Solution to Astrologian problem

[Connor]

Isn’t the whole ‘cards can’t be rng because FISHING’ completely irrelevant now because that’s exactly why Divination exists?

Even if they removed Balance completely it wouldn’t make a major difference because it’s Divination most of the rDPS comes from, right?

So realistically if they made Astrologian cards rng based again its overall contribution would be…pretty much exactly the same as it is now anyway. Because, funnily enough, ancillary defensive buffs aren’t considered a worthwhile ‘contribution’ to the community lol. Only damage is, and Astrologian’s damage output wouldn’t be significantly affected by a slightly reduced frequency of Balance, so what would be the problem?

[elioaiko]

I'm against making cards GCD because fitting them inbetween casts is what makes them fun.

Also the people who are saying that DT AST is proof SB AST wasn't ideal is mistaken. It's not just the effects that made them feel good to use. It's how it interacted with your kit, something current AST has completely detached from the cards.

For one, Royal Road was a fun minigame and vastly superior to whatever we have now. Being able to extend, enhance or spread the effects with what you had was a fun game you'd think about as you got cards.

Being able to make do with what you had was the challenge. But it kept you engaged to keep pulling for cards and deciding if waiting for the next one will be worth it or using the one you have now.

Not to mention the dopamine hit of Sleeve Draw.

On top of the royal effects, you also had Time Dilation which can extend durations of said buffs (even AST regens) on a single target. Then you had OG Celestial Opposition that extended the WHOLE parties AST buffs.

This is what made SB fun to me at least. It interacted with your entire kit in a way to where 1 spam/nuke didn't really feel dull because every run with the cards were never the same.

Sure it was inconsistent as hell when it came to raid buffs, but keep in mind that raid buffs weren't always strictly 2 min windows back then.

On top of that, utility in FFXIV is all but reduced to nothing. No aggro management, no assistance abilities outside of defensive CDs, and no real synergy between jobs.

No job with utilities is gonna feel good bc the combat design lacks meaningful ways of engaging the player that isn't just a dps timer.

Until we get some real depth back in the combat, whatever poor excuse the devs has for why AST isn't in a good place will not fly.

At first I liked the cards having utility back but then I saw the effects and that they're all ST with no ways of manipulate them, and my hopes went right back down..

[BabyYoda]

Cards as utility is the dumbest thing I ever seen

[Valence]

Minor Arcana is not comparable in the slightest with the major arcana deck in the HW/SB system. Minor Arcana had no way to manage bad hands, while the Major Arcana did.

[Sylvain]

Minor Arcana is not comparable in the slightest with the major arcana deck in the HW/SB system. Minor Arcana had no way to manage bad hands, while the Major Arcana did.

So?

Does it invalidate the premis?

We say that AST should be about managing the RNG element. But on the other hand, we don't use unwanted RNG element because we learn to deal without them. (So the Lady for the minor arcana).

Let's take SB cards, which many consider to be the paramount of best of the design but instead let's swap the 3 DPS cards for 3 support effect, like HoT, Heal Receive and Shield let say.
Would you still consider the system to be a good system?
Because which effect you get is random, you cannot plan around. So you'd need a healing strategy which does not involve any specific card draw.

The only reason SB cards worked was because there would always be one useful option and since we were doing 1 draw every 30s with the ability to store reroll royal-road the odds of getting a "DPS Spread" card was decently high.
But all the supportive aspect of cards was mostly useless.

Really imagine SB with only supportive effects on cards. It would have turned to "Throw wathever AoE buff you get here to help healing". But perhaps we would have actually been dealing with cards this way trying to make the most out of them instead of just throwing anything that wasn't serving the AoE+Balance combo.

[Supersnow845]

So?

Does it invalidate the premis?

We say that AST should be about managing the RNG element. But on the other hand, we don't use unwanted RNG element because we learn to deal without them. (So the Lady for the minor arcana).

Let's take SB cards, which many consider to be the paramount of best of the design but instead let's swap the 3 DPS cards for 3 support effect, like HoT, Heal Receive and Shield let say.
Would you still consider the system to be a good system?
Because which effect you get is random, you cannot plan around. So you'd need a healing strategy which does not involve any specific card draw.

