AST Cards are boring

[Raikai]

I really, really love AST, I've been maining it since I started in SB until now, and I love the way it heals compared to other healers.

But I really miss cards having a bit more depth. I get that they are the way they are now because back then you only fished for the same two cards, but all the cards doing the same thing now just feels like a thing to keep me busy, instead of a cool personal mechanic of the job.

I hope they can find a balance between practical and fun, because in the current iteration I still get RNG screwed anyway, so it may as well be more entertaining.

In a game like XIV, sadly, the option that gives more damage will always be preferred.

I don't see how they can add multiple different effects once more with this.. Unless they add utility as a secondary effect. E.g. the Bole gives damage and mitigation. The Arrow gives damage and movement speed, etc.

And even in the utility front, there's only so much that can be added. The big downside with XIV's 'on leash' encounter design is that there's very little room for player expression outside of the choreographed stuff.

[INovemI]

Feel free to roast me if this is a bad idea (or has already been tried and failed), as I'm fairly new to the job and have never quite reached endgame but am experiencing some of the same boredom with the current card system as I level, but what would be cool to me and I think would fix the issue the old system had (only wanting to draw the same cards over and over again) while preserving the convenience of the current system (plugging the card into the appropriate ally) is to allow the Astro to add effects to the card before they're played. Maybe it would be too complicated and add too much button bloat, but keeping the class reliable while also spicing up the cards a bit seems like something that would satisfy both sides. Plus I think there are ways without adding individual cooldowns for each effect to your bar, like by having skill usage dictate which effects get added to cards (like if you just used a DPS skill, you could buff your ally's damage or - if you used an AOE - freecast an AOE at the target's location as you deploy the card). Maybe this wouldn't fix the problem with the cards you draw not feeling distinct though, so perhaps the cards could be used to enhance the skills instead? Like if you draw Arrow, you increase the range of the next skill you cast and make it automatically crit or if you draw Spire it automatically makes the next single target skill you cast into an AOE.

Maybe I'm just dreaming though, I think it would be cool for Astro to be a class that excels based on adapting to whatever it gets and using that effectively, rather than seeking out any specific outcome or having certain outcomes be "bad" regardless of your play (with redraw being there to help in situations where you draw something which is inappropriate).

[IceBlueNinja]

So I dont play smn and asked my friend about the searing light buff since I did not know what it did and she told me its a 3% damage buff for the entire party lasting 30 seconds. That is so crazy lol ast cards really are a joke and clown fest. Dps and a handful of them at that giving full party buffs but ast must single scroll with snooze fest cards nice job SE.