AST Changes Ideas

[Liam_Harper]

Unpopular opinion but I have no interest in the obsession with utility cards. It's always the same ideas. "increased cast/attack speed", "restore mana", "increased movement speed", "increased healing taken", "tiny bit of mitigation". Most of these are flat out worthless in a lot of situations or even problematic (such as reduced recast time on the wrong class or too much unexpected movement speed sending someone over the edge of a platform). Fights are designed and we gear our classes to beat them without such Utility. It's the reason tenacity is worthless, permanent 10% damage reduction sounds great on paper but if the fight is designed so you can beat it the same without it, it serves no use. We use Piety if we need mana, we meld SkS/SpS if we need to reach a perfect breakpoint, we mitigate enough to survive. In other games it might work, but ff14 is just so scripted and exact.

Sure some utility might be handy if someone screws up but I'd rather not build a whole class mechanic around "might be useful if you group sucks, maybe, then it's worthless later". Utility cards often just feel useful to players who don't really care if they're actually being useful. Dps cards are always useful.

If you make the utility impactful, like heavy mitigation, you make AST too good. It's really quite hard to design and balance.

I'd rather they looked at other ways to make AST more interesting. Delayed time magic, both heal and dps. A Sleeve draw that aligns with Divination. The ability to place a Return marker like on e12s. A buff Share cd, so you could share a card buff, shield or Lightspeed on you with another player. More dps abilities than Malefic spam. I'm just throwing things out, but there's plenty of other things they could look at. Cards are mostly fine though.

[Heilstos]

Unpopular opinion but I have no interest in the obsession with utility cards. It's always the same ideas. "increased cast/attack speed", "restore mana", "increased movement speed", "increased healing taken", "tiny bit of mitigation". Most of these are flat out worthless in a lot of situations or even problematic (such as reduced recast time on the wrong class or too much unexpected movement speed sending someone over the edge of a platform). Fights are designed and we gear our classes to beat them without such Utility. It's the reason tenacity is worthless, permanent 10% damage reduction sounds great on paper but if the fight is designed so you can beat it the same without it, it serves no use. We use Piety if we need mana, we meld SkS/SpS if we need to reach a perfect breakpoint, we mitigate enough to survive. In other games it might work, but ff14 is just so scripted and exact.

(...)

I'd rather they looked at other ways to make AST more interesting. Delayed time magic, both heal and dps. A Sleeve draw that aligns with Divination. The ability to place a Return marker like on e12s. A buff Share cd, so you could share a card buff, shield or Lightspeed on you with another player. More dps abilities than Malefic spam. I'm just throwing things out, but there's plenty of other things they could look at. Cards are mostly fine though.

That Aspect of Cards still exist about the idea from Divination as trait. So you get the reforcement to play the card. So its like Card (Utility) + Divination trait ( that is the effect from very card now) (Dps push)
Your aspect that a dps push is important. Is there because you have to play every card, which are not independent of the jobs (Melee ranged) which are available for the DPS part. It feels not great to give ranged cards in a group to the melee but what is the other way to do it. To give a 3% card to the melee or 6% to a tank. The SHb Sytsem has is problems aswell.

This idea is intended to be a further development of the SHB card system. The DPS push is and remains trivial, but the card itself is a game for the branch.The style of play goes in the direction of the bard.
As you said, the utility effect of the card is a pure bonus that is under the RNG. And that Part is not important for you Liam.
Because the approach that every card pushes the DPS is important and correct. Otherwise there is no incentive to play the card.

[ASkellington]

Cards are mostly fine though.

Cards are not "fine". We have 8 different cards with six (three each) that do the same damn thing. You could literally change Divination to a 1 button skill on a 120s cool down, remove the seals, keep say Balance and Ewer with Lord/Lady of Crowns and it would literally feel no different than the current state.

And while you are right to say that moving from the cards to instead distance AST from WHM in its healing deparment would be a better idea, the fact remains that what makes AST AST is the cards. Yes we had time magic (when I wasn't even playing the game). Yes I personally enjoy the idea of time based healing (Horoscope/Earthly Star). But what drew me and many other ASTs to the class was the cards. They have to be addressed. Either they should be outright removed, or changed from its current system.