Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

[Zolvolt]

EDIT: also saying 'you have no logs for any expansion besides Endwalker' as some sort of gotcha is pretty rich coming from someone with no logs in anything lmao. For all I know you haven't done a single fight in your life, and I know from your gear that you didn't touch AST in t3 either, so don't try and pull that card.

Difference between you and me is I used your lack of logs to better understand your view. That its coming from someone who has only played ast in endwalker. You used logs to belittle and beat people down and call them liars and trolls. You also volunteered your logs in a post. Nobody else has done that. You opened yourself up to that scrutiny. I'm not replying to the rest of your post because you've shown that you argue in bad faith. You've come in whip up a storm and ignore everyone else. You're not a person worth engaging with on here.

[ty_taurus]

I see a lot of passionate back and forth with AST, so I want to share my thoughts overall as well, because I honestly have a lot of feelings with some being positive and others more negative.

Let me start by saying that I am more happy to see the return of utility cards than I feel for anything else, but I think my final thoughts will be greatly influenced by learning what these cards actually do and how these cooldowns actually coexist. Because I think you're supposed to get both the offensive draw and utility draw per minute. And I don't think any of the utility cards will be a heal other than the Lady, because she's already an AOE heal. I guess they could try and get away with Ewer being a regen or something, but I at least hope that Lady is the only actual healing card still. Watch me be horribly wrong though, but that's exactly why I think the end result is going to be massively impactful to how good or bad this ends up being. Like, if we take MP restoration of general card use and make Ewer an MP card again meant to replace that, I think that would be really cool. Because then you could potentially pass that MP regen off to your cohealer if you don't need it.

As for the topic of RNG, I'm mixed. I feel like utility cards will never be able to thrive on a fully RNG system. Even if they were to make the old system, everyone is just going to crap on the utility cards for not being reliable again, including many people that are currently arguing against the removal of RNG. I've just seen how there is no winning with RNG sustain cards. The loss of utility cards sucks. The return of an RNG healing card sucks. The return of utility cards without RNG sucks. I don't know how to create a card system that avoids those three statements, and I have sat down to think about it many times over the last few years.

The best I can think of is this new system, but instead of being able to pick and choose which card you want to use, you have to use them in order, and Redraw is reworked into a tool that reorders your cards? So you still either draw a hand of offensive cards or a hand of utility cards, but you have to play around with what order you have. But I don't feel confident that that would appeal to the players complaining here either.

[Aravell]

I've been thinking about how to fix the card system as well, but the best idea I can think of is marrying the utility and damage cards or separating them. One thing I know for sure though, is that the system could be a lot more creative than what they gave for DT. Here's a draft of how I would do a card system that allows thinking and optimisation:

Balance: 10% damage dealt up, 10% damage received down [ Straightforward, can use on anyone]
Bole: 20% damage received down, adds a portion of active mitigation and defensive stats into damage [The tank card]
Arrow: Increased autoattack speed and causes all autoattacks to hit twice [Best on jobs that already autoattack fast]
Spear: Increase crit rate by 15%, whenever a weaponskill/spell is used, apply a stack of Fury, Fury becomes Retribution at 3 stacks, Retribution causes the next weaponskill/spell to echo for 50% potency [Best on SAM when they use Meikyo or on PLD that's just starting their Blades combo]
Spire: Lasts 30s, increases move speed and allows every weaponskill/spell to grant 1 stack, every stack increases damage dealt by 2% to a maximum of 20% [Best used 15s before raid buffs so they have full ramp up in buffs]
Ewer: Restores 2000MP, every spell now costs 50% more but is 20% more potent (includes healing spells) [Basically usable on any caster except a BLM]

With that, you have a card system that has plenty of thought required to optimise fully while also having a diverse range of effects without having any cards that's just straight up useless. Also allows you to place cards on more than just the DPS jobs.

