[AST]: A Healthier Card System

[Xtro99]

this 100%. ShB card system wasn't great, but it was leagues better than what we have today.

[Marxam]

@OP, I had a similar idea back in ShB once I realized they gutted AST and after seeing the direction they took it in EW I personally would have kept the 4.0 version with some changes:

Draw changes

-Draw = Draw a Card (2 charges). Draw changes to Play.
-Play = Use currently drawn card on self or target party member. Play cannot be placed on the hotbar.

Draw functions the same as it currently is but this one simple change reduces the button bloat by one and I no longer need to macro the two together anymore. If you think this can't be done just look at Hororscope and how that works so don't tell me it can't be done.

-Royal Road - Discard currently drawn card for enhanced, extended, expanded, buff on the next card used. Each buff adds a corresponding seal. Cannot be used outside combat.
-Balance/Bole = dmg up, RR effect, enhanced (increase potency) and solar seal
-Arrow/Spear = crit up, RR effect, extend (increased duration) and lunar seal
-Ewer/Spire = sks/sps up, RR effect, expand (aoe effect) and celestial seal

Royal Road will be the new lvl 50 skill, replacing Astrodyne. Redraw and Undraw is also removed, since cards can just be RR if a card is not desired at that given time. A card can also be used without the need to RR and it will not affect the seals. This change would also slow down card play a bit since RR removes the need to target party members every 30 seconds, making the job feel less busy.
Each time you RR with a card you gain a seal. The seals work in the same way as they do now but rather than being attached to using the cards, they are attached to RR. So ideally you want to RR each of the effect at least once to have 3 different seals. The seals will come into effect in another skill mentioned later.

-Astrodyne = Grants an effect using the astrosigns read from your divining deck. Can only be executed after reading three astrosigns. Effects granted are determined by the number of different types of astrosigns read.
-1 Sign Type: Grants Harmony of Spirit
-2 Sign Types: Grants Harmony of Spirit and Harmony of Body
-3 Sign Types: Grants Harmony of Spirit, Harmony of Body, and Harmony of Mind

Harmony of Spirit Effect: Gradually restores own MP
Harmony of Body Effect: Increase potency on all party members with card buffs
Harmony of Mind Effect: Increases duration on all party members with card buffs by 10 seconds

Astrodyne basically works as it currently is but rather than a self buff its party utility. Divination might need to get nerfed to compensate for this.

-Minor Arcana = Gain either the Lord of Crowns or Lady of Crowns buff. Minor Arcana action changes to Set.
-Set = Set a card on the field based on either Lord of Crown or Lady of Crown buff. Set cannot be placed on the hotbar. Set can only be used when a card is drawn.
-Lord of Crown = Set a card face down on the field. Grows in strength and buffs all party members in range with the drawn card's effect (enhanced) and a single heal after timer expires. 8 yalms
-Lady of Crown = Set a card face up on the field. Buffs all party members with card's effect and heals, while inside the aoe. 8 yalms

Minor Arcana is changed to being a tech option for utility and getting rid of cards while providing an aoe buff/heal. In addition to how RR works and MA, it will reduce the RNG when fishing for seals without having the need to bring back Sleeve Draw.

TLDR: My idea reduces the card bloat down to 3 skills; Draw, Royal Road, Minor Arcana, and removes or combines irrelevant actions i.e. Play, Crown Play, Redraw and Undraw. It also changes Astrodyne to be party utility instead of a self buff while also negating some RNG with how RR and the seals work together. Of course this is all just some ideas I've had to slow down the unnecessary business AST (and many jobs in EW) have. Though I do feel in the future that AST will get a skill to set cards on the field. However at the very least they need to remove Undraw and merge Draw and Play together similar to how Horoscope works.

[Atmaweapon510]

Just a couple issues on numbers:

1) Direct hit buffs have to be around 2-3x the value of crit in order to be equivalent to it. You're probably using the Bard song buffs to ratio it, but it's be better to compare Battle Voice and Chain Stratagem values (20% to 10%). Just to keep in mind, at a very reachable 2000 crit rating, Each % Crit is already more than twice as good as a % of Direct Hit.

