Astro Card Proposal

[NobleWinter]

I miss the old Astro Cards with their varied effects and while I understand why many people enjoy the consistency of the new card system I would like to offer my take on a card system with some of the old and new elements I enjoyed most combined. For my proposed system every card can be manipulated four different ways with Play, Royal Road, Minor Arcana and Undraw.

First, choosing to Undraw a card would grant 1 stack of "Royal Road," up to a total of 3. Previously, Royal Road Effects were activated by using the next card drawn but I didn't like that. Instead, every time a card is drawn a player could choose between pressing "Play" for single target card use, Royal Road (if available) for an altered effect, or Minor Arcana to default to the Lord/Lady of Crowns effects which could then also be applied with Royal Road or Play. Royal Road is greatly simplified in my version but more on that later.

Let's look at my proposed Card Effects. I'm stepping outside the imaginary boundary that Astro's can only buff the party and decided on 3 DPS Boost or Offensive Cards and 3 Support Cards like we had before. Let's consider the Offensive Cards first. I will abbreviate Royal Road to RR and Minor Arcana to MA from here on.

Balance

• 10% Damage up for Self or Party Member for 15 Seconds
• RR: 5% Damage Up to all Party Members in Range of Target for 15 Seconds
• MA: Lady of Crowns

Spear

• 4% Vulnerability Up to Enemy Target for 15 Seconds
• RR: 2% Vulnerability Up to Enemy Target and all nearby Enemies for 15 Seconds
• MA: Lady of Crowns

I wanted to create a reason for the Balance to be as desirable as I remember but with some alternatives that could be better depending on the situation. In solo play a Balance would offer you more personal damage than the Spear. In a dungeon or trial a Spear on a single boss would offer 4% more damage to the entire party outweighing the Balance on a single person if everyone is pumping out dps. In an Alliance Raid a plain Spear would outweigh a Royal Road Balance on the whole party against a single enemy due to the number of people taking advantage of the Vulnerability. Being able to weigh the Vulnerability of the Spear against the Damage Up of the Balance, both with and without Royal Road, is a dynamic I would enjoy personally. There's still an optimal card for every situation but it isn't always the Balance this way.

Arrow

• Grant Self 1 Divine Seal. Once three seals are obtained you will become "Ready to Divine" and able to execute "Divination" consuming all Seals
• RR: Grant Self "Focus" for 8 Seconds allowing the next spell to be cast instantly at half the MP cost. If no card is held and at least 1 Seal is present Royal Road will consume 1 Seal and grant "Focus" (meaning that basically a Seal can be traded for an enhanced Swiftcast any time no card is drawn if you're willing to potentially push back the use of Divination)
• MA: Lady of Crowns

Divination

• Grant Self and all nearby Party Members a 12% Damage Increase for 17 Seconds. This can be stacked with other bonuses like how it works currently and would still be a 120 Second Cool Down

Divination would require three card draws of specifically the Arrow to execute. Matching your seals correctly would be a thing of the past. In comparison, it would take four card Draws (two Undraws for Royal Road and two Balance) to Spread a 5% Damage Up Buff twice to your party making Arrow the bigger Dps Gain for an Astro in a party setting but smaller solo since you could simply use 3 Balance on yourself. Depending on how much time is left in an encounter, the number of enemies, party members present and their individual performance, fishing for Balance, Spear, or Arrow could each be optimal and this decision making would allow for growth as an Astro becomes more familiar with their cards and the content they enter.

That covers the DPS boosting cards. Now let's look at the Support Cards.

Spire

• 10% Damage Down to Enemy
• RR: 5% Damage Down to all enemies in range of target
• MA: Lord of Crowns

Bole

• 20% Damage Received Reduction to Self or Party Member
• RR: 10% Damage Reduction to all Party Members in Range of Target
• MA: Lord of Crowns

Spire on a single enemy and Royal Road Bole on the party provide the same damage mitigation although Spire can't be used when the Enemy is unable to be targeted. Another Distinction between the two appears when there are multiple enemies versus one or a single person taking damage versus the entire party. Spire and Bole may be capable of giving the same amount of mitigation but which is better would vary by scenario.

Ewer

• Refresh MP to Self or Party Member
• RR: Refreshes MP to all Party Members in Range of Target
• MA: Lord of Crowns

Royal Road

• Spreads the effect of every card except Arrow to nearby party members or enemies at half potency. Grants "Focus" when used with Arrow Drawn or when no card is drawn but a Divine Seal is present consuming 1 Seal. Granting Self Focus doesn't consume or require any stacks of Royal Road.

Minor Arcana

• Converts Balance, Spear, and Arrow into Lady of Crowns or Spire, Bole, and Ewer into Lord of Crowns.

