Weird/random idea for AST to make one ability actually...have a point:

[Marxam]

Undraw: Increases damage done by the caster by 25% for 30 seconds.

You realize they actually fixed Undraw in SB right? Minor Arcana was a 1 sec recast that you can use to proc a lady/lord. It was active every time you used Draw. It was was a way of "discarding" a card you didn't want, but still got a positive effect. It was literally everything Undraw needed to be and there was no reason to use Undraw, yet Minor Arcana got removed and Undraw stayed. It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

[ForsakenRoe]

However, if it were me, I'd have Undraw create a random effect on the battlefield, as the AST has chosen to leave things in the chaotic hands of Fate,

That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself. Logs would have to exclude the effect for parse purposes because otherwise the top parses will be 'the ASTs who ran enough runs to get a god run where they Undraw Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc every time'. Could you imagine if they roll a non-present raidbuff, eg if their comp is NIN DRG BRD RDM, and they rolled Technical Step? Complaints about 'how badly RNG screws parsing' would be out of control

It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

It's been a long long time, but wasn't Minor Arcana in SB that 'you delete the Major Arcana, to get the Minor Arcana'? So that if you drew, say, Spire, you could convert it and have a 50% chance that it turns from 'useless' to 'well it's a little bit of damage I guess'. In SHB it was truly 'fixed', as it was better to use MA over playing the card regular, as long as you had already set up your 3 seals. Then for EW they went back to the RNG style of SB, but forgot to include the system hook that incentivized you to use the skill (deleting 'bad' cards to manipulate them into a more useful effect), since every card is now 'useful' due to being the same damage boost, and because MA is just a standalone 60s CD. It's like the worst of all worlds in design. I'd honestly find it so much more interesting if Lady was 400 heal, and Lord was anywhere from 100-200 shield, because then neither are a 'damage gain' over each other directly. But AST is 'pure healer' so it's not allowed shields, that's not part of it's new 'identity'. Don't look at Neutral Sect. Or Intersection.

[MintnHoney]

That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself. Logs would have to exclude the effect for parse purposes because otherwise the top parses will be 'the ASTs who ran enough runs to get a god run where they Undraw Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc every time'. Could you imagine if they roll a non-present raidbuff, eg if their comp is NIN DRG BRD RDM, and they rolled Technical Step? Complaints about 'how badly RNG screws parsing' would be out of control

Well, I did say "if it were me." I tend to prefer my RNG effects to have downsides so that real boons can be mixed in (risks for rewards, in my opinion, is the only way for it to be fair), but, if we must dampen the risks significantly, then all negative effects could be removed via Esuna or its equivalent.
I also prefer the effects to be reminiscent at best of existing actions, because otherwise it would just feel like AST is stealing skills from other jobs and, to be honest, many of the skills aren't all that interesting to begin with (on top of other players then potentially complaining that we're stealing their kits, or messing with their rotations if we somehow use something that would put some kind of 2minute meta debuff on the enemy ahead of the 2minute meta timeframe).
If we're worried about serious players in a serious instance with a serious difficulty range and serious enrage timer that comes down to the very second of the allowable timeframe, then those players should probably focus on using the 2 tones of balance and their 3 rebrands, due to consistency (because, as we all know, serious players who must succeed at all costs leave no room for fun in their always-perfect-and-perfectly-consistent rotations, because their fun comes from rigid success and nothing but).

But my idea is, indeed, a very unsafe way to go about things, and, honestly, this game is like 96% not made for players like me. Therefore, it's probably better to go the safer route and just make undraw a "metronome" of random healing abilities, so that we can have the extra healing that new healers can't get enough of and experienced healers don't need but will try to fit into their rotation somewhere, maybe.

[SieyaM]

If I am remembering right Minor Arcana, worked well with the old set up of StB, where we still had royal road as well. So you could decide to use the drawn card for Royal road to enhance your next draw or if you already had an enhancement you wanted you could Minor Arcana it for either the heal or the damage. I also remember being able to hold a card to be used later so you could minor arcana if you had a card stored you wanted to use but didn't have a desirable card for Royal Road. It really is a system I enjoyed and want back since it had a lot of different effects and uses instead of giving just a damage boost that you would need a parser to even know was happening.

[Renathras]

You realize they actually fixed Undraw in SB right? Minor Arcana was a 1 sec recast that you can use to proc a lady/lord. It was active every time you used Draw. It was was a way of "discarding" a card you didn't want, but still got a positive effect. It was literally everything Undraw needed to be and there was no reason to use Undraw, yet Minor Arcana got removed and Undraw stayed. It eventually returned, but even worse now. Idk how they keep doing this but I might not be here to see if they continue doing this in the future.

I first started seriously playing AST in ShB, so yeah, I remember that version. I genuinely don't know why they got rid of it and not Undraw, though. I can only think of Undraw as being useful for managing seals for Divination, but Minor Arcana was the tool for that in ShB, as it burned the cards without applying the seals, and actually gave them a slightly more potent effect (4/8% instead of 3/6%?) to make up for the delay slightly.

I guess it made the burst window and opener even more insane, so maybe that's why they changed it, but at least it had a PURPOSE.

