[AST]: A Healthier Card System

[Heilstos]

Hey Tani,

I was aware that this balance card is difficult to handle and therefore gave a lot of room for speculation. Since the balance team can do a lot on this map there. The stats of the Astro itself can be taken as a bonus, or really of the target, although this can be reduced from 1.56 (BLM) to 1.1 (DRG) with a smaller number of Hell of Fire stacks. At best, the values of the card can have a fixed non-percentage value or depend on the astro.
This Balance should deliberately go against OGCDs, which does not guarantee a percentage increase. Also one of the reasons why the balance was so popular.
It was important for me to take Bunshin as a basis and about a pure push of 5%. In the form of a skill that improves a value X for a limited number of hits.

That was the main thinking of the Balance Idea I made. An I belive i. e. everone can 3 Spells/Wap. skills in 15s out, or?

[Shurrikhan]

And I believe everyone can do 3 Spells/Weaponskills in 15s, or?

In a true 15 seconds? Generally 7 spells/weaponskills.

Having zero extra Skill Speed / Spell Speed is almost impossible; at least one piece will give it to you. Let's go ahead and call it, then... a 2.48 GCD.

15/2.48 = 6.05 GCDs. That is greater than 6 GCDs. So long as no GCDs are clipped and no spells longer than the GCD length are casted, that will net you 7 spells or weaponskills. (Granted, to get 7 spells, the buff would have to arrive just before you complete the GCD-length spell's cast, while to get 7 weaponskills, it'd have to arrive just before you use the weaponskill.)

I was aware that this balance card is difficult to handle and therefore gave a lot of room for speculation. Since the balance team can do a lot on this map there. The stats of the Astro itself can be taken as a bonus, or really of the target, although this can be reduced from 1.56 (BLM) to 1.1 (DRG) with a smaller number of Hell of Fire stacks. At best, the values of the card can have a fixed non-percentage value or depend on the astro.

That's still an unnecessary complication. There is no need to assign different buff values to each job, let alone based them further on the AST's stats (which would have no effect on this target-selection imbalance anyways), if you just use the same frame of reference around which the jobs are balanced instead of specifically selecting a factor by which certain jobs would be more benefitted than others. The only thing possibly wrong with just using a 10% damage (or Determination / damage+healing) buff instead is that you already did that for Arrow.

As such, just change one or the other to a different means of throughput that'd have less target-selection bias, such as by causing it instead to increase GCD- and casting-speed and non-GCD damage specifically (the old Arrow effect, but slightly buffed for reduced target-selection bias). And with that, you're good, and one of the cards is now more interesting for having a palpable gameplay effect, instead of just requiring that you have a BLM in your group for AST to have its full rDPS.

[Dyvid]

I think everyone is forgetting what the core issue was with the original AST design, people only wanted DPS card and tossed everything else. This in turn had SE turn all the cards into DPS card and completely ruined the concept of RNG.

To bring it back into an FF Gambler Job and keep RNG you have to fix two things; one is to make all 6 cards useful at anytime and second you have to redesign the rest of the Healers into Healer/Support.

For RNG card design it best to just keep it simple then add layers after that. The game is designed around core Attributes; VIT (I know it doesn't buff Tanks), STR, DEX, INT, MND. If you increase those, everything the job does is also enhanced including DPS. Now for the VIT issue (Personally they should just combine Tenacity into VIT), the card would just buff Tenacity instead of VIT since that is the stat that really matters for tanks. The last card would be a Wild card that applies a random 1% secondary stat buff to the whole group for 5s (it's a joke card after all).

Next you replace Undraw with Double Down which either doubles the effect card played or cuts the effect in half.

Astrodyne change to 1 sign would be a 1% Damage Buff, 2 signs would be 3%, and 3 signs would be 5% to the group.
-Alternatively you could go with 1 sign would give 3% Determination, 2 signs would be 3% Determination and Direct Hit, and 3 signs would grant 3% Crit, Direct, and Determination

Minor Arcana replaces Redraw @ 70 so if you don't like the Arcana Card you pulled, you can change it into either Lord or Lady and hold it for play with Crown Play freeing up Arcana Draw for continued play.

However this redesign hinges on other Healers getting comparable though less random buff system otherwise it becomes overpowered.

[Heilstos]

I think everyone is forgetting what the core issue was with the original AST design, people only wanted DPS card and tossed everything else. This in turn had SE turn all the cards into DPS card and completely ruined the concept of RNG.

To bring it back into an FF Gambler Job and keep RNG you have to fix two things; one is to make all 6 cards useful at anytime and second you have to redesign the rest of the Healers into Healer/Support.

Hey Dyvid,

I think the ulterior motive of Taurus is/was to split the cards into damage buffs and utility parts. The reason was, as described, that only DPS cards were taken. So the player has 2 decks, which is a cool idea in itself. And yes the balance team must falsify the idea which come through forum. I think separating support cards into two categories also gives the "weaker cards" a chance to be used. Celestial River is simply meant to compensate for not always having a DPS card. SE just has to see what they're doing here. Only that all cards are the same and depend on who gets them is a plague for every random group or raid. I think we as a community have found many ways now to make the AST more comfortable.