Simple AST Card Suggestions

[Alicia_Fletcher]

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about suggestions for reworking the card system. While most suggestions would benefit the astrologian and breathe life back into the class, the simple truth is that a lot of these would have unforeseen consequences. I won’t go into detail on that because I’m sure people can theorize and/or figure that part out. You’re reading this because you probably want to check out what my simple suggestions are. These suggestions will simplify astrologian’s playstyle while restoring its utility gimmick, and making it easy to still heal and dish out damage. Finally, you may/will see a suggestion that has already been said in other posts. There are like-minded people who share a passion for astrologian.

1. Remove the RNG aspect of the cards and allow players the power to choose the cards they want. To balance this, make each card an ogcd with a reasonable cooldown timer.

2. Remove Sleeve Draw and Minor Arcana. Unnecessary.

3. Three damage type cards: Melee, Ranged, Dual. Flat 10% increase for Melee and Ranged. 5% damage increase for the dual card.

4. Divination effect completely changed to be an ogcd buff for the astrologian. Allows the astrologian to turn a card into an aoe effect.

5. An ogcd that doubles the potency of a card. Cannot stack with Divination.

6. Three utility cards: Damage mitigation 15% (Bole), Duration extender (Spire, resets the duration of the current card in effect), All OGCD Cooldown timers reset (Ewer)

These are just my suggestions. If you like it, great! If you don’t, then oh well, no harm done. I don’t expect the devs to see this if I’m going to be honest. There are lots of posts that needed to be sorted through, after all.

[YusiKha]

Being able to choose the individual card Turning the cards into individual oGCDs could be a pretty neat idea. In fact, it sort-of reminds me of Melia's 'summon element' skills in Xenoblade Chronicles, especially since each Arcanum is based on an element.

[Malmstrom]

There's always going to be the problem of "as long as there is a card that increases damage the most, it will be the best card and all other cards will be meh if not terrible." You have utility cards here, which is great and fine, but people will still choose / fish for the damage cards instead.

If people really want utility cards AND damage cards, then maybe it would work if there were two separate Draw skills for them that don't share a cooldown with each other or anything else.

nb4Mitsuki

[Alicia_Fletcher]

There's always going to be the problem of "as long as there is a card that increases damage the most, it will be the best card and all other cards will be meh if not terrible." You have utility cards here, which is great and fine, but people will still choose / fish for the damage cards instead.

If people really want utility cards AND damage cards, then maybe it would work if there were two separate Draw skills for them that don't share a cooldown with each other or anything else.

nb4Mitsuki

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that you missed the part of each card being an individual ogcd. There should be no need to sacrifice a card to redraw for a utility card. This system does away with the draw mechanic.

But, I completely agree with the consensus that many will choose damage cards over utility cards. That is why each card being an individual ogcd would help with that. That way, if the situation calls for it, a utility card can be used without losing the damage cards. The utility cards are there and available for use at the player’s discretion.

[Malmstrom]

Mm, yes, I think I missed or misunderstood that part.

There would still have to be some limiting factor to letting you rapid-fire the cards all at once or something, I think. Especially your Ewer effect, since you could in theory blow all your cards and then Ewer yourself and do it again.

Assuming I'm understanding half of it right, at least.

[Alicia_Fletcher]

I hadn’t thought about the limiting factor. I guess a more balanced approach would be to have a 30 second cooldown for the type of card used. So, if I were to use Balance to boost Melee damage, that puts the other two damage card types on the same cooldown timer while leaving the utility cards available. Likewise, using Bole for damage mitigation will put the utility cards on cooldown while leaving the damage cards available still. Since you could theoretically give a tank their invuln every 30 seconds with this, a way to balance Ewer would be to have it has its own cooldown, I guess. Similar to Hallowed Ground’s cooldown possibly. With this in mind, an astrologian shouldn’t be able to rapid-fire cards and it would make the player choose the best card for the situation.

Do I want to help the tank with two vuln stacks mitigate with Bole, or use Spire to extend the melee dps’s enhanced card (from the ogcd buff that doubles the potency of a card).

[YusiKha]

Do I want to help the tank with two vuln stacks mitigate with Bole, or use Spire to extend the melee dps’s enhanced card (from the ogcd buff that doubles the potency of a card).

No, no. Bad idea. You can't have mitigation and DPS competing for the same spot. Give all cards, like, a 90s cooldown or something, so that competition doesn't happen.

[Side-Eye]

I think the idea has a lot of promise. By removing the RNG factor, the system would be easier to tweak for balance. And splitting off utility so that the player doesn't have to choose between DPS+ and nonDPS cards, there'd be no harm (or resentment) by using the utilities as needed or to optimize group performance.

And before anyone suggests that lore requires random card draws, keep in mind that Squeenix threw lore out the window when they changed all the cards to have the same effect. (I'd imagine a new player leveling up AST would be confused as hell by the storyline.)

[Haxaan]

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about this, but after giving it some thought I actually really like it. It still gives the lore of the cards meaning by allowing for different effects to be usable while eliminating the RNG that end gamers hate so much. There is still a "Best" card, but by having cool downs this makes the use of other effects just as viable and purposeful. I like the idea of merging the old system with the new system in a meaningful way and I think it could potentially work very nicely. Thank you for posting this.

[Gemina]

I am definitely on board with the simplistic approach to the cards. I've seen a lot of good suggestions as well, but the intangibles is something that can't really be accounted for regardless of how good the suggestion might seem. But peeps here are also really good at predicting how job changes and adjustments will play out, so I have to give credit where it is due.

1. Removing the RNG would also remove the need to draw cards, and all six would have to be placed on the hotbar. This basically kills the card mechanic. I think the RNG factor makes it difficult to give cards certain utilities (see previous Bole, Ewer, Spire), but what I believe actually makes the cards a total mess is allowing the AST to 'fish' for the card/seal they want, instead of simply just dealing with the card they get. If we want to simplify, take that monkey wrench straight the hell out. AST's APM is already really high. Giving them even more ogcds would be a nightmare.

2. I couldn't agree more with getting rid of their current iterations. If they can be reworked to compliment a new card system then that is a different story.

3. It kind of comes down to this I think. Not agreeing or disagreeing here, but right here is where the suggestions start varying greatly. What the cards do seriously impacts how the mechanic should work. If we want to restore giving a different effect to each card, it is imperative they design the Draw mechanic to be compatible with each effect.

4. New card system effectively terminates Divination. Like Minor Arcana and Sleeve Draw, it would have to be reworked or scrapped.

5. I think it would be possible to work this into a new system. I see no reason why things such as this, time extenders, among other utility cannot be given/returned to the AST kit; so long as it balances out with card effects and default duration of those skills.

6. Echo #3

I personally would like to see a simple, yet effective card system. Basically the opposite of what it is now.