How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Shurrikhan]

I think that tactic would get messy very quickly and also would make the card system's burden of knowledge higher than it's ever been. I also don't think the cards are going to stay single target because the constant single target swapping is one of the jobs' biggest pain points for many players who try the job.

Given that we need to future-proof rapid target selection even just to allow for responsive healing requirements, this doesn't seem a reasonable warrant for precluding a design.

Instead, it should just mark a need to select allies even on controller through something more responsive than just left/right arrows. (There are, happily, 8 directions available to the DPad, and only 8 party members, so it's not as if we need to go for particularly sophisticated solutions to make at least noticeable improvements.)

I can see why we'd want to segregate the cards into say 3 'only utility' and 3 'only damage'. But then we have the issue we do now: those utility cards potentially won't see much of the light of day outside of Savage. Then we've taken the deck from 6 down to 3

Even this isn't necessarily the case, either. The diminished value from use comes not only from lower damage intake but also from the type of sustain provided, i.e., whether it be flat or scaled. Aquaveil, for instance, might mean little in a dungeon where Exaltation will still be useful simply because the latter provides significant flat value, too, therefore being useful even when damage intake is low.

That assumes the utility cards and damage cards share the same resource. In any attempt I've ever brought up of adjusting Astrologian where I've separated the cards that way, I made it a point to clarify that those separate Draws do not share a cooldown and are played independently so that utility isn't fighting against damage.

That said, I don't think you remotely need to do this, either, as long as you make use of your Seals.

The control added by having the second, separate Draw pile still wouldn't be worth much (far less than, say, a Spread), after all, seeing as even among your three utility skills, you've got a 67% chance to get bonus healing received or bonus movement speed, for example, by which to prevent... an immediately incoming one-shot (such that you wanted mitigation instead).