AST Changes Ideas

[MintnHoney]

All I've heard is "dps cards are boring" and "utility cards are fun" and no one touches on the fact they're also useless in the current game design.

Please understand that optimal and useful are different concepts, just as sub/non-optimal and useless are also very different.
Utility cards would not be optimal for DPS gains, but would still be useful.
The fun part is subjective.
Though, with that in mind, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you would want to mince words over whether or not we should view the current cards as being the same, considering that the differences between the cards boils down to 1/2 of them having a 1 word difference in their description (the optimal target). The Seals, meanwhile, are an underdeveloped, tacked-on token mechanic that's more trouble than it's worth, especially since it brings back that which had already been mitigated very well with the prior cards: fishing.


But otherwise, I think there's a lot we could do with the concept of fortune telling rather than what we currently have or previously had. For example, often times, when getting ones fortune told, the reading is made with something specific in mind (prospects of love, the future, the immediate fate of a specific person, etc.).

If I could ask for anything, then I propose we change the "Draw" command into "Astrology" and choose to do an astrological reading for 1 of 3 paths: Life (target allies only), Death (target Enemies only), and Fortune (target Allies or Enemies). Keeping the job's storyline as it is, we would end up revealing a celestial body through our reading; depending on the celestial body we reveal, the exact effect(s) changes.
Life corresponds to healing, Death corresponds to attacking, and Fortune corresponds to buffs/debuffs.
This way, we have access to a variety of effects for a purpose that we specify.

Some (not-necessarily-balanced, off the top of my head) examples of readings could be:

We use Astrology, and choose to read for Life, targeting an ally: our reading reveals The Spire. As a result, our target gets a 100 potency heal, and also gains a 50 potency regeneration effect every 3 seconds, for a period of 30 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Bole, then our target would receive Althyk's Gaze, a 10 second buff which records how much damage the target receives during the duration of the buff. Once the timer expires, the buff consumes itself and activates Nophica's Embrace, healing for an amount of the total damage received (say, 50%).

or

We choose to read for Death, targeting an enemy: our reading reveals The Spear. The target then takes 100 potency of (I'd prefer Ice-aspected, but elements in this game are "whatever" now) damage and covers them with ice. The next attack done to the target triggers the ice to shatter, dealing a 10 potency DoT to enemies within a certain radius, including the target, for 15 seconds.
Alternatively, if our reading revealed The Balance, the target would take 3 instances of 100 potency (fire-aspected) damage, applied each time the AST uses an offensive spell or ability, but not necessarily having to target the enemy.

or

We choose to read for Fortune, targeting either an Ally or an Enemy: we target our ally, and our reading reveals The Ewer. The Ally and allies near them gain faster passive HP and MP regeneration, and casting time reduced by 1.5 seconds for 15 seconds.
Alternatively, we target an enemy, and our reading reveals The Arrow. The enemy's auto-attack speed and accuracy are reduced by 25%.

Names and lore notwithstanding (assuming I remembered things correctly), that's what I would like.

Perhaps you could also only give a seal if you apply a card to the correct role, align sleeve draw with Divi but make Divi far worse without 3 seals so playing the seal minigame right becomes more important.

I also wanted to touch on this bit here.
1) This would make the skill floor rise, but the skill ceiling would stay the same. Put another way, it would bring about player suffering (especially new players) rather than consistently provide "more fun."
2) They used to have Divination provide worse buffs depending on seals obtained, but they changed those numbers to be closer together (likely to try and help bring back the players they lost when they scared them away at the beginning of the expansion, but also because the differences probably threw off the devs intended numbers for their boss fights).
3) I have seen complaints from players where they've been bitched at for not throwing cards on a specific party member, either because they did not realize that the AST never drew the right card or because they believed that the AST should always be throwing cards on that player. While that can be harassment (especially if they continued to attack the AST, assuming an explanation was provided) and should be reported, we should also be trying to avoid putting players into situations where they would be harassed.
4) Imagine trying to get perfect seals and drawing the same seal 3-5 times in a row. Or worse, imagine trying to get any seal, and drawing a card for a DPS type that was not present 3-5 times in a row. Coupled with the point above, we're leading players into situations that are aggravating.