Astro Card Proposal

[Mansion]

Bard would like a word with you about this. They were unanimously they most popular DPS in the entire game last expansion yet their entire identity was gutted for no other reason than more casual players didn't understand how it functioned.

I'm more inclined to say "because they added dancer". Bard was performing so well in late Stormblood that a form of nerf was expected (Crit scaling, DRG synergy). But it was still very popular in a more casual approach I believe.
If anything, adding a new healer job is a bit worrying for me, because it might lead to another identity gutting for the sake of "balance".

[Teraluna]

Bard would like a word with you about this. They were unanimously they most popular DPS in the entire game last expansion yet their entire identity was gutted for no other reason than more casual players didn't understand how it functioned. Said players were not even the majority as, again, Bard was immensely popular. Now it's nearly the least played job. Dark Knights have been complaining about Living Dead for years yet no changes. It took players literally refusing to play Monk for the dev team to finally listen. I could go on but time and again, the dev team hasn't listened. Or they go from one extreme to the other.

As for the rest. They haven't made any adjustments to DR whatsoever and the Castrum drop rates were only buffed because literally no one was doing it.

I suggest the overall goal of the development team in regard to classes is to aim for as even a spread as possible. Now a level playing number across all classes is a Utopian condition, whilst also having to contend with the playing styles of different geographical regions.
If the likes of Ast where seen to be at the lower end, then changes could be expected, and that of course is what happened. Similarly, if one or two classes are shown to be outstripping others in terms of player numbers, expect the same.
Now before people jump in, the devs don't always get these adjustments exactly right. I'd expect more adjustments of classes with 6.0 (on top of the announced healer adjustments to accommodate Sage).
Then further tweaks as the new expansion pans out.

[elioaiko]

I strongly feel that we need to move DPS support into other actions and leave the cards as utility only, at least in their own unique effects. That's the only way that we can reasonably see the cards not all do the same thing, because when utility is no longer competing against DPS, you have more opportunities to use these effects, and a more justifiable reason to have them be randomized.

I agree, no matter how strong they buff defensive cards, they will never equal to that of a DPS card. The idea of using an enhanced Bole was amazing in dungeons with massive mob pulls but that's where the usefulness ends. AoE balance will always be better than something you couldn't rely on for raidwides so past that, Balance can be used in any situation.

Removing DPS buffs off cards is where we can divisify the cards again with them being strictly utlity based. Although that can be useless considering that RNG utlity is tricky for timings.

So I would suggest a seperate CD timer for utilities.

Ex.

1. Solar/Lunar/Celestial procs Divination (120s)

2. Solar/Solar/Celestial procs an AoE regen oGCD

3. Lunar/Lunar/Celestial procs an AoE mitigation oGCD 10%~

4. Lunar/Lunar/Solar procs a shield oGCD

There's room for more card spenders but the idea is giving an RNG factor without being completely punished for it. The only issue with this the amount of cards needed to use them.

[Jaelommiss]

Placing offensive and non-offensive resources on the same cooldown will always result in offensive resources being favoured. This is an immutable consequence of this game's combat system.

Mitigation tools that cannot be relied upon are worthless. A decent healer will have planned how to complete a fight in advance, making extra RNG mitigation unnecessary. Unless the extra mitigation can save a healing GCD it confers no benefit, and even with a beefy -20% mitigation this is unlikely to happen outside of intense healing checks like J Waves or Terminal Relativity. This stems from how damage in this game tends towards infrequent spikes that must be mitigated to survive. If the game treated HP as a resource that is consistently drained and must be replenished using finite healing resources (like in most other games featuring healers) then RNG mitigation gains value in that it conserves resources. Utility, such as MP regeneration, falls into the same trap unless it can be converted into damage.

Unless you want to make a portion of cards entirely worthless there is no way to implement them as anything more than an offensive tool without either overhauling the entire combat system or splitting AST's cards into offensive and defensive decks that are accessed using two separate resources.

[Anhra]

There was no downside to the old system in itself, it may have been a bit poorly designed with the granted effects, but the "RNG" based aspect of it was well but together in a way, that you always had a solution left to do and if you were discarding cards, you clearly did something wrong here.

AST would have had great potential as a "high risk, high reward" type of healing Job (or just someone who plays triple triad midcombat) if Squeenix decided too build up more into the old card system, instead of listening to the majority of people who are casuals to the bone who only know the WHM toolkit for healers and view anything else as alien concept that interrupts their "optimisation".

I can only hope that Squeenix will learn one day that focusing on the individuality of Jobs, rather than on the Roles they fulfill, would only improve things for everyone who plays the game, but i guess being narrow-minded seems to be quite the trend in 2020+1.

