I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[ForsakenRoe]

ever returned cards that could feasibly lead to situations that make you want to click them off

I don't think there'd ever be a situation where you'd want to click a card off, except designs like the old one, where you would do so to preserve the AOE buff you've already set up. No chance SE would go back to something where you have choices between 'damage' and 'not damage', I think, makes the RDPS potential of the class far to swingy because of RNG. So Undraw gets to stay as this weird button that is in the spellbook, but on nobody's hotbars

Also you can still use the macro to click the buff off, turns out. Just tried it. So, Undraw's there to be a way to tell the player 'you can click off cards you don't want, btw', since using macros for something like that is not common knowledge. But the macro doesn't require you to OGCD weave it (you can 'click off midcast'), and there's no real situation where you'd want to remove a card (cos you're just throwing damage away)

What a confusingly designed 'ability'

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think there'd ever be a situation where you'd want to click a card off, except designs like the old one, where you would do so to preserve the AOE buff you've already set up. No chance SE would go back to something where you have choices between 'damage' and 'not damage', I think, makes the RDPS potential of the class far to swingy because of RNG. So Undraw gets to stay as this weird button that is in the spellbook, but on nobody's hotbars

Also you can still use the macro to click the buff off, turns out. Just tried it. So, Undraw's there to be a way to tell the player 'you can click off cards you don't want, btw', since using macros for something like that is not common knowledge. But the macro doesn't require you to OGCD weave it (you can 'click off midcast'), and there's no real situation where you'd want to remove a card (cos you're just throwing damage away)

What a confusingly designed 'ability'

And even the old Royal Road buffs should have been retroactive so you could actually choose when to use them (more Pepsis than Emergency Tactics, since you had such limited control over what it'd actually be spent on and such huge variance in value at the moment you got them).

That said, Royal Road's being so clunky was largely why optimal play was so far off from merely the "Balance-fishing" less optimizing players sometimes remember it as. The only truly useless Cards were Bole and sometimes Spear, depending on one's number of Redraws remaining, point in your Spread CD cycle, time until your raid's greatest span of damage density, and current Royal Road.

Still, I would have been okay with a tiny bit less skill gap between the best and the average from having a bit more control (especially since it would look like more skill expression being available to all but those who had mastered the less intuitive optimizations before it). At least a retroactive and more balanced Royal Road (between Empower, Extend, and Expand) would have allowed us to still have unique card effects, instead of getting them outright in favor of Melee/Ranged damage buffs...

[Deceptus]

No, it does not. You can Regen a tank as they pull and no longer get your face bashed in.

My anecdotal evidence proves otherwise.

In the half second (seems longer TBH) after you cast Regen if the tank aggros the mobs, they WILL go after me the healer.

Have had regen on the tank saw them charge in, and still got aggro before. There's something funky with the system (like all systems in FFXIV).

[Aravell]

Also you can still use the macro to click the buff off, turns out. Just tried it. So, Undraw's there to be a way to tell the player 'you can click off cards you don't want, btw', since using macros for something like that is not common knowledge. But the macro doesn't require you to OGCD weave it (you can 'click off midcast'), and there's no real situation where you'd want to remove a card (cos you're just throwing damage away)

What a confusingly designed 'ability'

Undraw was implemented in the time back in SB where every job got job gauges. They moved the card drawn into the gauge instead of it being a buff, so there was nothing to click off, you couldn't remove the card at all unless you pressed Undraw. I absolutely do not know why Undraw still exists after they put cards back on your buff bar.

[ASkellington]

Undraw was implemented in the time back in SB where every job got job gauges. They moved the card drawn into the gauge instead of it being a buff, so there was nothing to click off, you couldn't remove the card at all unless you pressed Undraw. I absolutely do not know why Undraw still exists after they put cards back on your buff bar.

Probably didn't do a pass on the ability or think there is some good reason to want to Undraw a card currently.

Here's a hint for you SE: there isn't.

[Shurrikhan]

My anecdotal evidence proves otherwise.

In the half second (seems longer TBH) after you cast Regen if the tank aggros the mobs, they WILL go after me the healer.

Have had regen on the tank saw them charge in, and still got aggro before. There's something funky with the system (like all systems in FFXIV).

Applying a buff generates a tiny amount of enmity (was equal to player level back at ARR, HW, SB, iirc). Let's say the 90 enmity. Face-pulling grants only 1 Enmity. As such, you pull off the tank with your ~89 extra enmity.

