Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

[Connor]

Even putting the randomness of cards aside can we talk about how borderline-useless and pointless they all feel? They’re (mostly) all just copies of pre-existing abilities

- Bole is just Exaltation but worse (no heal)
- Ewer is just Aspected Benefic with no gcd (on a job replete with powerful regens lol)
- Spire is just Celestial Intersection with no charges
- Arrow is a ‘unique’ effect, but given how many insane-strength heals Astrologian can pull off, I find it to be usually the card I can rarely ever justify actually using. I guess it’s good for making meme shields with a Scholar in a coordinated party lol, but also seems like a fairly ‘niche usage’ in general content.

I’d have been willing to forgive the complete overhaul of the card mechanics if the new version was even remotely interesting. But most of the time it’s basically just, use damage card, wait 60 seconds, cycle to Umbral set, use damage card. There’s really no ‘excitement’ to it at all in my opinion.

Some random shower thoughts on how they could be made more interesting:
- Bole could act like a Minicosmos and compile damage up to a certain potency heal. Alternatively it could increase the target’s max HP like Protraction. Some means of effective mitigation that can differentiate it from Exaltation
- Ewer as a healing card could go a few different ways. One (drastic) thing I’d suggest is returning it to an MP restore. Even if it just gave 2500 MP that’d still be enough for an extra raise, so it’d at least have some niche usage in like early progression content lol. And while MP management is already non-existent, that’s kind of why I think a MP restore could pass in the first place. MP can be managed to never run out anyway, so it wouldn’t majorly affect balance if Astrologian could throw out MP crutches lol. I think lol
- Arrow I think could actually be fairly interesting as a healing card. I’d suggest making it a spell speed / gcd increase. While it would cause issues with dps jobs, healers generally don’t have cool-down alignments to worry about anyway. And we already have Presence of Mind which works fine on White Mage. A gcd speed increase would also have double benefit for healers since it could be leveraged for either more healing or more dps. Alternatively I think making it a single target movement speed increase could kinda fit into a ‘healing card’; avoiding an aoe is the ultimate form of mitigation after all lol. Though that veers more towards ‘defensive’
- Spire I think could go a few ways. It could work like [Pan]haima and apply C amount of weak shields for its duration as opposed to just one (still weak) one. Either that or it could act like Ifrit-Egi’s old Radiant Shield and reflect a portion of the damage dealt back to the attacker, or deal damage of X potency to attacker for balancing. Maybe it still has a weak shield and the damage reflection only applies while the shield is active?

That’s just my thoughts on Astrologian’s cards. Not only have they removed a core aspect of the mechanic (rng), but they’ve replaced it with a system that just entirely worse in every way (in my opinion)

[Carighan]

No the bigger thing especially seeing how even before the cards Astro is a job filled with too many abilities doing too little or doing the same thing 3-4 times would be to massively buff the 4 non-damage cards (and the two lords), and then remove other abilities and rebalance the cards based on the 120s-ish CD they now have. For improved usability keep them slightly weaker but make the draw a 30s CD (and rebalance the damage cards). Draws still alternate of course.

We have too many buttons that ultimately do the same thing in too many similar ways. Cards are cool, they're thematic, but they currently have to exist on top of the kit, instead of being the kit.

[Connor]

No the bigger thing especially seeing how even before the cards Astro is a job filled with too many abilities doing too little or doing the same thing 3-4 times would be to massively buff the 4 non-damage cards (and the two lords), and then remove other abilities and rebalance the cards based on the 120s-ish CD they now have. For improved usability keep them slightly weaker but make the draw a 30s CD (and rebalance the damage cards). Draws still alternate of course.

We have too many buttons that ultimately do the same thing in too many similar ways. Cards are cool, they're thematic, but they currently have to exist on top of the kit, instead of being the kit.

I’d argue cards were the ‘kit’ up until around Shadowbringers. Between things like Time Dilation, Celestial Opposition, Royal Road, Sleeve Draw, Minor Arcana, its toolkit was largely built around supporting the party with cards. Hell, when they released it they gave it lower potency on all GCD healing compared to White Mages and Scholars because the cards were intended to be central mechanic distinguishing it from the others (it was very much not well received lol). It’s only in recent expansions that the cards have become almost entirely a ‘side-piece’ to the healing (or current expansion where they’re cannibalised by it and mostly turned into standard healing cool-down clones instead of [something interesting]).

Maybe it’s because I use controller but personally I don’t think Astrologian has ‘too many’ abilities at all. Though maybe that’s because I still remember Heavensward where every spell upgrade was an entirely separate action lol (I.E Bio I and Bio II were two separate buttons). I can definitely agree that the amount of ‘ability clones’ is too high, but I wouldn’t say ‘the overall amount of abilities’ is also too high. In my view.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I maintain the opinion that the biggest issue with old pre-ShB AST cards was the fact you have the choice to AoE-fy your cards. If swingy rDPS was their main concern, then that should've been the only part they axe out instead of turning all cards into Balance and give us free boring AoE Balance in form of Divination.