[AmiableApkallu]

That'd be pretty cool, I imagine they'd make it be 'Metronome' from Pokemon, but for only ally skills if they were to do such a thing, to prevent you from accidentally killing yourself with it (you have to beat a DPS check in a solo instance and you give yourself -10% stats effect, so you enrage and wipe, not good). So you're soloing and you throw out a card and you can get any other job's any other skill. Maybe you get Confiteor, maybe you get Bloodletter, maybe you get Superbolide and almost oneshot yourself.

If this were me, I'd make it so that the skills always span the range of "definitely undesirable" to "most definitely wanted." But I'd calibrate it based on content. So, for example, in solo content, the range would be relatively limited, and heavily biased towards "desirable" skills. At the other end, in a savage or ultimate, you might see everything from "Morbol Bad Breath on the entire party" to "god-run Confiteor/DoubleDown/etc.", with lesser "bad" outcomes being a real possibility.

Leaving things in the hands of "chaotic fate" shouldn't always be a net-positive, but we don't need to make solo and normal-mode content stupidly punishing, either.

[ForsakenRoe]

I guess it made the burst window and opener even more insane, so maybe that's why they changed it, but at least it had a PURPOSE.

MA's 'purpose' is that it allowed you to delete a card you did not want to play (for example, you have AOE Royal Road ready for a Balance/Spear/Arrow in a pinch, but you drew Bole/Spire/Ewer). Normally you'd be able to rightclick the buff off, or use a macro to remove the status, but with the shift to Job Gauges, Playstation/controller users lost access to that. Thus, Undraw was 'invented' as a pseudo-replacement to the macros they used to use. I say pseudo, because unlike the macro, which could be used not only mid animationlock but mid-cast of a spell, Undraw is a true OGCD and so has to be weaved, so the solution is clunkier than the 'janky workaround' we used originally. Classic. Anyway, with SHB changes, MA became the 'Undraw but better', and so UNdraw's existence became questionable, but it remained for some reason. Just like Freecure, I guess the devs either forgot, or they think it has some use that we're just not skilled enough to see.

Leaving things in the hands of "chaotic fate" shouldn't always be a net-positive, but we don't need to make solo and normal-mode content stupidly punishing, either.

Yes, I would agree, however, what we are seeing as 'net positive' is different from one another. Where you and Mint are looking at self-stat-downs and the like as the 'negative outcome', I'd see a lot of potential results from the 'use a random Job Skill' RNG machine as a 'negative outcome', not because it's effect is negative in itself, but because it's worse compared to just playing the card normally on yourself. Like, for example, if your only goal in that moment is 'do as much damage as possible', you have the choice of using the card on yourself for 6% more damage for 15 seconds, or you can risk it with the RNG machine. So while 6% on self would add up to, let's call it 5000 damage for ease of maths, not everything from the Undraw would result in 5000 damage. In my gear (bis except for weapon which is 645), I'd need a move with a potency of at least 130 to deal equal damage to what I'd get from just playing the card, and that doesn't factor in the Astrodyne Seal. So if I got, say, Fan Dance 2, I've lost damage because it's 100p. Bloodletter from BRD, 100p. Quite a few AOE combo starters are 100. A lot of skills don't even do damage at all, such as it randomly giving you pretty much any role action, or tank CD, or self-mit like Arcane Crest. Plus, I imagine it'd do the move as if you've executed it yourself as that job, ie, if it rolls Fan Dance 2 (self centered AOE) and you're in Narnia away from the enemy, you'd just use it out of range and miss, and lose the potency anyway, meaning that it's even more likely you lose damage

And lastly, there's still some truly negative effects (potentially). Gyoten/Yaten, Hell's Egress/the other one, Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, En Avant, Thunderclap, Corps and Displacement would all be on the table as 'oops you got a bad roll, time to randomly flip off the edge/into the deathwall'. Nothing says 'chaotic fate' quite like suddenly being repositioned, unexpected Rescues in DF content show that pretty clearly

[MintnHoney]

And lastly, there's still some truly negative effects (potentially). Gyoten/Yaten, Hell's Egress/the other one, Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, En Avant, Thunderclap, Corps and Displacement would all be on the table as 'oops you got a bad roll, time to randomly flip off the edge/into the deathwall'. Nothing says 'chaotic fate' quite like suddenly being repositioned, unexpected Rescues in DF content show that pretty clearly

Well, so that's where I would personally try to draw the line: any effect that would cause any player to be forced to move isn't just a truly negative effect, it actively stops playtime and potentially ruins the encounter (although I wouldn't avoid this so much in most other games, but in XIV, the extremely choreographed fights mean that unexpected forced movement is absolutely the worst thing you can do to someone). I think it would be better to avoid creating a scenario where the risks begin to severely outweigh all of the potential positive effects, because then Undraw would remain excluded from serious gameplay instead of at least considered for mixing up the now near-non-existent rotation.
Assuming the intent is to make Undraw a contender, but still give it random effects, I think applying status effects onto the party is about where we should cut that off, and even then, to avoid having players whine about ASTs being unplayable due to 1 skill being unpredictably good or bad, being able to Esuna all the negative effects off of players should be the answer to those situations where things go sour (and it'll give us a reason to have the ability on our bar at all times again, and we'll still feel the impact due to needing to spend GCDs removing the effects). If the issue then becomes "but the enrage timer!" because the healer(s) had to spend up to 8 GCDs on removing the effects, then that's probably more a skill issue and potentially a tuning issue for the encounter, and the alternative is to simply use the card rather than undraw if they must have reliability above all.