A different Minor Arcana

[AmurT]

1. Have Minor Arcana give you the 250 potency damage Lord or 400 potency healing Lady depending on which normal arcanum you currently have drawn, with the skill requiring that you have an arcanum drawn.
2. Just remove Minor Arcana, add Sleeve Draw back in to make obtaining the optimal Astrodyne outcome easier.
3. Turn arcana in general into complete utility effects, removing any kind of damage buff. Only Divination would provide a damage buff.

1. I guess this is fine, but it then introduces the problem of you having to weave in Minor Arcana inbetween Draw and Redraw/Play during burst which isn't desirable in my opinion
2. Why remove another part of AST? A reoccurring complaint of this job was always "SE removing job identity". Sleeve Draw can be returned regardless of whether or not MA exists because MA is not part of the main card system anymore
3. This is also fine, but then what utility would you suggest? Bole, back in Stormblood, was actually a really good card providing 10% mitigation to everyone or 20% single target for 30 seconds, but it was considered garbage because it was unreliable when you drew it. Adding random bits of utility to cards would just introduce the same problem of "Balance fishing" but instead of damage, you're looking for the best utility.

I personally like what we're getting come Endwalker in regards to MA. It's the Minor Arcana for a reason, so it's not supposed to play a huge role compared to the Major Arcana. It was pretty bad in Stormblood in terms of everyone wanting Lord, but that was because 1. Lord was significantly higher potency and 2. Lady was a single target heal which is a lot less useful. With the new MA, theoretically speaking if a Lady saves you from having to use a cast of Helios, you gain a Malefic which is no different than if you had drawn a Lord.

[Hozomeen]

1. I guess this is fine, but it then introduces the problem of you having to weave in Minor Arcana inbetween Draw and Redraw/Play during burst which isn't desirable in my opinion
2. Why remove another part of AST? A reoccurring complaint of this job was always "SE removing job identity". Sleeve Draw can be returned regardless of whether or not MA exists because MA is not part of the main card system anymore
3. This is also fine, but then what utility would you suggest? Bole, back in Stormblood, was actually a really good card providing 10% mitigation to everyone or 20% single target for 30 seconds, but it was considered garbage because it was unreliable when you drew it. Adding random bits of utility to cards would just introduce the same problem of "Balance fishing" but instead of damage, you're looking for the best utility.

I personally like what we're getting come Endwalker in regards to MA. It's the Minor Arcana for a reason, so it's not supposed to play a huge role compared to the Major Arcana. It was pretty bad in Stormblood in terms of everyone wanting Lord, but that was because 1. Lord was significantly higher potency and 2. Lady was a single target heal which is a lot less useful. With the new MA, theoretically speaking if a Lady saves you from having to use a cast of Helios, you gain a Malefic which is no different than if you had drawn a Lord.

Good point about the awkward weave with suggestion 1. And yeah, I'm sceptical about the possibility of having 8 different, useful types of utility for the cards. Maybe it could be like heal, mitigation, extra HP and something else, in Area and Single Target versions. But I'm honestly not too stoked about making mitigation randomly available, that would just not fit well into the game.

I'm really extremely sceptical about that situation Momo mentioned arising regularly. You likely won't be casting enough Helios for them to regularly be replaced by Ladies you draw.