Ast Cards

[Carighan]

the cards effects seem fine, really its the lack of randomness that makes it boring.
Really think they should of just have a double draw on a 30 second timer one for dps one for utility and had them randomised, static cards are just incredibly boring.

Kinda agree? I mean I would like some randomness, but not with how the current draw mechanism is aligned around the 120s burst window. To get something like that, I'd like the following system (that also frees up a hotbar slots!):

- Every 15s, I automatically draw a single card. This restored 5% mana. No manual draw at all.
- The order of the 4 slots is random within each minute, but they will overwrite if I am still holding a card the moment it re-draws. Meaning that if in minute #1 I draw Spear on the fourth draw, I can 15s later in theory get Balance drawn on the first draw of minute #2, so no stacking cards for burst windows at all any more.
- Cards still draw from the Astral set in odd minutes and Umbral set in even minutes. No randomness in cards drawn or on what slot.
- However, the randomness comes from the draw-order, and hence the inability to predict when a slot will be refilled respectively overwritten.

Visually, add a moving effect to the outer ring of our UI element akin to the glean on the White Mage UI. Every time it moves all the way across (15s) a card is drawn. Every 4 draws the color of the glean swaps to indicate whether it will be drawing Umbral or Astral cards.

This would be both reliable (each "slot" has a predetermined effect that'll go into it next) and random (you don't know when said predetermined effect will be available exactly). One big upside of this is also that it frees up a hotbar slot, as no manual draws are needed at all!

[Ramiee]

snip.

Id prefer if the decks didn't exist and it was instead just separated into damage buff and utility. Drawing automatically is fine but even and odd minutes is still too linear, in the end you'll still just be putting all your utility cards on the tank 90% of the time, at least not knowing what utility card you'll get will make it more interesting. if anything at most to appeal to the people who want the linearity I'd have the ability to hold a card for one minute or so in a separate slot and use it later, so if you have a card you want to use for an upcoming mechanic you can.
Most of AST is planning ahead and predicting what's coming up the EW cards were boring in their effects but they were useful in making it engaging because it made you have to adapt your planning around it, with the current utility cards if they were random the same effect would happen but with more variables.

[Katish]

-snip-

A bit of a nuance here, is that you healing potentially 0 is you still healing potentially 0.
There are other factors to consider: right usage of essential dignity (time your heals correctly), the tank healing themself, damage dealers contributing to the heal, your other healer (people forget there is another healer in the party also looking for optimal time to heal)

The card becomes nothing but bloat if you look at it in that perspective, you should not be rewarded for mistiming your oGCD (and there honestly should only be the one on single target else the new one is redundant). Even the three charges of ED is kind of overkill but at least it's not a new button or meaningless (I guess?). But yeah, numbers are not everything.

[Carighan]

The card becomes nothing but bloat if you look at it in that perspective

I don't see how this follows. I mean yeah, but that goes for every just-healing oGCD. While is why Essential Dignity is slightly weaker than the new shield and the HoT card, instant heals are better OHSH*T-buttons but overall more prone to hitting right after someone else already healed the target, an element shields and HoTs naturally avoid to a degree.

[Katish]

I don't see how this follows. I mean yeah, but that goes for every just-healing oGCD. While is why Essential Dignity is slightly weaker than the new shield and the HoT card, instant heals are better OHSH*T-buttons but overall more prone to hitting right after someone else already healed the target, an element shields and HoTs naturally avoid to a degree.

Healing should used when needed, ed isn't an oh-sh button it's a button you use when you see the tank low, I wouldn't liken it to benediction which has a much wider wiggle room (as your true oh crap, hence why it has the one charge [even then it has its use case as not an o-shi button, look at the tanks to M4S using invuln]). ED was designed to be used as needed, if you are wasting it when the tank has a lot of hp, then you need to start digging into GcD (that is by design). You should be looking when the optimal time to use it would be, otherwise stay consistent on timing your heals with cohealers. ED is all you need to cover the tank falling to low hp (not oh-craps amount of hp)...and you should be using it, again as "is".

In savage, you really want to start timing when the optimal time to use your heal is...and no heal should feel redundant (but this game is kind of flawed in that regard).
These new cards I have removed from my bar, and clear savage fine on AST without burdening my cohealer. [They really aren't needed]

[Carighan]

In savage, you really want to start timing when the optimal time to use your heal is...and no heal should feel redundant (but this game is kind of flawed in that regard).
These new cards I have removed from my bar, and clear savage fine on AST without burdening my cohealer. [They really aren't needed]

Well by that logic we got no basis to compare, granted. I think I get it now. Because you're right, we need neither those cards nor ED. And we absolutely do not need to optimize ED. As unlike EX1 which was promising when I first got into it, the savage raids follow the tired old paradigm of virtually 0 damage for 20-60 seconds and then a large hit you pour a few timers and oGCDs into. Meh.

But to be fair, that does not make the cards worse. If they would simply ramp up the damage intake of groups - in particular non-tank, single-target, randomly-targetted damage - massively then we would still need to know which of our heals are better or worse.

[Katish]

Well by that logic we got no basis to compare, granted. I think I get it now. Because you're right, we need neither those cards nor ED. And we absolutely do not need to optimize ED. As unlike EX1 which was promising when I first got into it, the savage raids follow the tired old paradigm of virtually 0 damage for 20-60 seconds and then a large hit you pour a few timers and oGCDs into. Meh.

But to be fair, that does not make the cards worse. If they would simply ramp up the damage intake of groups - in particular non-tank, single-target, randomly-targetted damage - massively then we would still need to know which of our heals are better or worse.

It does when it takes from a pre-existing job design, there is such thing as adding onto a job to adhere to a player type. But when you change a job to associate that player job with a new player type, the people on that job that liked it prior, now find it a weird zone. I still play AST, but it doesn't feel like the AST I am used to because my bar is basically barren. It's certainly a lot less busier and more similar to dare I say, whm, but is that a good thing? The cards system we had in Endwalker was better in regards to RNG, not amazing mind you, but better than DT imo bc you were busier. Now AST is more aligned to other healers and the malefic breakup is even less so, while it was replaced with heals we don't really need.