How will 7.0 make jobs even more dumbed down?

[Supersnow845]

The ShB cards and by extension these we have now are much less interesting than their previous iteration. When you had royal road and varying card effects that had varying efficacy on different jobs, decisions making and situational awareness were required and added a lot of fun and interaction with the job and the cards had a noticeable difference if used correctly and even more so if used well. Now it's all just the same flat % damage increase, and I do absolutely believe if they keep them they will change it so that every card gives every person the same % increase, so all you are doing is fishing for seals instead of even having to think about who gets what.

That’s why I said “(though boring)” and “I don’t like the modern card design”

I know how the old cards worked and I liked them better

I’m simply saying that EW AST train wreck of a design is not actually caused by a flaw in the modern card design (as boring and uninspired as it is), I’m saying it was cause by decisions they made going into EW

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't expect it, but would not be surprised if AST has cards deleted. It has caused them nothing but trouble and they seem to have no idea how to make them fall into the strict balance they have insisted on. You go back to the older system and people complain they aren't getting balance the whole time, and you keep it in the new system and it's an almost imperceptible increase in damage and the astrodyne and divination abilities are just plain disappointing.

Again, the issue was not just Balance, it was AOE Balance. It wasn't that 'oh Balance gives 10% damage up for 15s, vs Bole giving 0% damage', it was 'AOE Balance is literally current Brotherhood/Mug/Embolden, and Bole is not'. The main factor in why the cards could not be balanced back then is because of the AOE potential. If they had removed Royal Road and added Divination for that predictable AOE raidbuff they really want, they'd have noticed that actually, it's pretty easy to balance cards against each other when they're single target

If they remove cards/simplify them more because they can't work out how to balance them, then there's zero hope for healer design in general. It'd show that, rather than put any effort into fixing an issue, they'd rather just remove the pain point completely, fun/aesthetic/identity/etc be damned. And that's just going to lead to where we are going with certain other jobs right now, sterile, bland, flavorless, they 'work', they are 'functional' but they have no soul

[Shurrikhan]

Again, the issue was not just Balance, it was AOE Balance.

Empower total value in 8-mans: 150%
Extend total value in 8-mans: 200%
Expand total value in 8-mans: 400%

Extend's effective value is slightly lower than that due to synergy with the damage after the initial 15s being so much lower in the context of having 2 charges (to use only on per-minute bursts), but Expand's is true to form. It was the only viable choice for most cards.

All they needed to do to make each card viable was to increase Empower to +75%, Extend to +125% (else two raw cards would be better in most cases than either Extended), and to have the duration, too, and for Expand to double the potency and duration but then split that among all available targets (with a cap of the original duration and potency), such that their nominal values would be 175%|225%|200%, and their in-practice value basically equal, for all content with 2+ players.

[Shurrikhan]

While the cards did remove the opportunity cost for less than immediate use of cards, I don't feel like it actually hit our skill expression that much, as we now have to target recipient's burst windows, specifically/always (after first card per instance), instead of using cards on CD.

Similarly, there'd be a reduction in skill ceiling but not much in complexity if we were to always see the next Card in advance, since it's just mean you have up to 30 seconds to remember who the best recipient would be rather than just having it memorized in advance. It'd be a loss to cognitive load required for optimal play, but not a loss to nuance in itself.

Just food for thought.

Somewhat related: Things that would make it easier to track recipient actions/sync (such as by showing their last instant action, too, rather than just casts, and perhaps even allowing one to track particular CDs) would likewise reduce cognitive load but, in doing so, would make optimization more accessible to enough players that it would likely seem to increase the in-practice complexity of what actions that change would affect.

[Aaros]

Again, the issue was not just Balance, it was AOE Balance. It wasn't that 'oh Balance gives 10% damage up for 15s, vs Bole giving 0% damage', it was 'AOE Balance is literally current Brotherhood/Mug/Embolden, and Bole is not'. The main factor in why the cards could not be balanced back then is because of the AOE potential. If they had removed Royal Road and added Divination for that predictable AOE raidbuff they really want, they'd have noticed that actually, it's pretty easy to balance cards against each other when they're single target

If they remove cards/simplify them more because they can't work out how to balance them, then there's zero hope for healer design in general. It'd show that, rather than put any effort into fixing an issue, they'd rather just remove the pain point completely, fun/aesthetic/identity/etc be damned. And that's just going to lead to where we are going with certain other jobs right now, sterile, bland, flavorless, they 'work', they are 'functional' but they have no soul

One of the fun parts of old AST is dealing with RNG in the most optimal manner though. A huge thing with AST is to maximize the chances of getting 2-min AoE Balance while also maximizing the damage otherwise outside of 2-min windows. There are real snap decisions you'd need to make, like whether you should use AoE Spear at 3:00 with a held Balance and gamble on whether you'll get Spire or Ewer in time for 4:00. (The answer to that depends on composition especially the number of 3-min buffs you have like DRG).