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..