An Idea to make AST’s Minor Arcana more Interesting

[Mimilu]

In another thread I suggested that Minor Arcana should be removed to help reduce button bloat and open more space for more useful/interesting skills because I feel it’s too random to be useful but also not random enough to be fun or charming and that got me thinking; How would I make Minor Arcana fun?

I assume they changed Minor Arcana into an AoE version of its original Stormblood variants because some players missed the random effects of Draw and how it fit with their tarot-theming. So my suggestion is “Why not give Minor Arcana six random effects?”.

In XIV lore, Astrologians have sixty cards, 6 Major Arcana (the cards used for Draw) and 54 Minor Arcana, each separated into 6 suits (Crowns, Cups, Rings, Knives, Staves, and Irons. Each are linked to an element), each with 9 cards (Ace-6, Knaves, Lords, and Ladies), yet Minor Arcana only deals with 2 cards from the same suit (Lord and Lady of Crown). What if Minor Arcana had 6 random effects based off the 6 Minor Arcana suits?

It could work like this:
You play Minor Arcana, it draws 1 of the 6 cards, and it then turns into its own play button (to save up space).

The effects could be something like
Crowns: Grants the user a Seal they don’t already have
Cups: Places a Regen on all partymembers within range.
Rings: Decreases damage all partymembers within range take.
Knives: Decreases the user’s cast time by 1.5 seconds.
Staves: Damages all enemies with in range
Irons: Increase the Critical Hit of all partymembers within range.

With these effects, I took inspiration from the old Major Arcana effects that these cards share elements with:
- Crowns is lightning and Spire, giving you a resource.
- Cups is water and Ewer, refreshing HP instead of MP (ASTs don’t really need another MP-regen at the moment but if it does later down the road, this could be changed to that)
- Rings is earth and Bole, reducing damage.
- Knives is wind and Arrow, increasing your speed by reducing your cast time.
-Staves is fire and Balance, doing damage instead of buffing it.
-Irons is ice and Spear, increasing critical hit rate.

With a change like this, I feel it will bring back the charm of the old Draw mechanic while the current Draw can still shine as being stronger in a more direct way and being more controllable and usable in all situations.

[Marxam]

Change minor arcana to place a card on the field face up as an aoe bubble. Lady of crowns is a HoT. Lord of crowns is a dot.

[elioaiko]

While I'm here for cards in general getting interesting mechanics behind them.

But I personally don't think it'll happen or people will complain about it being unreliable. The devs have been ridding AST of that gambler aspect because it simply doesn't benefit the player consistently.

Current Minor Arcana is only fluff but otherwise unreliable, same with original buffs.

Personally I'd rather Lady to be an AoE heal and Lord to be a ST heal so at the very least, it'll be worth using because there's no damage attached to it.

In a different timeline, original AST would have the same Royal Road aspect expanded and feels like a high risk, high reward healer but alas, that is simply not the case.

[rewd]

While I'm here for cards in general getting interesting mechanics behind them.

But I personally don't think it'll happen or people will complain about it being unreliable. The devs have been ridding AST of that gambler aspect because it simply doesn't benefit the player consistently.

Current Minor Arcana is only fluff but otherwise unreliable, same with original buffs.

Personally I'd rather Lady to be an AoE heal and Lord to be a ST heal so at the very least, it'll be worth using because there's no damage attached to it.

In a different timeline, original AST would have the same Royal Road aspect expanded and feels like a high risk, high reward healer but alas, that is simply not the case.

The devs didn't get rid of the old system because it was unreliable, they did because they made the mistake of putting DPS boosts and utility on the same system. In a game where DPS is all that matters, this is a death sentence.

Current Minor Arcana is worth using because it has damage attached to it. Yours suggestion would kill the current system and would make it similar to WHM's old lilies, that is useless. It would be beneficial to not even put MA on your hotbars in order to reduce bloat and APM. AST doesn't need more oGCD healing (RNG healing on top of it) and ST healing is already trivial so new Lord would be even worse than current Lady.

As for OP's suggestion: I'm all for diversity in cards, but this is just current MA with extra steps, but actually worse. Irons is the best card and as such the one you'd want to get. Getting other cards would suck and would ruin one of the good things the devs did with the rework, that is making AST's party DPS buffs consistent.

We can have cards with different effects, as long none of them are DPS boosts.

