plenty of topics for that.

See you lost me with this 1st paragraph and I'd suggest changing 'valid suggestions' as that implies not only do you think anyone asking for the old system doesn't have a valid opinion (they do you just don't agree, WHICH IS FINE!) but also other people who tried to improve current system before now are not valid suggestions too which is just hurting your cause to get improvements.

When it comes to a subjective matter such as how people feel about the card system all opinions are valid full stop.

I look at actual suggestion later after I get home as would be interesting to see how others might improve it (I usually get half way then scrap since gets too wonky).

[Lastelli]

I can see this working very well. What I don't get is why you gave 2 values to buffs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you draw a card, you'd have to chose between turning it to a seal or using it to buff a party member. So what is the alternative scenario where the buff value is doubled?

See you lost me with this 1st paragraph and I'd suggest changing 'valid suggestions' as that implies not only do you think anyone asking for the old system doesn't have a valid opinion (they do you just don't agree, WHICH IS FINE!) but also other people who tried to improve current system before now are not valid suggestions too which is just hurting your cause to get improvements.

He's right though. There's zero chance the devs will bring back the previous card system, so whining about how good things were in a past long gone is useless.

[Crushnight]

He's right though. There's zero chance the devs will bring back the previous card system, so whining about how good things were in a past long gone is useless.

Time to be snide it seems since that wasn't what I was arguing

So pray tell us what order are the weapons going to be released in? the next Ultimate? What lovely outfits can we expect? When do Viera and Hrothgars get their next hairstyle? What are the job adjustments coming with 5.2 down to exact detail and potency please?

Get the point, you, me, Seraphor we ain't the devs and have next to no sway in what will happen, asking for the old system IS just as valid a suggestion as asking for improvements to the new one, you just don't agree, simple.

The old card system cannot return as a 1 to 1 as things have to be changed and more importantly improved or it would come off as lazy but you cannot say it cannot return with 0 proof since you are not a developer of this game.

Even the one quote from that live letter says 'foreseeable future' that is so vague could mean months or until next expansion or beyound.

Like it or not people asking for old system are valid suggestions, get over yourselves downplaying other people wants and opinions.

[Crushnight]

snip

Now to actually address this,

These buffs can be very helpful with reducing busy work, Sleeve Draw still being a pain and Lady's ability feels redundant we don't need more heals but Lord's mp recovery would be absolutely lovely.

Now the big problem(and the one where I start giving up on trying to improve this system as it makes me go over all 3 healers) how much personal damage are you going to take off from Ast, the healers despite everything are reasonably balanced so increasing effects of cards requires less personal damage or they would shoot up in rDPS, have too low personal damage and you get a lot of players complaining killing basic mobs are a chore, if you improve other healers dps then they start overtaking tanks while only spamming 1 button.

This is the nightmare of a more consistent buff system because you can determine how much it could give within range you have a set level of personal damage it can deal.

To buff this card system requires you to deal with whm, sch and all tanks and their output (Can you see why I give up halfway through).

[inhaledcorn]

I like where you're going with it, but I'm not certain on the added Lord/Lady effects. I think they would be better as Shield/Regen effects, or maybe grant an effect dependent on Seal, but it still stores the seal. The other problem is, or at least for me, that we don't have a way to take Seals back out if there are multiples of the same Seal. It "shouldn't happen" I grant you, but, sometimes, things happen. You didn't exactly issue the clunkiness of the current system (you have to target a character to buff them), but you did make it less vital to target a character which, I suppose, is good. This makes Sleeve Draw less cumbersome to deal with as you basically use that to bank Seals for Divination while using actual draws for buffs.

In short: Like the idea. Like the MP recovery tied to Lord/Lady. Still think Lord/Lady effects need work. This could tie into an idea I had before of making the cards utility only, but putting the utility into Lord/Lady cards I think works better. My idea was:

Sun Seal: Heal/Regen

Moon Seal: Heal + shield = heal

Celestial Seal: Heal + incoming damage reduction

I think also granting MP regen to it would be nice. Lord and Lady could also determine if it's a single-target effect or AoE effect, but you might have to split Minor Arcana into two buttons in that case.

