Wasn’t suggesting to homogenize the cards—I hate the new system as much as most ASTs do and all cards being Baby Balances.
Determination is weak. Skill Speed/Spell Speed would be much better even if it only benefited a couple of jobs (e.g., SAM and BLM). This is not about “there will always be a best card” but about the fact that your chosen effect for The Arrow ensures it will be just like old Spire: Minor Arcana fodder.
Unless you can store utility cards, damage cards are always preferred. Especially since healing is so overpowered in most content, and damage—be it busters or raid-wides—are not all that threatening outside of Savage/Ultimate.Umbral Draw exist because not everyone focus only in buffing dps
There are some people who enjoy using card like Bole, Spire, Ewer back in HW and SB
They like to help their party member in a different way
You don’t need to tell me that people enjoyed using at least Bole and Ewer back in the day. I’ve played AST since HW and know that. I was one of them: not afraid to use a Ewer on myself—or slot it in my Spread if I had a bad party that was draining my mana—or Enhance a Bole for a tank to use during a mass dungeon pull so I could DPS. The issue is less that people don’t want to use them but that damage is always the better option when you have offensive and defensive options competing with one another. It would be preferable to eliminate that and add more credence to the offensive/defensive split in the major arcana.
Spire has always been borderline useless, though. Especially in SB when all DPS that used TP had access to Invigorate, Goad was a role skill for melee, and ranged all had Tactician. Outside of extreme AOE situations, TP management wasn’t really a thing. It hasn’t been a thing since HW—which was why they did away with it in ShB.
One of the major cited failings of the previous system was that damage cards always trumped utility cards. They were always in competition with each other. Give two different Spreads—one for offensive cards, and one for defensive/utility cards—and there is no longer a competition. That was my suggestion to improve your proposed system, but you seem to have not given it any thought.If people prefer focusing in damage buff then feel free to only using Astral Card
Other may have a different preference and play Umbral Card instead or even use both card
I feel like you skimmed over what I wrote without really reading it, based on this reply. Please go back and reread it.