Quote Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas View Post
I appreciate your additional comments, once again, I may be mistaken, however it sounds a lot like AST would become a lot like a bard- which doesn't appeal to me.

By comparison- - I did very much enjoy a support job in another game which had a lot of utility, heals and DPS.
In that job design, it had a number of buffs to pick from that were basically toggles that could be set at any time. That was more effective and enjoyable than tracking and managing when a buff was going to run out. I could concentrate instead on heals and DPS, depending upon the circumstances.
I've explained this build before on these forums, which I mainly say because I don't really mean to sound like a broken record or present this as the "only" or "right" way to build AST or a new support-focused healer, but I think it outlines a really healthy way to create a more support-focused healer who is allowed to forego a lot of their DPS focus. So here's a simple overview of the just the card system in my own personal take on an AST rework:

1. Draw is split into 2 GCD actions: Solar Draw and Lunar Draw. Both have 30 second cooldowns with 2 charges and are independent of one another.
- Solar Draw will randomly pull either The Balance, The Arrow, or The Spear, all offensive buffs.
- Lunar Draw will randomly pull either The Bole, The Ewer, or The Spire, all defensive buffs.
- Only 1 Solar Arcanum and 1 Lunar Arcanum can exist at any given time on a party member. The effects do not activate immediately, but sit on the target until activated with another action.
- Both the act of drawing and playing a card summons 1 Lodestar that orbits around the AST. Up to 6 Lodestars can orbit the AST at a given time.

2. Celestial Opposition and Celestial Intersection are moved to the GCD along with a new action: Celestial River. Each of these has a 60 second cooldown with 2 charges.
- Celestial Opposition is a GCD AoE heal of 200 potency. It additionally generates 1 Lodestar. All allies healed that have Lunar Arcanum on them have the Lunar Arcanum activated. Example: The Bole adds a 10% damage reduction buff on top of the 200 potency heal.
- Celestial River is the same as Celestial Opposition, but triggers all Solar Arcanum. Example: The Balance adds a 5% increased damage dealt buff on top of the 200 potency heal.
- Celestial Intersection is a 400 potency single target heal that activates both Lunar and Solar Arcanum on 1 target and generates a Lodestar.

3. Stargazer is a new OGCD action on a 5 second cooldown that applies 2 stacks of a unique buff to either yourself or another party member. When using a spell or weaponskill, 1 stack is consumed, which causes 1 of the AST's existing Lodestars to attack the first enemy attacked by the buffed party member's action, dealing your current Malefic potency to the first enemy and dealing 50% less damage to nearby enemies.

The main point I'm trying to convey with this concept is that we can potentially create a healer who spends much of their GCD time targeting allies with buffs and healing in place of DPSing. Because the buffs are also not immediate, you aren't creating a healer that's necessarily keeping up lots of buffs constantly, but rather setting up buff windows to activate later. This is just the core of the concept and other tools can be added around it as well, for example, I imagine Horoscope could possibly be reworked to apply a 1 random Lunar Arcanum to the party to set you up for upcoming mechanics in savage. The numbers in this example could also change of course, but again it's really just about communicating the idea of something that allows players who want a healer that can break away from being green DPS.