A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

This stems mainly from their extremely high APM during Burst. The fact that you have to Lightspeed to keep up with your cards already shows an issue, since Cards are effectively your rDPS you're providing that's a large amount of your damage by buffing. Too many oGCDs to stuff in before burst finishes since Crown Play is also included in the bunch.

I think the main contributor of that 'busy' feeling is not actually the OGCDs themselves, but having to constantly swap targets to place cards, then retarget the boss to throw another Malefic. On controller that is probably kinda ass to do, so I wouldn't be surprised if they made the cards be an AOE around you (like PVP), turn their effects down, and let them stack (so they're 1% damage buff, in an AOE, and one person can have 3 seperate cards applied at once). RDPS of having less % on a card, but having 3 at once (multiplicative buff stacking) AND having them applied to 8 people instead of 3 probably works out either the same, or even higher than now, so potency tweaks to Malefic might be warranted too. At least, that seems like the simplest solution to program in, so it'd be the one I'll assume they go for.

[ASkellington]

I know it's frustrating to lay on RNG sometimes, but it's funny that they literally made a job flavored with things like divination and fate.

Hm, reading this, I wonder if they are going to turn Draw into a GCD, it will certainly alleviate the burst APM, but I guess they would have to balance some numbers to make up for the lack of Malefics.

That's essentially the rework concept I worked on myself for AST over on the echo chamber thread. Spend most of your time drawing and playing cards, which instead of providing immediate buffs are laid on your allies until you manually activate them with a different spell not unlike trap cards in Yugioh. All of these actions then generate stars that orbit around the AST, which they can then weave stacks of a special buff onto themselves or other party members, which causes the buffed target's spells and weaponskills to cause those stars to detonate on the first target attacked, dealing Malefic potency damage.

Please no. Part of why I LIKE AST is the weaving. Moving cards to GCD removes that weaving.

Plus, there is 0 reason to move cards to GCD to reduce APM. The reason why its so bloated right now is due to Astrodyne and previously Divination (seals system) remove that and the APM goes down. Doesn't fix the tab targeting issue I'll admit.

[HyperiusUltima]

I think the main contributor of that 'busy' feeling is not actually the OGCDs themselves, but having to constantly swap targets to place cards, then retarget the boss to throw another Malefic. On controller that is probably kinda ass to do, so I wouldn't be surprised if they made the cards be an AOE around you (like PVP), turn their effects down, and let them stack (so they're 1% damage buff, in an AOE, and one person can have 3 seperate cards applied at once). RDPS of having less % on a card, but having 3 at once (multiplicative buff stacking) AND having them applied to 8 people instead of 3 probably works out either the same, or even higher than now, so potency tweaks to Malefic might be warranted too. At least, that seems like the simplest solution to program in, so it'd be the one I'll assume they go for.

Making it AoE at a 1% you essentially have a higher rDPS contribution per card if they're stackable. They probably won't make it that easy since currently the raid contribution per card is 3% on the wrong job type and 6% on the correct job type. You'd essentially be buffing AST in this way too by adding another 2% contribution across 8 people vs. current cards. You'd either have to reduce AST's general damage for that or buff the other jobs considerably to match output so as not to alienate WHM. As for APM, I think they've developed themselves into a corner alongside current systems. People use Macros to play cards most of the time now from what I've seen, and it's disgusting. Trying to change something like that is difficult unless you overhaul AST's card system completely and change how it actually plays, alienating the AST player to relearn their job from the ground up; something I don't think people would want to deal with until 7.0 comes around.

It's not simple breaking out of the norm when you develop yourself into a hole by compiling systems onto one another.

[Raikai]

Making it AoE at a 1% you essentially have a higher rDPS contribution per card if they're stackable. They probably won't make it that easy since currently the raid contribution per card is 3% on the wrong job type and 6% on the correct job type. You'd essentially be buffing AST in this way too by adding another 2% contribution across 8 people vs. current cards. You'd either have to reduce AST's general damage for that or buff the other jobs considerably to match output so as not to alienate WHM.

But what would be the problem with this? If in the end, the overall rdps is balanced, it doesn't matter a lot if it comes from buffing others or from your personal potencies.

[ForsakenRoe]

But what would be the problem with this? If in the end, the overall rdps is balanced, it doesn't matter a lot if it comes from buffing others or from your personal potencies.

Only real issue would be that it feels bad to do solo instances as it (since the cards would be scaled with the assumption that they are hitting 8 people), but when has that ever stopped them before. They can also target specific things to reduce AST's personal potency, without making it feel worse to play in non-raid content. For example, instead of knocking 10 potency off of Malefic, they could remove the damage from Earthly Star or lower the potency of Lord of Crowns (which would make it feel less crappy when you don't get one), to name a couple of suggestions

Actually hang on, wasn't the issue with old SB AST cards 'balance fishing' for the perfect log? Now we've got Lord-fishing.

[ty_taurus]

Please no. Part of why I LIKE AST is the weaving. Moving cards to GCD removes that weaving.

Plus, there is 0 reason to move cards to GCD to reduce APM. The reason why its so bloated right now is due to Astrodyne and previously Divination (seals system) remove that and the APM goes down. Doesn't fix the tab targeting issue I'll admit.

