AST changes for 6.0: Let's forget 5.0 happened, and just fix what was wrong with 4.0

[Seraphor]

It was the ability to HOLD a card for use, that was the cornerstone to being able to choose WHEN to use those "random" cards for specific moments in a fight. There were so many capabilities taken away from AST, it's difficult to explain how much was lost when 5.0 came out, to people who never played AST as main, or to its fuller capacity before Shadowbringers.

I played, and to some degree mained AST in SB (in the sense that I played each role more or less evenly and AST was my main healer)

Holding a card was necessary when the cards all did different things and you had to juggle Royal Road effects, it's not necessary in this new system.

But holding a card wasn't the problem, it was how the different effects of cards clashed and conflicted with each other.
Having a significant mitigation skill tied to RNG that you shared with your dps was always a poor design choice, even if you didn't accept it back then.

When it comes to balancing healer kits, it's not something that works, because you can't account for this skill being available.
It's like saying Celestial Intersection or Divine Benison or... Emergency Tactics, has no effect 50% of the time. It's not a skill you can rely on, therefore it's not a skill they can take into account when balancing the healer kits, and therefore represents an unfair advantage on the occasion it IS available.
This was part of the problem with balancing AST in HW and SB, and why it would yoyo from the bottom of the pile to the top of the healer tables from relatively minor adjustments.

For this reason I, and most other AST, simply never used Bole, or at least never used it effectively. You Royal Roaded it, or you went "what the heck!" and threw it on a tank in a casual dungeon setting where it had no real impact.

RNG has no place in deciding the functionality of your jobs skillset. It can be used as a quirky way of applying your skills, as our current card system does, but the functional result of your actions on the party have to be more or less consistent.
A choice between damage or healing/mitigation is far too crucial to leave to RNG. Which is why having a choice between these, say via Minor Arcana, having a choice between whether you use your cards for damage or healing, as a second layer to it's current job gauge specific RNG, is the best way of doing it.

Healers are the most balanced now than they've ever been, though it has been at a cost of some more intricate functions and some job identity.
But I think it represents a good base to build upon in the next expansion, with extra layers that compliment, not conflict, with the current skill sets. Rather than calling to turn back the clock to when everything was a slightly more fun but still complete mess.
And in a more general sense, I am stick to death of seeing all these '6.0 Job X concept' posts that all invariably boil down to "basically just like it was in SB". Go forward, not back.