A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

I wonder if the issue with GCD cards is how often (or not, as it is) we actually play them. Like, imagine for a second, if there was a system that used the deck of sixty. Every, say, 15s, you Draw a card from that minor deck (OGCD), and Play (GCD) it as a replacement for that particular Malefic. Would it feel 'less bad' if that GCD was more often, or would it be worse?

I did see a post a long time ago, of someone having an idea for something like this. Might even be you Taurus, since it involved 'star that is equal to Malefic potency' in a way. But it was a GCD that applied 5 stacks to an ally, that empower the next 5 Weaponskills or Spells with (potency value) extra damage, scaling off of the AST's stats instead of the target. With the example given, it was like, Malefic is 250, and these 5 stacks are 60 each, so totalling 300, making it a gain to use them over Malefic. Malefic would keep a place, as 'the thing you use when you can't apply more stacks' (4man content or solo for example). But is it 'more interesting' to change from 'cast Malefic on the boss' to 'rotate buff skill across 5 players', it'd be almost the same, just you have to keep retargetting who you're aiming at. Then again, it's undeniably a 'buff focused playstyle' so surely it'd appeal to those players who want to 'support' but without directly doing damage. And there'd presumably be ways to add extra 'stars' via other actions as a way to make them damage neutral

I'm not sure if you're aiming for 'AST blows buffs on self during downtime to prep more stars for when boss comes back after High Concept', I assume the CDs on things would discourage that kind of behavior

[ty_taurus]

I wonder if the issue with GCD cards is how often (or not, as it is) we actually play them. Like, imagine for a second, if there was a system that used the deck of sixty. Every, say, 15s, you Draw a card from that minor deck (OGCD), and Play (GCD) it as a replacement for that particular Malefic. Would it feel 'less bad' if that GCD was more often, or would it be worse?

I did see a post a long time ago, of someone having an idea for something like this. Might even be you Taurus, since it involved 'star that is equal to Malefic potency' in a way. But it was a GCD that applied 5 stacks to an ally, that empower the next 5 Weaponskills or Spells with (potency value) extra damage, scaling off of the AST's stats instead of the target. With the example given, it was like, Malefic is 250, and these 5 stacks are 60 each, so totalling 300, making it a gain to use them over Malefic. Malefic would keep a place, as 'the thing you use when you can't apply more stacks' (4man content or solo for example). But is it 'more interesting' to change from 'cast Malefic on the boss' to 'rotate buff skill across 5 players', it'd be almost the same, just you have to keep retargetting who you're aiming at. Then again, it's undeniably a 'buff focused playstyle' so surely it'd appeal to those players who want to 'support' but without directly doing damage. And there'd presumably be ways to add extra 'stars' via other actions as a way to make them damage neutral

I'm not sure if you're aiming for 'AST blows buffs on self during downtime to prep more stars for when boss comes back after High Concept', I assume the CDs on things would discourage that kind of behavior

Sounds like something someone else may have bounced off the idea. I think I remember someone doing that before. But I agree, the thing that keeps circling around in my mind on how to make it work is ensuring that you're using the cards often. You touched on the concept not so long ago when I brought up each card can only be used once per "hand" so you can just balance balance balance, and you'd have effects like:

Balance is a 5% damage buff
Spear is a 5% crit buff
Arrow is a 5% DH buff
Spire is a 5% Det buff

but if Bole and Ewer are supportive, those are only needed as much as the fight demands, which creates an issue even if the design enforces each card to be used once per rotation. I really want to move away from them all being a flat DPS buff, and even if they're different variations of damage, there's at least some nuance to that and certain jobs benefit more from certain types of buffs. There are definitely ways to make it work, but it's just really tricky to find the goldilocks answer. If I really dedicated a day to beating out the ideas, I'm sure I could figure something out, but at the end of the day, it's really just about communicating the general ideas.