Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

[Carighan]

[LIST][*]Draw makes their return. Recast is at 20s. MP restoration is at 5% per draw. All cards gives a primary, -fixed- 4% damage buff and a secondary effect (potencies are mostly for placeholder) for 15s to targeted party members:

1. Balance = increases physical damage by 10%.
2. Spear = increases critical damage by 20%.
3. Arrow = haste+20% and movement speed up (peloton speed).
4. Spire = increases magical damage by 10%.
5. Ewer = MP Regen (total 2,500 MP) and reduce MP expenditure by 30%.
6. Bole = damage taken reduced by 10% & reflect 50% damage taken back at their attacker.

There'd be no way to balance this, tbh. I see two immediate problems:

1. Some effects deal raid-relevant damge (like +20% crit, +10% damage or reflecting damage back). +20% haste is a downside for virtually all jobs OTOH and an active nerf to their damage in most cases as rotations misalign for later. MP regen is entirely unneeded and might as well be a "You lose" -draw.
2. The damage-reflection is hopefully capped? Otherwise that's the default card to random-or-reset for, using a Warrior or Dark Knight to let them take obscene damage and survive, reflecting 50% (or 75%!) back.

I mean I get what you're going for, all of these deal strong damage output so that's one of way of balancing them, but sadly these just would not balance. Assuming the damage reflection is capped (if not it auto-wins all raid competitions), +20% crit damage would probably win in particular in later parts of the expansion it'd be a huge boon. Meanwhile when still leveling, the +10% damage stuff would be better. However, your setup where phys and magical is split also means some jobs (e.g. Red Mage) are inherently unwanted as buff targets, I don't think DPS players like that a lot. >.>

I dunno, it reads cool, but it also kinda exemplifies why this system was removed, tbh. Modern MMO players decry 3%-5% imbalances in damage output, nevermind what they'd do with something as inherently unbalanced&unbalancable as this.