Solution to Astrologian problem

[Sylvain]

Except AST didn’t “didnt work” when you drew the wrong card because its entire minigame was around mitigation and playing around the RNG you got, if you were relying on drawing something in particular for a particular mechanic then you were playing AST wrong,

I mean.. sure but on the other hand, can we really say that "every draw but this one is useless" makes for an intertaining gameplay?

I agree that relying on something random for a specific mechanic would mean playing AST wrong. But because if I can't rely on a random utility then when it occurs its just useless because I learned to deal without it.

Lady vs King is a good example of the Lady being systematically useless because you'd simply learn to deal with a mechanic without it. It was also too weak to replace a gcd heal if you were doing one most of the time.
So in any scenario the heal from the lady would be wasted.

So if planning around a random event is wrong, but because the event is random I don't use it, the system might as well simply not exist because it serves no purpose. Wether I would draw a lady had 0 impact on performances.

If playing AST was about dealing with whatever random option the cards would offer you, than old AST was imo a failure because it didn't achieve that. You didn't deal with whatever the card would offer you, you would just do your best to mitigate the RNG to reach your goal which was to get more dps cards. Which resulted in 6 copy carbon cards for two expansions.

And while it was fun to throw a bunch of cards every 2 mins and you'd never really knew who would get the cards (and boy was it an exciting moment every 2 minutes when some players would litterally be purring hoping to get a card because I'd draw 3melee in a row or 2 range or whatever)

From all the flaw the new card system may have, this isn't one. No matter how useless you believe the cards to be, you can plan around them and use them.
Sure they are no longer proper cards per say. They're not random, they're just cycling buff/heal on a 1min cd. But I don't see that as worse than a system with 6 random buff from which 5 will be ignored.

The card system has never achieved what you portrayed as correctly playing AST, "dealing with the RNG". In SB we never dealt with it, we just waited to get what we wanted. And then we just threw whatever was available in ShB/EW because they were all the same anyway and the gain from having 3 seals over 2 was just.. "there" I guess.

So again, not saying the new system is amazing or anything but I really don't see the old one as especially better. I don't see fishing for an AoE balance more intertaining than fishing for 3 seals over no rng. Unless you're very into fishes.