Also, having Fun should always come first before any optimisation on any part (having 3 WHM Jobs clearly isnt fun in my book), if you think otherwise, maybe you should reconsider if video games really are a thing for you.

[Teraluna]

There was no downside to the old system in itself, it may have been a bit poorly designed with the granted effects, but the "RNG" based aspect of it was well but together in a way, that you always had a solution left to do and if you were discarding cards, you clearly did something wrong here.

AST would have had great potential as a "high risk, high reward" type of healing Job (or just someone who plays triple triad midcombat) if Squeenix decided too build up more into the old card system, instead of listening to the majority of people who are casuals to the bone who only know the WHM toolkit for healers and view anything else as alien concept that interrupts their "optimisation".

I can only hope that Squeenix will learn one day that focusing on the individuality of Jobs, rather than on the Roles they fulfill, would only improve things for everyone who plays the game, but i guess being narrow-minded seems to be quite the trend in 2020+1.

Also, having Fun should always come first before any optimisation on any part (having 3 WHM Jobs clearly isnt fun in my book), if you think otherwise, maybe you should reconsider if video games really are a thing for you.

Well what do you say to those players who like and enjoy the current card mechanics over the previous one, those players who have fun playing it?
You see, we are down to individual preferences and these can vary widely. There is no right or wrong here, just personal taste. The downside of course comes when an individual's preference isn't the one that actually happens. Then we get into name calling, telling people what to do (as in don't play video games etc).

[Mikaeus_The_Lunarch]

There was no downside to the old system in itself, it may have been a bit poorly designed with the granted effects, but the "RNG" based aspect of it was well but together in a way, that you always had a solution left to do and if you were discarding cards, you clearly did something wrong here.

Also, having Fun should always come first before any optimisation on any part (having 3 WHM Jobs clearly isnt fun in my book), if you think otherwise, maybe you should reconsider if video games really are a thing for you.

you can't just say there was no downside then immediately list a downside in the same sentence. The old system was clunky during its entirety and to pretend it wasn't is just bad faith. sure the current cards are rather boring, but the consistency is much more preferred. i feel like everyone who thinks they liked the old cards has completely forgotten just how awful it was to have to throw away unwanted cards all for a spread ewer/spire or to even get the spread effect in the first place. i get that the adaptation of working with the system was apart of the fun, but it was much too weighted to RNG to be as enjoyable as i'd liked.

Having fun is entirely subjective and implying optimization isn't/can't be fun is disingenuous at best

[Seoulstar]

you can't just say there was no downside then immediately list a downside in the same sentence. The old system was clunky during its entirety and to pretend it wasn't is just bad faith. sure the current cards are rather boring, but the consistency is much more preferred. i feel like everyone who thinks they liked the old cards has completely forgotten just how awful it was to have to throw away unwanted cards all for a spread ewer/spire or to even get the spread effect in the first place. i get that the adaptation of working with the system was apart of the fun, but it was much too weighted to RNG to be as enjoyable as i'd liked.

Having fun is entirely subjective and implying optimization isn't/can't be fun is disingenuous at best

Absolutely nothing is wrong with optimization...but when that completely strips away another fun aspect of something. Maybe we need to find a middle ground with it. As it is very clear that many people are not happy with the card system that replaced the old. Something else could have been done instead of making it which color of balance do you want.

[ty_taurus]

Absolutely nothing is wrong with optimization...but when that completely strips away another fun aspect of something. Maybe we need to find a middle ground with it. As it is very clear that many people are not happy with the card system that replaced the old. Something else could have been done instead of making it which color of balance do you want.

This is something some players on both sides of the argument need to understand. There was a lot about the old cards that had charm and was fun to work with, but could also get frustrating when you're trying to prog and you're getting RNG screwed. The ShB cards tackled that problem by tossing the weight to the opposite end of the seesaw, taking away everything that has individuality and charm. What we got was something cold and lifeless, but undeniably functional and consistent. Now, progging is clean and straightforward, but there's no personality to the cards and no nuance to finding a time and place to use the cards you get. We need to redo it again and this time try and strike a balance.

[Anhra]

Well what do you say to those players who like and enjoy the current card mechanics over the previous one, those players who have fun playing it?

I tell those kind of People usually "stop pretending to like AST and play WHM instead".

The current way the cards work, cant even be considered a proper system, since youre only applying the same buff in 4 different flavours/magnitude.

Having multiple different effects not only would make things more flexible on the way AST interacts with the party or solo in the field, it would also give alot of room for future improvements.

More importantly, this isnt about personal tastes, its about seeing things on a objective level and the amount of threads on this forum about healers being boring as hell in the way they currently are, speaks volumes for itself, and it would be great if people would finally stop being ignorant about it.