[Carighan]

And even that could be balanced if the +damage cards weren't "Hey, you do 10% more damage now", but "Every spell or weaponskill deals 200 potency more damage", and then the AoE version is simply that divided by the number of people hit.

But to be fair, I don't think back when the cards were supposed to be the kit that they were the kit. I mean they kinda were, but more by necessity, not by aspiration. The rest of the kit was weak, you had to involve the cards. But what the cards were was mostly a gamble-mechanic where there were a number of "perfect" results for the situation and a whole slew of "wrong!"-results that required extra abilities to remedy and ideally fish for the perfect result instead. That's ... not exactly a kit. There's no reason to be variable with it, after a few months were the best results were known and you wanted those.

I think one big issue is that +damage is in there. Maybe that just ought to go. Really really strong healing and heal-modifying and other stuff cards, semi-random, but that's it.

Say each draw we draw four cards. One is AoE, 3 are single-target, as now. Which of two sets (Astral/Umbral, fine!) we get is random.

The cards roughly fulfill four functions:

* Heal-augmenting. In Astral, the next 8 times a heal hits a partymember (so can be 1 group heal!), it causes a HoT effect that is based on our stats, that stacks if multiple heals hit the same target. Independent of who we use the card on, could be a dancer, could be us, anyone. In Umbral, it's always self-cast, for a few seconds our HoT effects also cause shields with each tick (but direct heals do not!).
* Protecting. In Astral, a 10s buff on a single target that causes healing to be stronger on them. If they take damage, this is stored. When the effect ends, the stored damage is projected as healing in a radius, healing everyone but that target. In Umbral, target takes less damage. Each instance of damage they take causes a stacking damage-reduction on everyone else.
* Direct effect, single. In Astral, it's a very long-lasting HoT (60s or so, far longer than the new draw CD). Healing is overall extremely high, but per-tick is average-ish. In Umbral, it deals high direct damage to a target, but is a GCD (but instant and more damage than Malefic) as you Gambit-style throw the card at the enemy.
* Direct effect, AoE. In Astral, it's a small direct AoE heal + a moderate AoE HoT. In Umbral, it's wide-radius AoE damage.

And in return some frankly bloaty effects like our tankbuff or Neutral Sect or so can be removed, and the draw-CD lowered to compensate. The idea being that "many" of our oGCDs would be just using the four cards before the next draw, so we want way less oGCDs in the rest of our kit than we have now.

That way the cards can be a meaningful part of our kit (they're very strong and on short CDs after all!) while also keeping it raid-balance (no +damage from cards at all) while also having some randomness (the supportive/healing Astral vs the selfish/damage Umbral).

For an extra fancy version, re-implement a sort-a-ish Royal Road, but adapted to this idea: You do an instant "extra" draw. It'll always be the opposite of the one you are holding right now (say you got Astral, you'll get Umbral with this). The old draw is saved, so you can use the extra draw then each card slot immediately re-slots the previously set-aside drawn card as the new one is used up. Leading to a potential 8 cards in rapid-fire use.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

My personal suggestion remains relatively the same to the one I eek out probably last year. The main idea is to keep the old elements of RNG and the tools to control them. The following also rewards AST's knowledge over other jobs' gameplay. For that, I borrow largely an inspiration from StB era:

• Draw makes their return. Recast is at 20s. MP restoration is at 5% per draw. All cards gives a primary, -fixed- 4% damage buff and a secondary effect (potencies are mostly for placeholder) for 15s to targeted party members:

  1. Balance = increases physical damage by 10%.
  2. Spear = increases critical damage by 20%.
  3. Arrow = haste+20% and movement speed up (peloton speed).
  4. Spire = increases magical damage by 10%.
  5. Ewer = MP Regen (total 2,500 MP) and reduce MP expenditure by 30%.
  6. Bole = damage taken reduced by 10% & reflect 50% damage taken back at their attacker.

• Royal Road makes a return with slightly tweaked conditions:

  Royal Road (Recast: 15s)
  Consumes currently drawn arcanum to empower the next card play.
  Consuming Balance, Spear, or Arrow changes "Play" action into "Astral Play", increasing the potency of next card played by 50%.
  Consuming Bole, Ewer, or Spire changes "Play" action into "Umbral Play", doubling the next card's duration.