[ty_taurus]

I've been thinking about how to fix the card system as well, but the best idea I can think of is marrying the utility and damage cards or separating them. One thing I know for sure though, is that the system could be a lot more creative than what they gave for DT. Here's a draft of how I would do a card system that allows thinking and optimisation:

Balance: 10% damage dealt up, 10% damage received down [ Straightforward, can use on anyone]
Bole: 20% damage received down, adds a portion of active mitigation and defensive stats into damage [The tank card]
Arrow: Increased autoattack speed and causes all autoattacks to hit twice [Best on jobs that already autoattack fast]
Spear: Increase crit rate by 15%, whenever a weaponskill/spell is used, apply a stack of Fury, Fury becomes Retribution at 3 stacks, Retribution causes the next weaponskill/spell to echo for 50% potency [Best on SAM when they use Meikyo or on PLD that's just starting their Blades combo]
Spire: Lasts 30s, increases move speed and allows every weaponskill/spell to grant 1 stack, every stack increases damage dealt by 2% to a maximum of 20% [Best used 15s before raid buffs so they have full ramp up in buffs]
Ewer: Restores 2000MP, every spell now costs 50% more but is 20% more potent (includes healing spells) [Basically usable on any caster except a BLM]

With that, you have a card system that has plenty of thought required to optimise fully while also having a diverse range of effects without having any cards that's just straight up useless. Also allows you to place cards on more than just the DPS jobs.

I've seen the merging idea as well, but I hate it, and the reason is because the utility is an after thought. Balance, in your example, doesn't go on the tank about to eat a tank buster. It goes on the Samurai because damage. The utility ends up becoming more window dressing than anything else.

What I was thinking for the card effects, going off what the trailer has established, would be the following:

Balance: 6% damage increase
Arrow: 9% critical hit rate increase
Spire: 12% critical damage increase

Bole: 15% damage reduction
Spear: Receives 30% HP restoration from single target healing actions (Synastry is removed)
Ewer: Discipline of Magic - 60 potency MP regeneration; Discipline of War - 120 potency HP regeneration

All cards last 15 seconds.

Lord of Crowns: Deals damage with a potency of 500 for the first enemy and 50% less for all other enemies.
Lady of Crowns: Restore HP with a potency of 500 to self and nearby party members.

In addition to this, Celestial Opposition would be partially reverted to look like this:
Stun nearby enemies for 4 seconds. Extends the effects of The Bole, The Spear, or The Ewer on self to all nearby party members. - 120 second cooldown.

[Aravell]

I've seen the merging idea as well, but I hate it, and the reason is because the utility is an after thought. Balance, in your example, doesn't go on the tank about to eat a tank buster. It goes on the Samurai because damage. The utility ends up becoming more window dressing than anything else.

That would depend on the player, I would absolutely put the Balance card on a tank if they're low and don't have defensives available. The option is there to use it for either purpose, you can even dump the Ewer on a DRK that doesn't have enough MP for a TBN even when the other effect is entirely worthless on them.

The aim of my proposed cards is to give both sides something they'd enjoy. For me, I can use the utility portion to make the impact I desire, which is what I want from the job. For the side who enjoys damage optimisation, they get more to think about because the way the damage boost happens is different for every card and every job would utilise it differently.

I think what most AST players hate about the card system is when the outcome they want is unreachable. SE chose to remove the RNG and hand us everything directly for free to fix it. I propose to marry the two sides of damage optimisation and impactful utility with benefits to both sides.

[ty_taurus]

That would depend on the player, I would absolutely put the Balance card on a tank if they're low and don't have defensives available. The option is there to use it for either purpose, you can even dump the Ewer on a DRK that doesn't have enough MP for a TBN even when the other effect is entirely worthless on them.

The aim of my proposed cards is to give both sides something they'd enjoy. For me, I can use the utility portion to make the impact I desire, which is what I want from the job. For the side who enjoys damage optimisation, they get more to think about because the way the damage boost happens is different for every card and every job would utilise it differently.

I think what most AST players hate about the card system is when the outcome they want is unreachable. SE chose to remove the RNG and hand us everything directly for free to fix it. I propose to marry the two sides of damage optimisation and impactful utility with benefits to both sides.

I would prefer that the choice to use things like what you're describing still be the most numerically advantageous way of playing those cards. I am perfectly fine with certain choices between things like offense and recovery, like how Energy Drain is (or moreso before it was nerfed into the dirt). But while it provides a lot of options for the player who's comfortable playing more casually and not concerning themselves over optimization, it punishes the person who wants to optimize. But why? Why can't we have both the opportunity to use cards for utilitarian purposes at the times when they are most useful, and that still be the optimal choice? Or at least, using the cards for their utility is an optimal decision, but as for when and where you use that... That's another story.