Because if you move the cards to the GCD then there's never going to be any other OGCD actions AST will ever receive in its lifetime? There are other GCD actions that can exist beyond the cards you know. Moving the cards to the GCD doesn't have to be about APM. Rather, it's about reducing the amount of time AST has to spend atomizing whatever button Malefic is linked to.

The way I reworked it, you had an OGCD button that essentially gave 2 of your stars to someone else to detonate and featured a 1 second cooldown. You'd be weaving that aggressively as you played your cards instead of weaving the cards themselves. It's just rearranging how your tools work.

Moreover, slowing down your actual use of drawing and playing cards has another advantage: easing the burden of knowledge that has driven people away from AST since its inception. You need to be able to recognize what each card does and be able to pick the exact person for the card within 1 GCD, optimally speaking. Allowing your cards to be set up on people in advance offers time to think, and makes the job a lot more methodical as you set up your burst windows, without necessarily slowing down your weaving.

[ASkellington]

Because if you move the cards to the GCD then there's never going to be any other OGCD actions AST will ever receive in its lifetime? There are other GCD actions that can exist beyond the cards you know. Moving the cards to the GCD doesn't have to be about APM. Rather, it's about reducing the amount of time AST has to spend atomizing whatever button Malefic is linked to.

The way I reworked it, you had an OGCD button that essentially gave 2 of your stars to someone else to detonate and featured a 1 second cooldown. You'd be weaving that aggressively as you played your cards instead of weaving the cards themselves. It's just rearranging how your tools work.

Moreover, slowing down your actual use of drawing and playing cards has another advantage: easing the burden of knowledge that has driven people away from AST since its inception. You need to be able to recognize what each card does and be able to pick the exact person for the card within 1 GCD, optimally speaking. Allowing your cards to be set up on people in advance offers time to think, and makes the job a lot more methodical as you set up your burst windows, without necessarily slowing down your weaving.

And I don't want it. The issue that I have with the system isn't anything other than "I don't like how it feels" hate to break it to you. There is 0 way you're going to sell me over to the idea of GCD cards when 1 - we had them back in SB, 2, we have them currently in PvP, both of them work if a bit flawed in some respects and 3 - the whole reason why I picked up AST when I started the game was the idea of weaving my cards on the fly.

Some people WANT that burden of knowledge, and I am one of them. And rather instead of slowing GCDs I would argue spread out the cards over leveling so players have the time to get used to which one does what.

[ty_taurus]

And I don't want it. The issue that I have with the system isn't anything other than "I don't like how it feels" hate to break it to you. There is 0 way you're going to sell me over to the idea of GCD cards when 1 - we had them back in SB, 2, we have them currently in PvP, both of them work if a bit flawed in some respects and 3 - the whole reason why I picked up AST when I started the game was the idea of weaving my cards on the fly.

Some people WANT that burden of knowledge, and I am one of them. And rather instead of slowing GCDs I would argue spread out the cards over leveling so players have the time to get used to which one does what.

Then let's just not do anything. No job needs to change, or even get new actions. Let's just not have anything added ever.

[ForsakenRoe]

There is 0 way you're going to sell me over to the idea of GCD cards when 1 - we had them back in SB, 2, we have them currently in PvP, both of them work if a bit flawed in some respects and 3 - the whole reason why I picked up AST when I started the game was the idea of weaving my cards on the fly.

Sorry to butt in, but cards were as OGCD in SB as they are now

Then let's just not do anything. No job needs to change, or even get new actions. Let's just not have anything added ever.

If the devs actually did that, maybe they'd actually get the jobs remotely balanced for once. Infinite typewriters and all that. But 'new stuff!' is a big selling point, so they have to flip the boardgame every 2 years and make a new mess of balance. And 'nothing changes ever' would lead to the same issue as what we saw with Classic WOW: the meta was solved, everyone knew exactly what was best at what point, and which classes were best to play for certain roles. You want to tank, be a warrior or you're a meme. You want to heal? Don't be a druid or you are a meme. You want to DPS, probably be a warrior because for some reason warrior gets to be the hybrid that doesn't suffer the 'hybrid tax'.

Here, if nothing changed ever re: balance, I guess we'd see 'the meta' get solved and then everyone would parrot 'you have to play this comp or you're griefing' even if a player doesn't know the jobs in that comp well. An off-meta RPR that knows their stuff will likely outdps a FOTM rerolling NIN who can't tell their Trick Attack from their TenChiJin. Actually, I guess we did see this kind of thing at the end of HW with the dreaded NIN DRG BRD MCH meta. Didn't matter if you were a godlike SMN or BLM, you were perceived as griefing for not playing the 'best comp'. Bloody annoying

[Nizzi]

Then let's just not do anything. No job needs to change, or even get new actions. Let's just not have anything added ever.

On the one hand, I agree with you that getting new stuff is good because we still have had some good things added in ShB and EW, but on the other hand... would SCH/AST being their SB versions really be that bad?
(though if I could get SB SCH with Recitation and Expedient? That's the dream right there.)