2) Everyone is going to Minor Arcana Lord of Crowns at 500 potency. Aspected Helios reaches 1000 total healing potency compared to Fall Malefic's 250 damage potency (or 295 since AST become comparable to SCH in this rework) it'd always better to hard-cast A.Helios instead of wasting Minor Arcana on anything else. Hell, I play SCH and there are more instances than I'd like in current savage where I can dump 6 Aetherflow stacks in a row into Energy Drain, trading 400-500 healing potency (+mitigation) for a measly 100 damage potency and getting away with it without me or my co-healer ever needing to hardcast a heal because of it.

3) Spear is basically Lightspeed for healers on a 40 second cooldown, but will also always be going on the Black mage. Just give it Astrodyne's current MP charging effect and Astrodyne can do something else.

[TankHunter678]

They could have just kept ShB card system if they really wanted to keep balance. This new version of AST feels so bad. The cards are so disconnected now. At least with ShB, you were using the cards for Divination, tying the cards to a meaningful system. Not perfect but definitely not what we have now.

The cards now are such an afterthought, Astrodyne is an interesting idea but ultimately doesn't matter because you're playing AST to support and buff your party, not yourself.

Minor Arcana revert is honestly trash. Because when I need a an AoE heal, it's Lords and vice vice versa and since you don't have Sleeve Draw, they may as well have deleted Minor Arcana.

Tbh they should really stop touching the cards because it has gotten worse and worse each iteration. SB was the best but broken and flawed. ShB was dull but balanced and still rewarded you for doing things right.

I'm scared that they're just gonna make the cards into emotes at this point.

Honestly? ShB and current cards do not feel all that different, both are immensely crap and make me hate the job. I only ever used Minor Arcana in order to remember what range I was supposed to throw the card buff onto someone and divination felt terrible to use.

They honestly at this point should just scrap the cards entirely, just make it a single target buff button that has a randomized animation where it pulls the card out and plays the card. Then just change sleeve draw to toss a card on every party member.

That wont fix the issue that AST feels soulless without its utility belt, but at least it would be out and open for how simple they want it.

[Theox]

I honestly am failing to see how having 3 separate buttons for each card is going to help the button bloat people are hating on, on top of the fact that you have to play them still and also the redraw is there as well. Idk, I feel like having draw on one button is much more convenient and actually is lower apm.

I do like the idea of divination being tied to the seals and cards, it feels much more connected and just overall whole as a concept. That being said, I also like buffs astrodyne gives (particularly haste and mp recovery) despite the fact that it can screw you over if the rng is bad. So maybe we can have an additional effect on divination just for ast alone?

I like your idea on crown play, but personally I always thought that it would better work as a passive gain during combat, much like whm lillies when you wait for it to pop and then use whenever.

Overall I like your ideas, but having three separate buttons for cards is too much for me. Maybe it's actually not three different buttons and I'm reading it incorrectly? Do educate me on that part.

[elioaiko]

I honestly am failing to see how having 3 separate buttons for each card is going to help the button bloat people are hating on, on top of the fact that you have to play them still and also the redraw is there as well. Idk, I feel like having draw on one button is much more convenient and actually is lower apm.

I do like the idea of divination being tied to the seals and cards, it feels much more connected and just overall whole as a concept. That being said, I also like buffs astrodyne gives (particularly haste and mp recovery) despite the fact that it can screw you over if the rng is bad. So maybe we can have an additional effect on divination just for ast alone?

I like your idea on crown play, but personally I always thought that it would better work as a passive gain during combat, much like whm lillies when you wait for it to pop and then use whenever.

Overall I like your ideas, but having three separate buttons for cards is too much for me. Maybe it's actually not three different buttons and I'm reading it incorrectly? Do educate me on that part.

I agree. Having three seperate buttons for cards is a lot. It's kinda why AST has too many things to watch for. You have Divination which is completely seperate now so there's no pay off for getting different seals–just another one button buff like all the others. Instead we have Astrodyne which is a self buff that doesn't matter because you can barely manipulate them with only one redraw per card, and the self buff is there for their personal damage? AST is all about being the party buffer that sacrificed it's own dps to buff everyone else's. I could have gotten onboard with Astrodyne if it was an addition to building up to Divination properly. Reward the player for using Divination with the right seals.

