The Spear card needs a slight rework.

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

Its amazing at the start of a Fight.

But after then it require some serious coordination which even then may not be worth it.

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"Hey guys! I just drew the Spear Card; don't use your CDs for the next several seconds, so that the Spear card can reduce your cool downs by several seconds."

Seems counter productive to me, either way. You're throttling DPS to "get it's full effect"; that makes no sense.

(EDIT: This isn't really pointed at the person I quoted, just at the idea of the card and it's current function and the suggesting of holding off on using CDs to use it.)

Quote:

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"Hey guys! I just drew the Spear Card; don't use your CDs for the next several seconds, so that the Spear card can reduce your cool downs by several seconds."

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Thats what i meant by it won't be worth it in the middle of battle.

But another time it could be useful is during phase transitions.

What spear has over the other buffs. Is that CDR is useful to the entire party.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

Thats what i meant by it won't be worth it in the middle of battle.

But another time it could be useful is during phase transitions.

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20% CD Reduction certainly has it's uses, I'm not denying that.

Timing is key with an ability like that, and when RNG is a (huge) factor you can't rely on drawing it when it'd be the most useful.

On paper, most of the AST buffs seem very nice and OP, however, you can't rely on them being drawn when needed. You could easily just end up drawing TP reduction during a transition phase, or something else equally as useless in that time frame. That's the price you pay for having such versatility; if they make all of the cards useful all of the time, there really wouldn't be any drawbacks to AST (in general).

But you have Royal Road ,Shuffle and Spread so you aren't completely at the mercy of RNG.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

But you have Royal Road ,Shuffle and Spread so you aren't completely at the mercy of RNG.

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The only ability that removes the RNG aspect is Spread; all the others still rely on RNG. Using Royal Road also commits you to a longer CD on Draw.

AST is RNG reliant, and outside of Spread, you will always be at the mercy of RNG. Pulling the right card at the right time will happen, but for every time it happens, there will likely be 3-5 other times when it doesn't.

I've been continuing to play AST and thinking about the Spear card, and I've come to the conclusion that what it needs is (in addition to what it already does) an on use effect that reduces the remaining recast time on abilities by 20%. So if a 5 min CD has 10 sec left, then it'll knock 2 sec off that 10 sec and then it'll knock off the 60 sec it normally would if used again before the buff wears off. If that same skill has 100 sec left instead, it'll knock 20 sec off the remaining CD, but since the Spear buff will wear off long before it's CD reaches 0 again, we will just have to cut our losses and accept the 20 sec reduction.

This seems like the best solution to me, since no matter what it is beneficial, has natural diminishing returns should you get spear multiple times in a row and cast it on the same person with a long CD, and can't really be abused.

- Additionally reduces abilities already on cool-down by 20%.

Yeah, the card would be fine if it just worked on abilities already used too, the way Eudyptes described.
Even if they had to reduce the amount of time it takes off the counter, it would still make the card a lot more useful than before.

I mean, I like the card. I can RR it to get my AoE buff without having to sacrifice Arrow for it, but the card is just a lot more useless than any of the others, which doesn't make sense .-.

I Royal Road it everytime. Its pointless compared to the other cards you can get, and its RR is useful in groups. Sometimes I even just let it time out, if I have a better card in spread that I don't want to use yet and I have a more useful RR for the situation coming up/at the moment. I don't have Shuffle yet, which will be a huge help.

Agreed with poster. lvled AST to 49, and so far Spear card seems to be completely useless, given the fact that it doesn't affect skill/buffs that are already on cooldown.
"Hey I got a Spear, gather around hold your CDs for 5secs, so I can reduce its CD for 5 secs!!" lol