Lord of Crowns

• Deal 200 Potency Damage to Enemy Target
• RR: Deal 100 Potency Damage to Enemy Target and all Enemies nearby

Lady of Crowns

• 400 Potency Heal on Target
• RR: 200 Potency Heal to all Party Members in range of Target

Minor Arcana in my proposal is a way to get some healing out of Offensive Cards and some Damage out of Support Cards. If being a pure Healer is your wish or the situation is dire any card could potentially help you heal or mitigate damage. Conversely, if your healing kit provides all the healing you need every card could be used to squeeze out more damage. Optimization could be for extra damage, wipe prevention, or just fun. We could choose for ourselves again!

Redraw

• Draw a new card from your deck of the next most likely fortune. The same card cannot be drawn if it has appeared in the last 10 seconds. 30 Second Cool down. Up to 3 stacks may be held

Sleeve Draw

• Redraw your last card again for use. Cooldown on Redraw is changed to 1 Second for 10 seconds. 180 Second Cool down

Sleeve Draw is a way to guarantee which card you draw every 3 minutes. Using Redraw to get what you want ensures a spread balance during openers by Using Draw and Undraw for a stack of Royal Road and then Sleeve to choose a Balance. This Sleeve Draw makes the RNG of the card system reliable at the same interval that Scholar's have access to Deployment Tactics. If planned mitigation suits your fancy all the benefits the cards provide would be available at regular intervals.

Now I realize that this proposal has a lot of new card effects, but I feel it could follow a natural learning progression if we learned the skills in a different order than we do currently.

Level 30: Draw, Play, and Royal Road
Royal Road would only be accessible when Arrow is Drawn or a Seal from Arrow is present to allow for the Focus Trait to be used. Without Undraw available no stacks of Royal Road could be gained to spread the effects of any other card. Basically, you are forced to use every card you Draw and Arrow is one of 4 Support Cards.

Level 35: Redraw
Players get a chance to choose a different card and take more control of the Deck.

Level 40: Minor Arcana
All Cards can now be traded for Minor Healing and Dps Potential

Level 45: Undraw
Options increase as AoE potential arrives from using Undraw but Arrow is still purely a Support Card with only two dps increasing options in Balance and Spear

Level 50: Divination
Arrow gains the additional benefit of a DPS increase for the entire party transitioning from purely a personal buff to an option worth weighing apart from the enhanced swiftcast.

Level 70: Sleeve Draw

[ty_taurus]

This is recreating a lot of the same issues that the old card system had. I know many of us, myself included, mention how the old cards were much more fun, but they were stilled flawed. What we got was not the solution, but just going back to it isn't really either, and while there are definitive differences between this concept and the old cards, many of the same problems arise.

There's one shining idea here, I will say, and that's the idea of connecting the old Lord of Crowns to the defensive cards. This would certainly help in making utility cards less of a dead draw when they aren't necessary. That said, the card effects are kind of all over the place.

First, one of the reasons why we never got debuff cards is because they virtually do the same thing. Regardless of whether you're boosting the damage an ally deals or increasing the damage an enemy takes, those effects might as well be the same, with the only difference being the numbers involved. If you strike the right values, you could make them do functionally the same damage. That also creates the other issue where, at the end of the day, one of the cards will be superior for DPS contributions, and that one will reign above the others.

I think the best thing we can realistically hope for would be this:
- Restore individuality to the cards by making all of them utility--or in other words, disconnect % DPS increase from them. If none of them contribute to DPS, then you can actually start making decisions based on your results. You can still have something of a seal system for Divination, but the actual cards won't yield DPS buffs. Personally, I think AST should move over to having DPS support on their GCD. Give them a reason to cast buffs on allies instead of Malefic.
- Separate the Minor Arcana from the regular cards so they're on their own cooldown, and rather than have them be random, make them alternate between the Lord and Lady with each use. You can restore them to doing OGCD Damage and offering OGCD healing, but if they're always alternating, starting with the Lord, then you can still plan it appropriately.
- Keep the card actions low. There was a lot of interesting elements going on with things like Royal Road, but we have a lot of buttons dedicated to the cards and I think we need to look at more ways to consolidate them rather than keep it the way it is.

[SweetPete]

If they keep them as we have now then SE needs to rework the Astrologian quest line for the cards. They can be very confusing to new players thinking they are diverse and full of utility when they aren’t anymore.

[Anhra]

I think the ideas listed from the OP are great, AST in its current state is just a sad shell of its former glory, which is just a repainted WHM toolkit.

The only change i would suggest would be to make sleeve draw a lv60 skill instead, maybe even at the cost of a higher cooldown (240sec).

As for what SweetPete said, let that worry be not yours, but that of Squeenix, excuses like these shouldn't be a reason to NOT make any progress towards better overall gameplay.

Everyone who played more than 2 MMORPG's in their lifetime should easily notice that the current state of our healers (and tanks too) is one of the deepest low's the jobs could possibly reach, in terms of Gameplay. I am not saying that they don't work, but Squeenix's vision of a "pure healer" and "barrier healer" isn't something that fits in well in a enviroment, where over 80% of its combat related content is just as simple and difficult as the dps toolkit of every Healer Job.

