For AST, why not both card systems?...

[Seraphor]

I don’t think the old Bole and Ewer would work well in any kind of ‘hybrid system’. In fact even before any changes were revealed, many people were suggesting making all the cards DPS cards to give some kind of stability to the system.
Core healer toolkits shouldn’t be tied to an RNG gimmick.



So my suggestion would be something as follows:

Balance: 8/4% DHit for Melee/Ranged, generates a Solar Seal.
Bole: 8/4% DHit for Ranged/Melee, generates a Solar Seal.

Arrow: 8/4% Speed for Melee/Ranged, generates a Lunar Seal.
Spire: 8/4% Speed for Ranged/Melee, generates a Lunar Seal.

Spear: 8/4% Crit for Melee/Ranged, generates a Celestial Seal.
Ewer: 8/4% Crit for Ranged/Melee, generates a Celestial Seal.

This would make your choices even more impactful than they used to be. For example, Crit being best on a Bard or a Monk, would now be split into two cards. (although not so impactful now with Bard changes)

Minor Arcana would keep the same Ranged/Melee pattern as it currently does, but it would convert the buff into a pure 8/4% Damage buff, so this would be the new Balance.

The Seals would be more impactful too.
Instead of just getting different values of damage up, each seal would carry its effect.

Solar = DHit
Lunar = Speed
Celestial = Crit

Each seal would equate to a 5% buff for its respective effect, but be reduced with duplicates.

For example if you had one of each, then the party would get the following three buffs at once.
Solar = 5% DHit
Lunar = 5% Speed
Celestial = 5% Crit
Total = 15% cumulative buffs

If you had two different seals as below, then the duplicate would be reduced.
1 Solar = 5% DHit
2 Lunar = 4% Speed x2 = 8% Speed
Total = 13% cumulative buffs

And three identical seals would be reduced again:
3 Lunar = 3% Speed x 3 = 9% Speed
Total = 9% cumulative buffs

In this system, you’re still encouraged to get three different Seals for the maximum effect.
However, if you happen to have a party that benefits more from Speed, say a SAM and a BLM, then you’ll end up using more Arrows and Spires, and in turn generate more lunar Seals, meaning if you do end up with the 2/3 identical seals as above, that extra Speed bonus will be more effective and not as much a detriment.



The only glaring issue still here, is that Crit and Speed aren’t the easiest buffs to balance.
Crit scales exponentially across the life of an expansion.
Speed is downright detrimental to some jobs.
This is probably why they were removed to begin with.