[Silver-Strider]

As long as AST's card systems are tied to damage, you'll be hard pressed to make them into anything unique; The majority aren't going to wants to give up damage for defensive utility/resources and with SE following that philosophy by making all cards into Balance, trying to make MA into a more convoluted version of the old card system will simply never happen since you're essentially turning the 1/2 chance of getting Lord of Crown for a Damage Gain into a 1/3 chance of getting Staves/Iron for the DPS boost instead as the other effects simply aren't desired. So, here's what I would do.

We revert cards back into their own thing but Draw will only ever give you Balance/Arrow/Spear. Balance is changed into a D.Hit buff instead of a Flat damage buff to keep it in line with Arrow and Spear. Let Divination be the Flat Damage buff.
Minor Arcana will give Bole/Ewer/Spire and be changed to a 30s CD just like Draw. Spire will give a buff to healing effects since TP is no longer a thing.
This way, we don't run into the issue of Defensive Utility being inferior to the Damage utility since they're 2 different mechanics now.

From there, we would just need to address the Seal System. Since Cards are what offer Seals, having 2 systems that grants cards would speed up the rate we acquire seals so we'd need to either limit Draw/Minor Arcana to only 1 offering seals or just remove the Seal Mechanic entirely. Personally, I'm of the mindset that they're useless and can be abolished. We could make Astrodyne just be a 120s CD for AST that gives them all the buffs it currently provides with no RNG involved. The DPS gain from this is minor enough that it wouldn't really change much on AST other than make it more consistent in terms of raid alignment. As for Lord and Lady of Crowns, would they really need either? Astrodyne being made into a consistent DPS buff and Minor Arcana providing a plethora of utility, would an RNG Damage/Heal ability really be needed considering the rest of the tools in their arsenal? I don't think so but I'm sure someone will disagree, like it matters since SE doesn't really check the English Forums anyway.

[elioaiko]

In the end, like you said, as long as cards are tied to damage, utility comes second because damage buffing your party is the only card that matters.

Hell, you can ask any DPS what the cards do and they'll likely say, "Idk, don't they make you stronger?"

Personally I think AST's biggest issue rn is the lack of cohesive systems for their kit.

The devs want to getting three seals not punishing, so they seperated Divination.

Minor Arcana is fluff for either damage or healing which is problematic because you either get one when the other is needed/preferred.

You draw cards and use them to fuel Astrodyne which is just a small bonus for self-buffing? It makes no sense, AST buffs the party, they sacrifice their own dps for buffing others.

The thing is, that NONE of these things work together and that's what is currently making AST fee disjointed and hard to keep track of.

The only two things that are connected are Astrodyne and Seals. Naturally you get seals for using cards and in turn give you seals to activate Astrodyne. That's it.

Divination is no longer fueled by seals and cards.

Minor Arcana used to make filler cards into buff cards that didn't mess up your seals.

Drag ShB the card system from ShB all you want, but at least it flowed. You draw cards, throw them on dps, get three seals or use Sleeve Draw to guarantee that last seal and then Divination is ready. Pop Divination and start working on your next one, throwing undesirable seals into buffs that didn't affect seals.

There was a working flow. But now, it's just three different timers to watch and it's easy to forget one.

The devs want RNG but actively try to reduce it. In the end, the whole card aspect is being reduced into just set and forget.

[rewd]

There was a working flow. But now, it's just three different timers to watch and it's easy to forget one.

I agree that the systems should be more cohesive between each other and most importantly more interesting, but this shouldn't be a problem as it all works on a 30/60/120 seconds timer (or just 60/120, based on card plays). It's pretty much automatic.

[ForteNightshade]

The effects could be something like
Crowns: Grants the user a Seal they don’t already have
Cups: Places a Regen on all partymembers within range.
Rings: Decreases damage all partymembers within range take.
Knives: Decreases the user’s cast time by 1.5 seconds.
Staves: Damages all enemies with in range
Irons: Increase the Critical Hit of all partymembers within range.

The problem with the old card system is what I just highlighted. Once damage is attached to any one of the cards, the rest become instantly invalidated. Per your example, Irons is objectively better than every other option because it increases party damage. The rest are various degrees of insignificant to downright detrimental.