And i doubt that they have learned much with the incoming Endwalker expansion, but i remain hopeful that things change for the better, however faint it is.

[Teraluna]

The issue with the old card system was it's rng on getting the best card.
Firstly, pot luck with a class skill is just wrong.
Secondly, it was so multi-layered hit & miss people simply ignored it and just played with the class standard skills.

At least the current system gets rid of most of that, making it more approachable to players.....but:
I think the card system was a busted flush from day one, a gimmick thrown in to try and differentiate Ast from WHM, as it had copy-pasted several skills from that class.
I agree with a reworking of the cards although I think the originator's suggestions lead us back to the issues the cards first had. And of course we do have changes incoming. We will see......

[ty_taurus]

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. Here are some suggestions:

DRAW:
Balance:
Converts 20% of all damage dealt into HP.
Generates an Astral Seal.
- 15 seconds

Bole:
Reduces damage received by 20%.
Generates an Umbral Seal.
- 15 seconds

Arrow:
Reduces casting time by 50% (Does not reduce recast time).
Generates an Astral Seal.
- 15 seconds

Spear:
Grants immunity to cleansable debuffs and vulnerability.
Generates an Umbral Seal.
- 15 seconds

Spire:
Grants Sprint effect.
Generates an Astral Seal.
- 15 seconds

Ewer:
Restores 15% of maximum MP over time.
Generates an Umbral Seal.
-15 seconds

[Saefinn]

I think the only thing that needs to be changed from the current system is the effect the cards have instead of them all being "The Balance".

What happens when you get a card you don't want to use? I'd do what I do now, Minor Arcana it. And there, no useless cards. They fixed the problem with Minor Arcana and didn't need to give every card the same effect.

[Recon1o6]

4% 2%...these are insufficient for 15 seconds. You can't see those without a parser.
Royal road affecting lord of crowns would be a bit pointless, you could cast gravity.

We now know the reason for terrible utility on most jobs in shb was not because of balance despite claims on this forum, but because SE incorrectly thought that the bigger numbers and variety of buffs put off new players. With the stat crunch and myriad of complaints we should be able to get noticable and variable buffs back.

For players concerned with optimisation- optimisation isn't the most important thing about a job. The most important thing is the fun factor, and a lot of people loved the rng and flavour of the cards.

Here's an alternative that focuses on fun first

First:
Divination deleted
Draw and play recombined. Cards last until you play, RR or MA them, Undraw deleted, spread returned as a card holder
Draw can only be used every 30 seconds assuming no card is in hand.
Up to 2 card effects can be on a player at once (so 2 astros aren't fighting over cards)
Redraw: Now only has 2 redraw on a 60 second recast. Card removed in this manner will be drawn on your next draw
Royal road: Now has stacking properties. Cards stacking in this way are removed from the deck until a card is played normally. You get 2 RR effect stacks at 60, and 3 at 80. When a card is played using royal road, it will use the royal road buff to differentiate it
AOE- Balance and spear
Potency- ewer and spire
Duration- arrow and bole

Sleeve draw: Gives 1 of the missing royal road effects, recast 150

Lord and lady retain their current effects but effect is boosted to 10% Lord gives 10% to the astrologian casting the card on themselves when no melee or tank available (this is for situations like POTD, eureka, bozja and open world)

Cards
Balance: 12.5% damage boost for 30 seconds
Bole: grants 15% mitigation and a convelesance effect for 30 seconds
Ewer: restores 3000mp over 15 seconds regardless of other effects. Effect is written as 3% mp over 15 seconds, so if it gets extended, another 3% per tick happens
Spire: Extends current buffs by 12 seconds and grants a bloodbath effect for 30
Arrow: reduces auto attack delay and makes all spells instant cast for 15 seconds
Spear: Increases Dhit and crits by 20% for 20 seconds. % based positive effects alway proc

This gives back the fun cards used to have while retaining minor arcana so no cards are wasted. RR now also makes it worthwhile to sacrifice a balance or spear to redraw or RR if the parser is saving up for a full royal play. (Aoe+duration+boost)

[NobleWinter]

4% 2%...these are insufficient for 15 seconds. You can't see those without a parser.
Royal road affecting lord of crowns would be a bit pointless, you could cast gravity.

Cards are oGCD and Gravity is GCD. They dont conflict with each other and Gravity has room for weaving built in so you could use both for more damage. It's not a one or the other kind of situation. Its not really possible to see any of the current card efects without a parser so Im not sure if anyone even expects big numbers at this point over just knowing they are giving out a gain.

[Seoulstar]

Just give me something where I won't feel like I am a balance bot. I am happy the balance or bust crowd got what they wanted...but it seriously took a lot of the fun from it.