Solution to Astrologian problem

[Sylvain]

Cards blabla

We went with litterally 2 expansion worth of cards only doing a small dps buff and the result was 1000 posts a year of "cards are boring bring back SB variety".

One way or another some people won't be happy.
I don't feel like the old system was really good... having 6 cards with the same 2 buffs (and boy was it a big variation... range vs melee...).

The issue with cards as gcd would be that if they compensate for the dps loss of the gcd through sheer buff, then AST becomes excessively reliant on party comp.

If cards becomes what you proposed,
balance giving 500p over 5 actions then... timing isn't really needed and it excessively favors job with high personal buff like BLM which would gain 85% more damage from the card on its fire spells.
Arrow kind of the same but for job with great personal buff like DRG or maybe even a SCH.
Spear would be ridiculous on any job with guaranteed crit.
Spire ironically most likely the most balanced cards.
What about Bole and Ewer?

Also... you wanna reduce business but make us draw 2 cards every 30s ?
That's basically putting a player under card buff half the time.
And since it's not really a % buff they can be applied to anyone with the same effect during down time. And what about 2min windows? hold + redraw so 4 cards ? sounds not busy at all.

And regarding business this is what many AST players enjoy...

Exaltation
Celestial Intersection
Neutral Sect

Weird that Neutral Sect is here considering it's already doing this, (altough more than 1). So you basically wanna gut AST from these 2 tools? You realize that the goal is to never do a gcd heal.