Couldn't they just have removed Redraw?

[Brandedblade]

I think you have to make every card have a (minor) damage increase—or no card have one—plus some more-powerful alternate effect which is more varied (and where which is "best" is situational).

As purely hypothetical examples (these would almost certainly not be remotely balanced; I'm throwing them up here off-the-cuff between work meetings):

• Arrow: Gives a +2% damage increase plus an +8% SpS/SkS buff to target for the duration of the card.
• Spear: Gives a +2% damage increase plus an +8% Crit buff to target for the duration of the card.
• Ewer: Gives a +2% damage increase plus halves the MP cost of every cast target makes for the duration of the card.
• Bole: Gives a +2% damage increase plus extends the duration of all timed beneficial status effects on the target (or applied while the card is active) by 20%.
• Spire: Gives a +2% damage increase plus decreases the duration of all timed detrimental status effects on the target (or applied while the card is active) by 20%.
• Balance: 'Locks' a card on the target, allowing a second card to be played on them without overwriting the first.

In this hypothetical, everything (except Balance) has a very small damage boost (so no one card 'wins' by being 'the one with the damage boost'), and there's still variety in what could be played. Bonus: time manipulation shenanigans with Bole and Spire.

your version of Spire could potentially be detrimental. shortening the duration of certain debuffs in refulgence for example would cause more harm then good.

[Packetdancer]

your version of Spire could potentially be detrimental. shortening the duration of certain debuffs in refulgence for example would cause more harm then good.

I mean... yes? And it would be a disastrous mistake to use it when Doom mechanics are in play. But there's plenty of things you can do in-game now that are detrimental uses of theoretically-beneficial actions; I don't actually think that part's necessarily a flaw, per se. And it adds an element of "is this the right time to play this" to things.

However, I know the examples were impractical and wildly unbalanced in general, and even said as much in the post listing them; they were not "these are exactly what the cards should be" but rather off-the-cuff examples of "cards could have a variety of different effects—things like these—and still have a damage increase to ensure no one card is immediately the One True Card like Balance was, and you could even probably come up with a way to restore some time manipulation stuff" which were cooked up in five minutes between meetings at work.

Any actual replacement card effects would need a lot more time, effort, and thought than five minutes of forum post put into their design.

But I do still stand by the general gist, that you could give the cards some variety where different effects would be situationally more or less useful, and where cards that could be extremely useful in one spot might even be downright hazardous in another.