It is true that AST does have an identity around its buffs already, but AST is still subjected to DPSing somewhere in the ballpark of 70%-90% of the time depending on the content, and that's something OGCD buffs can never address since they have no influence on your GCD usage. That's the point I'm trying to address, and while I personally have no issues committing to DPSing as long as the rotation is fun and engaging, I still believe there's a lot of value in having a healer who is designed to invert that dynamic.

Quote Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe View Post
As for the idea, I don't think the 'speed' of the class would necessarily be affected as much as it might sound. 1.5 is pretty fast, it's RPR burst, MCH Hypercharge, etc. I'm going to assume that when you press Reverse, it'd flip all three drawn cards? In which case, I'm wondering if it'd be more 'interesting' to have only one button to play the card, and you throw them out in the order they are drawn. For example, lets say when you draw, you get Bole, Arrow, Spire. But you want Balance, Arrow and Spear. So you'd have to go: Draw, Reverse (Flips Bole), Play Balance, Reverse (because Arrow was flipped to Ewer which you don't want), Play Arrow, Reverse (because you re-flipped back to Spire), Play Spear. It'd be like the Hypercharge weaving. Also, is Celestial Opposition a 60s CD in this? I would assume so but it's not listed anywhere. Minor Arcana would presumably function like a Royal Road of sorts in this case, an OGCD that changes the effect of the next card you play, just that the cards are now Half-GCDs. Could you make Lord/Lady/Knave into an 'additional effect' on the main cards? IE, you MA a Spear, it doesn't change from 'grant crit rate' to 'Knave effect', it does 'grants crit rate' but also you pulse the 'Knave effect' around yourself when you play it? Burning up eg a Spear, because you really need the Mit from the Knave would be very sad, but if it's a 'Dark Arts' kind of addition thing, then it's selfcontained as a choice between 'what do I need, mit, healing, or one Malefic of damage'.

You could also retuned potencies so that the 'loss' of using a not-Lord is lower, eg it could be 150 or even 100 like Energy Drain. Then there's more choice in the matter I think, because using a Lady here (losing you 100p) could save you from having to use a Helios there (losing you a Malefic cast, 250p), stuff like that. In fact, since Lodestars are listed at 150p, and Lord's at 250, you could just remove 'Grants a lodestar' from Lord specifically, that way it totals out to 100p gained vs a different card, as it stands it's a lot worse than Energy Drain vs 'other spender' dilemma because it's 250 from it's own effect plus 150 from the Lodestar, plus it's a 1.5s GCD instead of Malefic's 2.5, so you'd only ever want to use Lords, to the point where it's actually better to purposely Helios heal, if it means using Lord over the other two
In regards to speed, it's also not just a fast GCD phase you're going through regularly as you use regular Draw and Minor Arcana, but also the knowledge requirement to identify the cards you need for offensive bursts and if Reverse is necessary. But as I said, I am not looking to make AST slow, and if I was actually prepping this for release, I would be testing it in engine and making changes to ensure it still felt quick, so I don't want to get too hung up on the speed as it is written.

On the topic of Reverse, it would flip all 3 in the way I have it written, but how you listed is more what I was trying to go for. Having the "you draw 3 cards in an order and either play or reverse them" could work, but it does make it more complicated to use the Lord, Lady, and Knave since there's 3 you swap between. We could just give up on the Knave and leave it as the Lord and the Lady, in which case we just have one singular play action rather than the solar, lunar, and stallar concept, which conserves buttons. Or maybe Reverse just moves them from the order of Knave > Lord > Lady > Knave > Repeat, so you may need to draw, reverse, malefic, reverse, play lord in some instances. There are a couple of consequences here though. It makes the knowledge burden a little heavier since you now need to recognize the order of the cards you've drawn and which ones need to be reversed, but it also reduces the action order down from choosing between three buttons once each down to just pressing one button three times.

On Celestial Opposition, it doesn't have a cooldown and is a GCD action. All it does is spread your buffs which you otherwise can only have 1 of each card per 30 seconds due to needing to reshuffle them, but you could potentially spread all 3 offensive buffs and all 3 defensive buffs every 30 seconds as needed. That's also why I didn't go with Time Dilation because you already have very high buff time (and also I like CI's animation more). We could also just keep CI as an OGCD barrier/heal but if Opposition is going to be card related, I'd like CI to be as well.