Quote Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho View Post
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.