If HoT ticks themselves cause no Enmity, then the tank popping a defensive, even, will pull those back even if your HoT has ticked once already. I've had Regen pull off me often, in which case I just pop my least valuable defensive a little earlier to regain aggro enough to Flood them as I keep running. Even with a tick registered in combat, the self-buff seems enough, so no idea yet from experience whether HoTs produce no Enmity per tick or just miniscule amounts.

[Mithron]

My anecdotal evidence proves otherwise.

In the half second (seems longer TBH) after you cast Regen if the tank aggros the mobs, they WILL go after me the healer.

Have had regen on the tank saw them charge in, and still got aggro before. There's something funky with the system (like all systems in FFXIV).

The cast of Regen generates small aggro, but the Regen ticks themselves no longer generate aggro. This applies to all abilities with Regens, such as PLD's Holy Sheltron, GNB's Aurora, WAR's Equilibrium or SMN's Phoenix.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I don't think I've seen a single person say Undraw is engaging gameplay, or defend its existence

Neither have I. Square Enix should either make it engaging so the choice to Undraw is meaningful or just remove the skill. For example, they could revert back to five cards and introduce something different than +N% damage.

Could you imagine the possibilities if AST cards conjured temporary NPCs who lasted 30 seconds?

[ForsakenRoe]

For example, they could revert back to five cards and introduce something different than +N% damage.

I wouldn't make it 5 cards (it's always been 6), but I would make the cards be more than just '+N% damage'. Because my amateur ass sees the balance problem from SB, not as 'Balance is too strong, no other card can compete', but as 'AOE Balance is too strong'. It wasn't 'this card makes one person do 10% more damage' that caused problems, it was the fact that a possible result of the card system was 'you give out Brotherhood's damage buff on a potentially 1min CD'. Keep the cards single target, and the ability to balance them to do comparable damage becomes much easier.

Once that's settled, then the question becomes 'how' does the damage get dealt by each card. And that's where I believe the 'thematics' of the cards can shine again. The niche utilities can come back, but remain as niche utilities, the 'nice effect on the side' that helps, but is not the damage that you're using the card for. As an example: Bole. Everyone is split on Bole, some loved it cos the mit was nice to use on the tank. Some hate it because it was 'literally not even factored into your mit plans cos it's not reliably up at the right time'. So, how about we solve both of these at once? Having looked at 'current speedruns', I found that a SAM did 18k damage extra because of a Spear card. At 6%, that puts the 10% equivalent as 30k damage. So, if Balance at 10% were to give 30k damage, then the other cards can be balanced around that. Bole, for instance, I would make have two effects: One, it reduces damage taken by 20% for 15s, just like the old days. The 'I like the mit' crowd get their mit to use again. Two, '3 stacks of Bole's Bulwark, reflecting damage equal to 10% of the Bole'd guy's Max HP'. As tanks currently roll with 110kish Max HP, this would make the card give 33kish damage, but in a thematic way to how the Bole is meant to protect and such.

Then the other cards: Spear, 10% physical damage. Arrow, 10 stacks (more on phys ranged to incentivize using it on them) of 'increase Autoattack speed by 400%', plus a movespeed buff for the utility. Spire, 10% magic damage. Ewer, restores MP, and if used on a healer, it makes their next 3 spells hit twice.

With something like this, we wouldn't use cards based on the melee/ranged split (which has never sat right with me), but based on the role of the job. Arrow to PRanged (or melee wouldn't be bad either), Spear to Melee, Spire to Caster, Ewer to Healer (but can be used on casters to give them MP after a res, for example), Bole to Tank (or whoever needs the mit if they're doing a hard hitting mech), Balance is the wildcard and can go on any DPS. All of them would be balanced to deal 'roughly equal amounts of damage', but as with any system, there would be slight differences. Unfortunately, I'm of the opinion that these slight differences are acceptable if it means we get a more interesting gameplay out of it.

[Jirah]

Id say buff dungeon/trial damage. Tanks sometimes dont even need a healer if the DPS is fast enough WAR itself doesnt need healers. And they need stronger hitting attacks and more complex than “Designated Raid wide” that does shy of 100 damage or less. Savage is fine as is I guess but the core content is miserable.

They need to invent HEALER BUSTER mechs. Which can go in multitude of ways with multiple raid wides or the living dead thing