AST's cards are entirely seperate systems and it feels really bad. You hit Divination and then draw and throw three ST buffs for Astrodyne which doesn't do anything for the AST and is often forgotten because it overall doesn't matter to their job as its more important to buff the party rather than yourself. On top of that, Minor Arcana, is yet again used for something that can't be relied on really then a way to continue to use cards pass seal alignment.

At least in ShB, they were all hand in hand with how they interacted. You draw three cards, manipulate them to get three seals in order to achieve Divination as the playoff with Minor Arcana as a way to throw filler cards that you didn't want into buffs that didn't fit the seals you have.

They really don't know what to do with the cards and it's depressing because it's the biggest reason that people play AST, it feels like more than a healer, but a support buffer. Have have the highest APM because they're too many things to focus on with all these new things they added.

[ty_taurus]

I honestly am failing to see how having 3 separate buttons for each card is going to help the button bloat people are hating on, on top of the fact that you have to play them still and also the redraw is there as well. Idk, I feel like having draw on one button is much more convenient and actually is lower apm.

I do like the idea of divination being tied to the seals and cards, it feels much more connected and just overall whole as a concept. That being said, I also like buffs astrodyne gives (particularly haste and mp recovery) despite the fact that it can screw you over if the rng is bad. So maybe we can have an additional effect on divination just for ast alone?

I like your idea on crown play, but personally I always thought that it would better work as a passive gain during combat, much like whm lillies when you wait for it to pop and then use whenever.

Overall I like your ideas, but having three separate buttons for cards is too much for me. Maybe it's actually not three different buttons and I'm reading it incorrectly? Do educate me on that part.

In regards to bloat, this system would have 5 buttons dedicated to your cards: Solar Draw, Lunar Draw, Celestial Draw, Play, and Divination. Redraw would replace the Draw you used on the hotbar since you only ever need it when you have a card in play, and I left Play as a separate action both because either it or Redraw would need to be a separate button anyway, but this way we can auto-draw minor arcana rather than adding a button to play the minor arcana.

What separating Draw into 3 buttons ultimately accomplishes is creating control, and with control, we get the freedom to diversify the card effects. The issue with just going back to the old system is that it had no control. Sure there were situations where utility cards could be helpful, but you still largely were fishing for the most optimal strategy. By determining which cards offer offensive buffs, defensive buffs, or casting buffs, and requiring you use them all to get a greater offensive buffs, utility cards now serve a purpose and you can control when you get them. It makes the card system something that benefits you for planning and preparation rather than raw luck.

That all said, we also don't need any more card button fluff like Spread, Sleeve Draw, or anything else like that. So while 5 buttons might still be a lot, the clarity of the system and control make it function far better than it does now, and allow the cards to feel like unique actions and that the buttons each serve a valid reason to exist unlike now where some buttons just feel like fluff.

[yay4indigo]

Now that Divination is its own separate thing, I’m not sure why the card system can’t revert entirely to what it was in HW, but with slight tweaks. Don’t make any cards increase damage — just make them flavorful. Mana regen, health regen, health pool increase, movement speed, etc etc.

[inhaledcorn]

I agree with what others have said about the Solar cards. I would make Balance a flat damage buff while Spear is both a Crit and Direct Hit buff. Certain jobs can take advantage of one card more than the other.

I'm fine with the Lunar cards as is.

The Celestial Cards... One is a Haste, and the other is Krasis, basically. Haste is okay on some jobs but really screws over the way other jobs work. Krasis is... okay, but even Sage kinda shrugs their shoulders at it. I think the Krasis effect should be rolled into the Lunar card that increases HP while the Celestial cards have a different effect. Maybe making one card give someone Bloodbath while the other card is Eye4Eye?

[ty_taurus]

The original post I made for this thread is now 3 months old and my thoughts on how I'd personally want to direct AST has changed somewhat. Just wanted to throw that out there since this got dug up.