Astrologian: what is your understanding about it?

[Supersnow845]

Someone doing half your damage is still going to do more damage if you give them a card. And more dps = faster clear.

Yeah giving a chain rezzing red mage a mana card is nice but let's be real with ourselves. That rarely happens, and it still relies on you nailing the 1/6 chance of drawing it. I just as often meet red mages that don't even have verraise on their bar. With dps cards, I can at least put it on someone doing some semblance of damage. But hey, if you like having abilities that you just burn for mana and basically nothing else, why not play sage?

I really think you are missing a big chunk of the perception of power of a class, it’s why the current cards are so bad. Because you can’t feel anything from them, utility gives you an immediate and powerful feeling response when you get it right

I’d rather once in a while use a newer perfectly over perusing FF logs to tell me my cards meant we killed the boss 2.8 seconds faster

AST’s entire power fantasy is hot garbage at the moment and if I want buttons for mana that are pointless I’ll press astroydyne

[Kissune]

utility gives you an immediate and powerful feeling response when you get it right

Do you think minor arcana is a well designed, and fun ability? Because I don't. Because the thing is, here's my perception of what the 'power' of RNG utility would be. When I get it right, I don't feel power or anything. I feel relief that I wasn't fucked over. Because RNG utility cannot be planned around. It means I have to walk into a fight and play in one of two ways. I either need to

A. Play as if I never draw the right card for any situation, and always make sure that I can cover any single damage and healing scenario as if I never draw a card in the first place. What does that mean for the cards then? Well, they're... there. They don't do anything, bc either the fight is designed in such a way that you can take care of all the healing and mitigation required of you without relying on cards bc you can't be sure you'll get the right one for the given scenario... orrrr you'll just have to accept that you will just lose some pulls due to bad utility RNG. And dying bc I didn't draw a mit card does not, in fact, make me feel powerful.

B. Or I forgo any idea of having any kind of consistent mitigation plan, just say fuck it we ball, use what I have and treat every single pull like blind prog bc I have to deal with every instance of damage with some whatever random tool I pulled out of my ass and just accept that sometimes RNG will just kill us. It's an immediate and powerful response for sure when you die by 5k damage bc you drew the mana regen card instead of a 10% mit.

Having RNG utility would go against the rest of AST's kit fantasy anyways, considering how much their abilities are based around preparation and knowledge of the fight in advance. They're a fortune teller, not a gacha machine. I'd much rather have DPS cards that I know are having an effect, even if I can't see it, bc like... Are you just saying you hate the concept of raidbuffs in general? Why even have party buffs if you can't see it, right? How is a card any different in terms of immediate response in comparison to... literally any other raidbuff. Yeah, I think dyne kinda sucks but at the very least it gives you a reward for playing your cards right. Your reward for having good RNG now is more damage. Your reward for good RNG with utility cards is not dying. Take a guess what the punishments for bad RNG are.

[Supersnow845]

Do you think minor arcana is a well designed, and fun ability? Because I don't. Because the thing is, here's my perception of what the 'power' of RNG utility would be. When I get it right, I don't feel power or anything. I feel relief that I wasn't fucked over. Because RNG utility cannot be planned around. It means I have to walk into a fight and play in one of two ways. I either need to

A. Play as if I never draw the right card for any situation, and always make sure that I can cover any single damage and healing scenario as if I never draw a card in the first place. What does that mean for the cards then? Well, they're... there. They don't do anything, bc either the fight is designed in such a way that you can take care of all the healing and mitigation required of you without relying on cards bc you can't be sure you'll get the right one for the given scenario... orrrr you'll just have to accept that you will just lose some pulls due to bad utility RNG. And dying bc I didn't draw a mit card does not, in fact, make me feel powerful.

B. Or I forgo any idea of having any kind of consistent mitigation plan, just say fuck it we ball, use what I have and treat every single pull like blind prog bc I have to deal with every instance of damage with some whatever random tool I pulled out of my ass and just accept that sometimes RNG will just kill us. It's an immediate and powerful response for sure when you die by 5k damage bc you drew the mana regen card instead of a 10% mit.

Having RNG utility would go against the rest of AST's kit fantasy anyways, considering how much their abilities are based around preparation and knowledge of the fight in advance. They're a fortune teller, not a gacha machine. I'd much rather have DPS cards that I know are having an effect, even if I can't see it, bc like... Are you just saying you hate the concept of raidbuffs in general? Why even have party buffs if you can't see it, right? How is a card any different in terms of immediate response in comparison to... literally any other raidbuff. Yeah, I think dyne kinda sucks but at the very least it gives you a reward for playing your cards right. Your reward for having good RNG now is more damage. Your reward for good RNG with utility cards is not dying. Take a guess what the punishments for bad RNG are.

