Astro Card Proposal

[Kyeria]

In my honest opinion, the only thing that really needed to happen to fix the original card issues was to remove the damage buff from Balance.

1: Bring back all the original card buffs.
2: Bring back Royal Road, "Etc"
4: Change Balance into a new buff to compensate for the removal of the damage buff. ( No damage buffs of any kind )
5: Change Spire into a new buff to compensate for the removal of TP. ( No damage buffs of any kind )
6: Reduce Divinations Cooldown slightly and make it slightly more potent.
7: Bring back the original Minor Arcana abilities.

Bam! Astro retains its old identity and still retains a way to buff the parties damage. The issue with damage buffs in FFXIV is that they are always valued more than anything else by the community. The issue with the old card system wasn't that the other cards weren't useful, impactful, or fun to use...it's that they weren't useful in comparison to Balance.

This change removes the need to fish for Balance because damage is always valued over other buffs ( or any card that has damage+ tied to it ) and allows the Astro to use their cards more freely and situationally. Additionally, Divination now feels more impactful and worth saving seals for.

Just my two cents though.

[Tulzscha]

If you think about it, all pre-existing and proposed ideas for utility cards are really just highly situational dps increases. Damage reduction = less healing required = more dps, but only when the target would be taking damage. Increased move speed = higher uptime and/or less healing required = more dps, but only if the target needs to move a lot.

On one hand it would be satisfying to both draw and play the right card on the right person at the right time, on the other hand if your group knows what they're doing then most additional utility is completely useless, or they don't know what they're doing at all and get themselves killed regardless. The way FFXIV is designed there's little to no room for such abilities.

Alternatively AST's baseline utility (raise, rescue, some ogcd heals and buffs) could be put into the card system but then the random factor would be more than an annoyance, and if the cards are not sufficiently random there's no point in having the cards at all. Then again AST already has a fortune-telling aspect to some abilities (Astral Star, Horoscope).

Imo these are the most important factors in making the ideal card system:

• Rng is important so long as the AST remains capable when having bad luck.
• Seeing more than one card at a time helps make informed decisions which is more fun than being purely at the mercy of rng, particularly with utility cards.
• Minimal knowledge of other jobs required. You shouldn't need to know who benefits most from crit or direct hit in any given patch.
• Utility cards are more fun than dps cards but much harder to make work.
• A way to put useless cards to use is important.

Keeping in line with the fortune-telling theme here's an idea for utility cards: They have an ability to change the outcome of some future event, but if that player "defies their fate" they get a dmg buff or something instead.

• If target player would die within 6s they are automatically brought to 50% hp instead. If they don't die they get a dmg buff or shield (primarily for tank).
• If target player loses 50% of their max hp in the next 6s (without dying) they're healed by that amount. If they don't, they get a dmg buff.
• Target player gains a dash action for the next 6s. If not used they get a dmg buff. (Maybe too complicated for recipients.)
• The next heal received by the target within 6s is doubled. If they don't get healed they get a dmg buff.
• Target player takes 50% more dmg for the next 6s then gains a shield for twice the hp lost. If no hp was lost, dmg buff.
• All dmg dealt to target in the next 6s is delayed in a 12s dot. If no dmg taken, gain dmg buff.

In addition to such utility a number of mechanics could be utilized: Being able to see the next card after the one drawn, holding a card for later use, discarding a card to buff the next, burning a card for a simple dmg or heal effect, shuffling the deck to reset everything, etc.

[Rezef]

In my opinion, though I'm in the minority, the cards work as they should. Mediocre Utility is not that worth it in a raid scenario especially if we count for the RNG nature of the cards. DPS is the absolute metric in this game, nothing else really matters in the end of the day. From the moment in pre ShB we were fishing for Balance and the rest of the cards were either meh or situational for me the current system is diffinitely a step up.

Downvote all you want

[elioaiko]

As long as dmg buffs are attached to the cards, they need to be all dps buffs or nothing at all. Truth is that most of the newcomers and veterans (so people who haven't or don't like playing healers) don't even recognize when they have buffs on them. The only thing they do notice, is dmg buffs because it helps them hit harder.

IMO, cards need to have all dmg buffs completely removed and only have utility buffs. There will always be one true card to play if they keep dmg in the cards therefore creating the same issues they've so destroyed the job for to balance.

[KaerisKlyne]

Probably a hot take, but I think only meh ASTs ever had to fish for Balance.

Balance was the only *direct* damage buff in the old iteration, but it was hardly the only overall dps increase potential for a group. Enhanced Bole was so strong, tanks didn't need to pop cooldowns if it was up for busters, so healers got more dps in. I think an Enhanced Ewer could help sustain Bard's old Foe's Requiem for longer duration party-wide dps gains? Pretty sure Ewer also prevented Machinists from needing to swap turret to resource management for more dps, too. And these were only enhanced further when buff timers could be prolonged.

I'll give you that old Arrow felt very caster-specific, and I don't think old Spear was noteworthy (was it ever a Direct Hit buff or am I misremembering a time it at least helped a little?). But putting an Arrow on a caster was still a gain! Royal Road was the problem, because almost every effect was always better as a single target buff like we have now, imo.

I don't love the singular focus of the current cards, but I don't really miss all the old effects, either. If they ever reverted, I'd very much hope for each effect to just be a different flavour of dps manipulation rather than all being direct dps buffs. I like the idea of old Minor Arcana for Lord and Lady, too, but with the strength and breadth of ASTs current off-global options, Lady would just sit and probably overheal. And I don't think I'd want Royal Road back.

Honestly, the problem always felt more like players not being okay with a deck of shuffled cards functioning like a deck of shuffled cards: randomly, using your best judgement to use the tools you got. It just never felt to me like the randomness of the deck was at-odds with the scripted nature of encounters, because 4-mans have never been lethal, and in 8mans there's another healer to compensate.