[Hereon]

Now to actually address this,

These buffs can be very helpful with reducing busy work, Sleeve Draw still being a pain and Lady's ability feels redundant we don't need more heals but Lord's mp recovery would be absolutely lovely.

Now the big problem(and the one where I start giving up on trying to improve this system as it makes me go over all 3 healers) how much personal damage are you going to take off from Ast, the healers despite everything are reasonably balanced so increasing effects of cards requires less personal damage or they would shoot up in rDPS, have too low personal damage and you get a lot of players complaining killing basic mobs are a chore, if you improve other healers dps then they start overtaking tanks while only spamming 1 button.

This is the nightmare of a more consistent buff system because you can determine how much it could give within range you have a set level of personal damage it can deal.

To buff this card system requires you to deal with whm, sch and all tanks and their output (Can you see why I give up halfway through).

This could be avoided by using a buffing stance. Decreases pDPS, increases buffs and rDPS. Turn it off and you are back to solo adventure mode.

[Seraphor]

There should be no reason to nerf AST DPS with this system, because it's not functionally increasing their rDPS by much if any. It's doubling potency, while halving frequency. Maybe the actual figures would need to be tweaked to ensure this is the case, but this is my idea, there's no net buff taking place, just redistribution.

The Lord/Lady effects could be more imaginative perhaps, but it's there for some choice, and to differentiate between Lord and Lady. There may be times when you need some extra AoE heals and your others are on CD, otherwise you redraw to get a Lord and get the MP back.

[Crushnight]

There should be no reason to nerf AST DPS with this system, because it's not functionally increasing their rDPS by much if any. It's doubling potency, while halving frequency. Maybe the actual figures would need to be tweaked to ensure this is the case, but this is my idea, there's no net buff taking place, just redistribution.

The Lord/Lady effects could be more imaginative perhaps, but it's there for some choice, and to differentiate between Lord and Lady. There may be times when you need some extra AoE heals and your others are on CD, otherwise you redraw to get a Lord and get the MP back.

So you say but in the opener and for every divination you are losing at most 3x 6% dmg up cards from current but Divination is now either 10% at best for 15s or 6% for 30s (again at best) but with the cards also changed to be more potent or last longer i think it would likely end in a net gain for Ast rDPS.

Current system the most dmg up Ast can give to a single player is 14% for 15s (Divination + Lord/Lady) , and party 6% for 15s
Your system Ast would be able to give either 20% for 15s for single/10% for party for 15s or 12% for 30s for single/6% for party for 30s.

Both are gains by a wide margin but whether the loss of 3x 6% dmg up is worth more would require a lot of number crunching something not up to doing atm. But if the loss doesn't trump the gains then you have to nerf Ast damage and if the gains are less than the lost what is the point of changing the system to be weaker.

[Crushnight]

So you say but in the opener and for every divination you are losing at most 3x 6% dmg up cards from current but Divination is now either 10% at best for 15s or 6% for 30s (again at best) but with the cards also changed to be more potent or last longer i think it would likely end in a net gain for Ast rDPS.

Current system the most dmg up Ast can give to a single player is 14% for 15s (Divination + Lord/Lady) , and party 6% for 15s
Your system Ast would be able to give either 20% for 15s for single/10% for party for 15s or 12% for 30s for single/6% for party for 30s.

Both are gains by a wide margin but whether the loss of 3x 6% dmg up is worth more would require a lot of number crunching something not up to doing atm. But if the loss doesn't trump the gains then you have to nerf Ast damage and if the gains are less than the lost what is the point of changing the system to be weaker.

So I actually tried to run through what Ast could lose/gain here.

15s version
-lose 3x 6% dmg up (from current system to use your version)
-gain 2x 6% dmg up (2 single cards combined with divination)
-gain 6x 4% dmg up (difference between the divinations)

30s version
-lose 3x 6% dmg up for 15s (from current system to use your version)
-lose 2x 2% dmg up for 15s (using Lord/lady cards in current system instead of base cards)
-gain 2x 15s of 6% dmg up (single cards)
-gain 8x 15s of 6% dmg up (divination)

Yea both version would make Ast even more powerful, Ast would have to take a hit somewhere for either idea to be implemented. This is also getting the best rng possible for both systems.