Crowns: Three seal Astrodyne is negligible at best; so much so, Astros are advised to not bother even trying for it.
Cups: The absolute last thing Astro needs is even more healing. It arguably has the best overall healing kit in the game.
Rings: Between the sheer volume of mitigation jobs have nowadays, this is completely worthless. Tanks, Ranger and Healers all have a 10% damage reduction.
Knives: Randomly changing the GCD of other jobs would be horrendously detrimental. A sudden 1.5 GCD on say, Dragoon, would completely ruin their whole rotation. You'd be unable to weave any of your jumps or even go into Nastrond without massive clipping.
Staves: Relatively fine in theory but worthless because it will never beat a full party wide crit buff.

And therein lies why you've recreated Balance > everything else. A system like this simply can't exist in such a damage centric game.

[Leonerdo]

The devs want to getting three seals not punishing, so they seperated Divination.

Minor Arcana is fluff for either damage or healing which is problematic because you either get one when the other is needed/preferred.

You draw cards and use them to fuel Astrodyne which is just a small bonus for self-buffing? It makes no sense, AST buffs the party, they sacrifice their own dps for buffing others.

The thing is, that NONE of these things work together and that's what is currently making AST fee disjointed and hard to keep track of.

The only two things that are connected are Astrodyne and Seals. Naturally you get seals for using cards and in turn give you seals to activate Astrodyne. That's it.

Divination is no longer fueled by seals and cards.

Minor Arcana used to make filler cards into buff cards that didn't mess up your seals.

Drag ShB the card system from ShB all you want, but at least it flowed. You draw cards, throw them on dps, get three seals or use Sleeve Draw to guarantee that last seal and then Divination is ready. Pop Divination and start working on your next one, throwing undesirable seals into buffs that didn't affect seals.

There was a working flow. But now, it's just three different timers to watch and it's easy to forget one.

The devs want RNG but actively try to reduce it. In the end, the whole card aspect is being reduced into just set and forget.

Yep this is basically why I dropped AST coming into Endwalker. I don't even care that much about the thematic cohesion, but it doesn't flow well, and they swung the pendulum back towards RNG after 5.0 and 5.3 removed it.

It's just a lot of buttons to press and a lot of timers to keep track of for the sake of tiny RNG damage gains. Astrodyne is pitiful, so Redraw is almost a complete waste of time. Minor Arcana is only useful 55% of the time (90% of the time Lady just goes to overheal). Ideally you should be cramming so much shit into 2-minute burst phases that you need Lightspeed for it, so it sucks when you use Lightspeed for movement. The buffs to Earthly Star are nice, but it's so strong now that everything else feels weak in comparison.

I mean... I like that there's a lot of optimization you can do. It's still an interesting class. But the only buttons that feel satisfying on their own are Divination, Earthly Star, and some of the heals.

I used to like AST for the card system and the 1.5s cast time, but neither are benefits anymore.

[elioaiko]

.I used to like AST for the card system and the 1.5s cast time, but neither are benefits anymore.

I'm just so tired of the devs constantly changing how the card system works because they can't ever decide if they want to make it a huge focal point or just a divided mess.

ShB 5.3 AST wasn't perfect, but it sure as hell had flow. Divination being seperated from cards feels so bad. Like the satisfaction of Divination is getting the right cards and using it when the buffs lined up.

Even in SB AST, it felt good to mess with cards for the best outcome possible because shuffling cards for the correct one to enable an AoE buff was satisfying and was a nice pay off. Now it's just 1,2,3 systems that don't have interact with each other.

I think instead of reading the community and summing up AST's problems as "not fun" or RNG is too much, they should have just improved what they had before rather than reinvent the wheel every time. The card system now feels like the worst I've ever dealt with on AST.

Before people made the argument that AST felt very disjointed and high APM and hoped the devs would fix it. They didn't and even made things worse. The only thing they did right was forcing Diurnal on AST since being a dual stance healer limited it's kit so much.

My thing is, why are Astrodyne and cards here? Cards don't do anything for Divination, and Astrodyne is meaningless. Astrodyne should have been an added effect for AST, something you got passively for rolling the right cards. Now it's just used to give the right buffs instead of seal alignment.

Had they kept ShB system, add on Astrodyne as a reward for keeping correctly lining seals on AST with the 1st buff being a flat AoE MP recovery, 2nd spell speed increase for all casters, 3rd being a DPS increase for a random DPS.