AST Card draws

I've just came back to the game and decide to give AST a go. I've done some searching and reading on the AST cards premise to try and understand what I am supposed to do with this ability. If I'm understanding correctly. I want to get 3 different symbols so i can use the divination ability and you get those by using Draw (while in combat). If the symbol is one I don't have then I need to use Play on a party member, otherwise Redraw / Undraw. So do you basically want to get the 3 symbols first then save that for boss fight and use the Minor Arcana ability on party members? The simplest concept I've read is blue border cards go on tank/melee dps and red border cards on rng dps. Any clarification this AST ability would really be appreciated.

Once you have access to minor arcana you should never be using undraw, until you get access to sleeve draw pretty much though. Get your 3 symbols via draw and redraw and activate divination early in the boss fight to line up with burst phases. Otherwise though build your 3 seals using play and redraw and until you use divination use minor arcana for the damage buff and to not overwrite your seals.

On the Arcana Gauge, Purple outline on the card signifies ranged/healer DPS cards and green/blue outline on the card is the melee/tank DPS cards.

1. Play the card that benefits the player the most with it. Cards are split into melee and ranged cards.
Tanks and Melee DPS gets Melee Cards.
Healers and Ranged DPS gets ranged Cards.
The instances where you want to give tanks and healers the card is when the DPS does less damage than tanks, DPS is dead, or DPS already has a card. Cards do not stack. If you give a ranged DPS an Ewer, then a Spire, the Spire overwrites the Ewer. This also applies to Minor Arcana - Lady of Crowns can be overwritten by any other cards and that's a nono.

2.Never undraw.
Pre lv 50 - giving a card is still a DPS buff, even if it's 3% for the wrong role or 6% for the right role.
Post lv 50 - you can minor Arcana to change a seal you already have into a buff that gives 4% or 8% without affecting the gauge.

3. Redraw is for seals or for a card to minor arcana when you have full seals.

4. Don't delay your opener with redraw.
This is mainly lv 70+ because sleeve draw gives you 3 more cards to play.
Don't redraw to get the right card, just play all of them as they pop up to get Divination ready as soon as possible. It's worse to delay Divination and mess up with the opener where everyone's rotations get a power spike than to get a perfect Divination where everyone already used their oGCDs.

Draw = 30 seconds recast -> 4 cards can be drawn within 120 seconds.
Divination = 120 seconds. You have 1 free draw if you don't get the seal that can be minor arcana'd.
Sleeve Draw = 180 seconds. Every 3 divination windows have 2 sleeve draws .

The intent is for the cards to be directed to the appropriate role; however, in practice, just throw your cards at whoever is #2 in the party list for hate (or #3 in a full party, if OT is #2).

As of Shadowbringers, no DD has enmity management abilities anymore, so the party list's enmity rankings are accurate for comparing DDs' DPS, and the "right" DD at #3 has to be no more than 2.9% (major arcanum) / 3.8% (minor arcanum) behind the wrong DD at #2 for the "right" DD to be a better choice. Their damage outputs are probably more lopsided than that. If the two DDs are going back and forth between #2 and #3 then yeah, throw it at whoever is the "right" role. But in general, you can save yourself some decisionmaking energy by just throwing it at #2.

In later duties when you have Sleeve Draw, just go down the list: #2, #3, tank, yourself. Or in full party, #3, #4, #5, #6.

Can we talk about new players trying to figure out AST are considering undraw as an option

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Originally Posted by Zolvolt

Can we talk about new players trying to figure out AST are considering undraw as an option

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Square Enix really shouldn't need our discussion to know it's bad. Then again Fluid Aura has been a WHM skill with decreasing benefits since the games inception so maybe we should have a hearty chat about skills that are just useless and even detrimental in the case of Undraw.