  Note that when Royal Road is used, those secondary effects are the only part that the next Astral/Umbral Play affects. Umbral Play effects are straightforward. They just extend all the base secondary buff into 30s. Meanwhile, the Astral Play effects:

  1. Balance = increases physical damage by 15%.
  2. Spear = increases critical damage by 30%.
  3. Arrow = haste+30% and movement speed up (sprint speed).
  4. Spire = increases magical damage by 15%.
  5. Ewer = MP Regen (total 3,750 MP) and reduce MP expenditure by 45%.
  6. Bole = damage taken reduced by 15% & reflect 75% damage taken back at their attacker.

• Spread makes a return with slightly tweaked property:

  Spread (Recast: 30s)
  Add the currently drawn arcanum to your spread where it is kept indefinitely until played normally through the re-execution of the action, or by executing Minor Arcana. Recast timer begins once the card is played. Spread Play cannot be affected by Royal Road effects.

• Playing ANY card for yourself triggers Astrodyne, restoring an additional 5% MP, grants 10% haste for 15s, and deals damage to surrounding enemies in 10y radius centered on AST but at random potency of damage ranging from 70p to 320p. Astrodyne cannot be affected by Royal Road effects.
  
• Minor Arcana is tweaked (although frankly I prefer to just remove it in favor of adding redraw charges):

  Minor Arcana (Recast: 50s)
  Plays an arcanum that's kept separately in your spread for different result.
  Playing Balance, Spear, or Arrow triggers Lord of Crown, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 250 to all nearby enemies within 20y radius.
  Playing Bole, Ewer, or Spire triggers Lady of Crown, restoring own HP and the HP of all nearby party members with a cure potency of 400 within 20y radius.
  

These changes would also not affect today's AST hotbar count:

• Astral-Umbral Draw = Draw.
• Minor Arcana = Minor Arcana.
• Play I to III will all become Play/Astral-Umbral Play, Royal Road, and Spread.

If the the existence of these tweaks makes AST too powerful in rDPS front, I personally don't care if Divination also has to go to have these. But that's just me.

EDIT: the thought of readding Redraw back as a charged action to fish for the one card you're looking for is tempting but if I'm going to wish for that back, I'd like to remove at least 1 button from elsewhere. The ones that comes to mind are either Minor Arcana, Divination, or Neutral Sect but atp I'm already peering too far from the main topic so I'll stop here.

[Carighan]

[LIST][*]Draw makes their return. Recast is at 20s. MP restoration is at 5% per draw. All cards gives a primary, -fixed- 4% damage buff and a secondary effect (potencies are mostly for placeholder) for 15s to targeted party members:

1. Balance = increases physical damage by 10%.
2. Spear = increases critical damage by 20%.
3. Arrow = haste+20% and movement speed up (peloton speed).
4. Spire = increases magical damage by 10%.
5. Ewer = MP Regen (total 2,500 MP) and reduce MP expenditure by 30%.
6. Bole = damage taken reduced by 10% & reflect 50% damage taken back at their attacker.

There'd be no way to balance this, tbh. I see two immediate problems:

1. Some effects deal raid-relevant damge (like +20% crit, +10% damage or reflecting damage back). +20% haste is a downside for virtually all jobs OTOH and an active nerf to their damage in most cases as rotations misalign for later. MP regen is entirely unneeded and might as well be a "You lose" -draw.
2. The damage-reflection is hopefully capped? Otherwise that's the default card to random-or-reset for, using a Warrior or Dark Knight to let them take obscene damage and survive, reflecting 50% (or 75%!) back.

I mean I get what you're going for, all of these deal strong damage output so that's one of way of balancing them, but sadly these just would not balance. Assuming the damage reflection is capped (if not it auto-wins all raid competitions), +20% crit damage would probably win in particular in later parts of the expansion it'd be a huge boon. Meanwhile when still leveling, the +10% damage stuff would be better. However, your setup where phys and magical is split also means some jobs (e.g. Red Mage) are inherently unwanted as buff targets, I don't think DPS players like that a lot. >.>

I dunno, it reads cool, but it also kinda exemplifies why this system was removed, tbh. Modern MMO players decry 3%-5% imbalances in damage output, nevermind what they'd do with something as inherently unbalanced&unbalancable as this.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Snip[...]

1. Like I've described before, IMHO the old potential to spread the cards was the culprit for extremely swingy rDPS that they provide. That was what makes their potential almost impossible to balance. How were you going to balance a potential 5% damage buff AoE per minute against all the other they provide through the use of Royal Road? Henceforth Divination was made to ensure an AST always have access to reliable AoE buff while RR and anything related to that was removed. Single targets effect are easier to control. I also mentioned that the potencies are mostly placeholder. I've given them the 'idea' of what each card could do, the potency tweaking to ensure each cards remains competitive to one another is up to them.