The only reason SB cards worked was because there would always be one useful option and since we were doing 1 draw every 30s with the ability to store reroll royal-road the odds of getting a "DPS Spread" card was decently high.
But all the supportive aspect of cards was mostly useless.

Really imagine SB with only supportive effects on cards. It would have turned to "Throw wathever AoE buff you get here to help healing". But perhaps we would have actually been dealing with cards this way trying to make the most out of them instead of just throwing anything that wasn't serving the AoE+Balance combo.

And that’s that point, it worked because 3 cards were DPS cards (depending on who you gave them to)

Removing the damage options and giving 6 support cards when you can’t plan around any of them I agree would make the SB system useless………but that’s basically exactly what we have now. All of the cards are useless except the DPS cards. You can plan around them but you don’t need them in the first place so planning around them is pointless

The SB system worked because the goal was DPS but if a situation arose where a card you didn’t plan around came up at the right time it could be used, but if it wasn’t needed you could protect against the bad RNG. Old Bole generally you’d redraw it or minor arcana it, but if you set up a spread with royal road hoping for a balance but bole came up at the right time you could spread bole to great effect. Modern bole you can plan around but you never need it in the first place so it’s just useless fluff

Playing to RNG didn’t mean “always use the card you got” it meant “all cards but balance and spear are in service to balance and spear in an optimal scenario but there was a large degree of optimisation in controlling which bad luck protection you used on each card and if you randomly were presented with a scenario in which a card you would have burned for balance or spear you can instead apply as the card it currently is”

[Carighan]

Removing the damage options and giving 6 support cards when you can’t plan around any of them I agree would make the SB system useless………but that’s basically exactly what we have now. All of the cards are useless except the DPS cards. You can plan around them but you don’t need them in the first place so planning around them is pointless

But that's precisely the point, not having "oh lucky!" and "you lose, better luck next time" randomness, instead have equivalent randomness.

Like with the current system, a cool thing would be if the draw were random Astral or Umbral. It'd be equivalent though because you'd get that damage card either way, you just don't know which one (and with Astrodyne removed it's a minor personal difference wether you get 2 Lords vs 0 Lords, that might be acceptable).

Could you do a thing where you isntead get 13567777 redraws and "go fix it", SB-AST style having to work around bad luck? Sure, but it's also pointless, you're going to mitigate your bad luck anyways (everything else is utterly suboptimal), so why have the randomness saddle you with either having to do that or not, but the outcome is the same anyways (you mitigated and now have a decent albeit often not perfect option)?

Like, if the other choice (not mitigating your bad luck) was meaningful, we'd have a winner. But good luck actually doing that. It can work, but not in a vacuum. Like, you could have it so that you essentially get infinite Redraw on random card draws, but in return each Redraw costs 1000MP more than the previous one (and first one is free). But unless you update other jobs to suddenly have to worry about their mana in meaningful ways, that's just a pure nerf to AST unless you make it so thatr AST is stronger ot offset this (which makes us OP when lucky, the whole reason the system was de-randomized).

[BabyYoda]

After futher testing on the job I feel like we have many less important skills with the kit.

like 5% defense increase? why??? it doesn't feel rewarding.

also adding that damage buffs doesn't feel impactful enough, I don't see numbers and I don't see how much that buff is done to X party member.

[Rithy255]

I feel like the Issue with stormblood cards wasn't the RNG nor was it having utility cards, it was that damage buff cards and utility cards were mixed together in the same system.

Almost like they could have made minor arcana your damage buff system of rng cards (where you still get a ranged or melee card), they could have also done more with this, then theirs the utility cards, the reason why they feel flat and uninteresting is because the effects feel really boring like woo 10% mit, also the fact theirs no RNG element of trying to fit that card into everything else (you usually just put defensive/healing cards on tank)


I think if they rework ast again they should.
1. Minor arcana becomes your damage buff cards
2. Draw becomes support/utility cards, these are random again with 6 different effects.
3. a cooldown that will Spread your current drawn Support/utility card on a longer cooldown

Maybe then astro cards would actually feel interesting and unique to astro, though I miss having pure or barrier stance on astro even more personally, but likely will have to wait for the 5th healer (if they do one) to get that back lol.

[miraidensetsu]

For me, to solve AST problem it's just a matter of bringing back card RNG and the Time Mage aspects.