An idea of how to improve/change Astral/Umbral Draw:

[-Chrona-]

Title is plain and simple.

AST isn't fun.. We get 2 DPS cards, and 4 "uhh, I guess you can have this one" cards

That being said, I understand that it was very confusing to figure out what card went to whom, and what affected what, etc.(it really wasn't, just read the tooltips...) My suggestion to the devs/idea for the players is thus:

When we use Astral Draw or Umbral Draw, we get a "Balance/Spear" that, no matter if melee or ranged, gets a 3% damage boost.

Additionally, the effect of "Cannot be stacked with "Balance, Spear," can be added to prevent making it too strong and messing up damage output, making a particular class stronger than another because they got 6% damage boost because you threw the card on the SAM, used Umbral Draw, and then reapplied the card again, or in some DF cases, two AST in the same party.

Another idea could be change the effects of the cards to be beneficial to the party. We could change Arrow/Bole to make the next cast cost 0MP, and Ewer/Spire can give an AOE Divine Benison equivalent; just something to reduce some damage incoming.
So using Astral/Umbral Draw would look as such:

• One DPS, non role-specific + 3% damage card
• Next cast costs 0MP
• One AOE 500 potency shield

and depending on whether it's Astral or Umbral, you of course get Lord or Lady.

Admittedly, this doesn't change a whole lot for AST, so that's where the other side of my weird thought process comes in. Instead of party assists, upon execution of Umbral/Astral Draw, you draw 3 damage increase cards, that also do not stack with each other, to allow for disbursement to 3 dps, whether in opener, their personal burst window, or to pad your numbers.

Alternatively, change Lady/Lord to something like "Play IV" that changes the effect to a 10% HP shield for 5 seconds, that when broken applies a healing over time of 200 potency to the party, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 150. The effect will also apply upon expiration of the card, similar to Arcane Crest.

Overall, I feel like AST sounds really cool on paper, and has been something I've on and off enjoyed playing since I first heard about it at HW Fanfest in 2016. That being said, I'm not currently enjoying the experience. As stated before, two (possible) ways to change up the card system would be as such:

• One DPS, non role-specific + 3% damage card
• Next cast costs 0MP
• One AOE 500 potency shield

and depending on whether it's Astral or Umbral, you of course get Lord or Lady.

OR:

• DPS non specific damage card
• DPS non specific damage card
• DPS non specific damage card

and each Astral/Umbral you get an AOE Arcane Crest with a 150 unaspected damage potency

How do others feel about this? Am I out of my mind, and have no idea what I'm talking about, or is it something that sounds good, but executed is just awful? I'd like to hear input on this.

[Supersnow845]

They really have a few avenues they could go down with the cards

1) revert to a slower version of ShB AST where all cards are DPS but it’s RNG which card you get and each card biases a particular role so you have to consider if you want to give a card to that role or redraw it for a different role

2) keep a similar system to now but cut out non card heals that do equivalent things, like if you want spire to be a shield you need to reduce how much we use CI

3) make cards non healing and non damage- ie pure utility

Right now the current card system suffers from being a watered down ShB system shoved full of pointless heal bloat that just mimics the healing we already have too many charges of

[NegativeS]

Right now the current card system suffers from being a watered down ShB system shoved full of pointless heal bloat that just mimics the healing we already have too many charges of

This is my main issue with DT AST, every new card effect bar maybe one is something we already have 2 or more buttons to accomplish, except the cards are just worse versions of them that require way too much preplanning for them to be of any use other than as fire and forget mitigation.

At least in EW, the cards felt like you were being useful beyond healing.

[Carighan]

As with many things, the only reason we think of the 4 defensive cards as so meh is because there is so little pressure on the group.

If we had more damage on both the tank and also the raid, including non-spread damage (say, each autoattack in addition to causing 30k-40k actual HP damage to the tank there's 2x20k damage to random non-tank partymembers) then we'd think much more highly of these cards, as they'd be quite useful oGCDs for assisting with these situations.

The big issue is always less with our kit, but 95%-99% of the kit going unused due to a lack of incoming damage.

[Zaytex]

literally just revert AST to SHB, done, jobs fun and great again.

[Carighan]

literally just revert AST to SHB, done, jobs fun and great again.

Yaaay, not being in any raids. The fun! The joy! The amaze!

[Kissune]

Yaaay, not being in any raids. The fun! The joy! The amaze!

I'd just play AST anyways who gives a shit if it's meta or not. People care so much about so called meta lists. Can it clear the fight? Yes? Good enough. If everyone just played what was the best all the time we wouldn't have every job represented in clears.

I don't care if AST is strong or not. I want it to be fun. It's strong as fuck right now, but it ain't fun.

[FurryFrikker]

Yaaay, not being in any raids. The fun! The joy! The amaze!

Did we play the same tiers? AST was incredibly popular back then, being the 2nd most played job in Promise and 7th most played in Verse overall, but became the 2nd most popular healer after the changes in 5.3.

[Zakuyia]

Give us attack speed and mp regain like back in storm blood

[Kissune]

Give us attack speed and mp regain like back in storm blood

attack speed would be fun, but mp regen is so beyond worthless nowadays. every single caster is mp positive, you'd basically just us an mp regen card as a dps boost for dark knights and that's it. it would be nice in a recovery scenario but i'd rather have a card that isn't only useful when people fuck up