2. I think you're overestimating how much 20% critical damage buff could provide. It just means the card will increase the damage if you critical at all, which would goad the AST to throw them only at jobs they know whose nukes would auto-crits, or more willing to if their comp consists crit buffer like SCH, DRG, and DNC, which would also still make it less beneficial to keep playing Spear anywhere that’s not raidbuff window because the lower odds to score critical hits.

3. Personally I don't see Ewer as a "you lose"-draw. You can either (1)Redraw to fish other; (2)Spread them either to prepare MA or as a 'death insurance' for yourself or co-healer; (3)Throw that onto BLM or DRK, if you have them; or (4)Royal Road them. That's a lot of ways to mitigate the RNG in case you don't want XYZ card.

4. ... and neither Arrow. I'm fairly sure only BLM and Healers who are neutral or benefits from the haste today. Arrow’s bigger issue in the old times was how extended haste would cause some physical jobs to run dry of TP. The faster GCD itself was no issue as people would just resync themselves (oh hey, another form of skill expression forgotten). Now that we no longer have TP, I see no issue on readding this back.

5. Yeah yeah, I know. There's always the 'optimal outcome' depending on what comp the AST ends up with, and they obviously want XYZ card all the time over the rest in the deck. But here's what reads very odd to me: imagine complaining RNG on an RNG based job. One big takeaway from what I could learn from old AST was the fact their entire card system was not 100% mandatory. Why? SE can’t possibly make me believe that their idea of ‘balanced potential’ was to make AST requiring to get X amount of AoE balance spread or the raid group would flop. If I have to pick between ShB/EW/DT cards + Divination or the interplay between spread, royal road, so on, I will gladly take the latter.

I still blame SE that they caved in to their inability to parse the whys of peoples' complaint over the job due to their incompetence (draw getting 8% mp recovery in 5.3 for instance. But that’s too tangential & I will not discuss that in this thread) then ends up stripping job flavors to the point of what we're seeing in today's iteration. Feedbacks are useful if they can parse them, and I personally don't see them succeeding in doing that.

[Carighan]

The problem is not with RNG, it's if the randomness provides a simple "good" vs "bad", despite heterogenous options.

Other MMOs have long explored this. It's a solved system. It's done. The results are known.

You can have purely-positive RNG systems. These are called procs. You would ideally want 100% of procs (assuming the proc is positive, very rarely the opposite was done of course). The system won't let you. In the past, these did cause issues, because their chance could swing so widely and there was a significantly (10%-25%) difference between being "lucky" and "unlucky" on your procs.
This is a solved problem, and can be done in one of three ways. The bad one, trivialize the proc. One lame but working one, make the proc very common and the proc-chance-giving effect so frequent that you always overflow in procs. And finally what ended up being the most workable solution, "fudge" the proc. It's a PPM system with a strong normalization, meaning you can never be lucky or unlucky for long.

Or alternatively you can have effect-vs-other-effect randomness like your cards, but to handle this you remove the central power gain from the effect itself. Since everything is about damage in FFXIV, you remove damage (note: Yes, that's exactly one of the interim solutions the devs had for a while, it's where Divination originally came from).
The better-vs-worse can exist for say, healing. You can draw a healing dud, but hey, healing is secondary anyways to damage so it hardly matters. You can't draw a damage win vs a damage dud, only a healing win vs a healing dud or say you get a movement bonus effect instead of an extra heal, etc. Again something that was already done by other games (and to a degree here), again something shown to work, again something shown to solve the issue.

These issues have already been solved. The reason the devs don't use other game's solutions is of course difficult to truly know, but they did do a few steps of the second approach, before scrapping it entirely with Dawntrail now. And on the first approach, we have a few jobs with procs, but none that is proc-centric, so it's difficult to know whether the devs would be willing to embrace fudged-PPM mechanics. They're generally one of the best solutions to complex or RNG-centric class design in MMORPGs, but aso far everything has to be static due to the encounter design so again, impossible to know. It's hardly useful to deal in potentialities of going back to a 6-8 years old design paradigm that is >10 years old in other games and has been years-since-it-was-scrapped in every game. There's a reason they have all scrapped it.

Personally I don't see Ewer as a "you lose"-draw. You can either (1)Redraw to fish other;[...]

Sounds like you consider it a "you lose"-draw, if I'm being honest. And as above, you lose draws can work, but only if the win-vs-lose is not of a primary nature. As in, the win is not "damage".

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Not quite. I consider "not interacting with the system" as the true "you lose" situation, which was what I believe to be the baseline that SE thought of when they first create the HW/StB cards: assumes the AST in party do not or interact with the system so poorly they do not get AoE Balance at all. Otherwise they wouldn't be trying to get people to populate AST by comically buffing AoE Balance from 5% AoE to a bloody 20% AoE even when they were already comparable to WHM in performance by 3.2/3.3.

I prefer to have a multiple outcomes within a broad sliding scale rather than just "you played correctly/you played incorrectly".