I’ve specifically mentioned I said the cards should be non healing/mitigation based

[Kissune]

I’ve specifically mentioned I said the cards should be non healing/mitigation based

Then what should they be? A bunch of buffs that are just kinda 'nice to have' but don't even really do much? I'd rather have damage cards that require me to think and react to who I put them on than a bunch of buffs that don't really doing anything particularly amazing and be completely unreliable. Bc at least the damage I feel like I'm actually helping and timing things properly than just tossing out mediocre buttons that everyone plays around not getting anyways. You turn cards from 'an essential part of the kit' to a 'grab bag of random conveniences' and I think I greatly prefer the former.

EDIT: Well I got rate limited. Oh well <3 G'night, fun discussion.

[Supersnow845]

Then what should they be? A bunch of buffs that are just kinda 'nice to have' but don't even really do much? I'd rather have damage cards that require me to think and react to who I put them on than a bunch of buffs that don't really doing anything particularly amazing and be completely unreliable. Bc at least the damage I feel like I'm actually helping and timing things properly than just tossing out mediocre buttons that everyone plays around not getting anyways. You turn cards from 'an essential part of the kit' to a 'grab bag of random conveniences' and I think I greatly prefer the former.

Do you even read the posts you reply to, in the first comment I offered 5 seperate suggestions, if you don’t like that idea that’s a different story but I’m just offering my input on AST considering the damage cards feel completely garbage to me

[Aravell]

But my issue is that RNG mitigation can't be relied upon

I think I wasn't clear, I don't mean RNG mitigation as in The Bole, I meant RNG mitigation as in mitigating the RNG and being more in control of the situation.

But what if you never draw a good card?

How often does this happen to be a concern?

But then the optimal play is to always flip, and since you couldn't predict which of the 3 utility cards you'd draw, you couldn't add it to your mit plan anyways. Even if you intend to use the bole, what if you don't draw it? It's always better to just spit out dps.

Optimal play is always going to depend on the situation. If your cohealer just raised and a heal check is coming up soon, are you going to play that damage card or flip it for mitigation? That was the fun of old AST for me, can I use this card or do I redraw?

The problem with RNG utility is that there are 3 other healers in the game they need to balance fights around, and having one that isn't able to call its kit when it needs it means that it is the only healer that can just wipe a party from a raidwide through sheer bad luck alone.

You're assuming that the card utility will be balanced around, it wasn't back in HW/SB, it wouldnt be if they diversified cards. While old cards were entirely RNG, nothing was balanced around it, it was all a bonus. That's why you burn through fights so much faster if the AST was stupidly lucky with spread Balance.

[rawker]

I want the 4.05 HW card effects back. I may not be able to play SB and ShB but that Spear Card. Probably 3 more ogcds manipulating the cards:
1. Transform the currently held to the other of the same sign.. Let me explain.. Bole and Balance, both give Solar sign. If I drew Bole, I can use this oGCD and it will transform to Balance.
2. An oGCDd that never repeats the same sign, depending on the recently drawn card's sign. Using example 1, when I use this ability, the next draw will either draw a card coming from Lunar (Arrow/Ewer) or Celestial(Spire/Spear) sign.
3. Royal Road. Allow us to also manipulate its effects

The above will make it easier to get 3 unique signs. Not 100% but i'm quite sure the odds will be greatly increased.

[Raikai]

I'm all for diversified card effects again, but they would have to be very cautious whether or not adding SkS/SpS into the equation. Extra speed used to be a mild annoyance for some jobs back in the day, but today it would be extra egregious if it causes your actions to mis-align from the 2 minute meta.

[rawker]

Scrap the 2-minute meta.

[Raikai]

Scrap the 2-minute meta.

I wish. I actually love Speed stats, because it's the only stat that actually visibly changes your gameplay. I feel that if they weren't so obssessed with this 2min meta, the jobs in general could have more interesting designs because ultimately everything is just <insert obligatory job gimmick> + resource hoarding for the meta + actions with recast times that need to be aligned to the meta.

But so far (even from reddit vague datamined information from the Benchmark) everything indicates they'll just double down on the 2min burst windows with Dawntrail, so I'm not really hopeful it's going to be scrapped or even changed. I'm more optimistic if they manage to make the 'not 2 min burst windows' more engaging.