The Case for the Spear

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

in many of these situations, the Spear did make all the difference.

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Out of interest, how do you determine that? How do even begin to work out the opportunity cost of holding the Spear? It may be that without a particular example in mind I'm overestimating the difficulty, but it really seems quite hard to me to be sure that one Spear made all the difference. (In particular, I think, because cooldowns in ffxiv are relatively weak compared to wow to begin with. An extra tranq can be massive; the value of an extra lightspeed just seems much more situational.)

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

If you watched that video I posted awhile ago of the 4-man Royal Menagerie [...]

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Honestly, references to specific videos or scenarios always scream confirmation bias to me. However, to be fair, I don't have any objective data on the impact of Spear either. It's simply my opinion (no doubt based in large parts on bias and prejudice) that defensive healer mindsets are very often just down to confirmation bias (i.e. unwarranted, subjective emphasis on those occasions when holding a cooldown seemed to pay off).

On a separate note, can I say what a pleasant discussion this thread has been (in contrast to so many others). It just goes to show how hard it is (even in good faith) to accept that other people think differently :D

If all the cards are useful? When are you going to use Minor Arcana?

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

1. but if the poop and the fan never meet it's just an amazing ability being wasted.

2. Again this is all situational. On my primarily blind run of Bardam's the first time I don't think I used Bene once or Largresse in a boss fight because I was waiting to save the day with them. In those situations (reliable) cooldown reduction would be great. The majority of content being run though? No, you are better served rotating buffs and oGCD heals any day of the week and if you're doing that you will never burn enough cooldowns during a Spear to make it worthwhile.

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I think this sums up what you said very nicely, and I agree. Actually, I did mention this in my OP, although it came and went pretty quickly considering it was literally a 5-page essay.

I fully agree that, if you are in a situation where the party is reliable, then the Spear is fairly useless, and you don't need to save your oGCD spells for emergencies. However, not every party is that reliable. Honestly, the niche that I play in is quite isolated. In the examples I give where the party has low mechanical competence - or to put it more bluntly, the party is just bad - then the healers are usually also just as bad as the rest of the party. If the healers in these examples are bad, then the examples fall apart because the healer is likely making enough mistakes themselves that they could have fixed the problems just by not making those mistakes. In some cases though, the examples do work. At the risk of sounding arrogant, the examples I gave are based on a situation where I (an experienced and reliable healer) am helping less experienced players in clearing something difficult. In other words, they're examples of having to carry the party. A lot of people tend to discount those situations because they think: "You shouldn't have to be carrying; if the party is bad, just get a new party." But I enjoy the challenge of carrying, I like helping people, and I would be lying if I said it didn't have anything to do with my ego. But even though my ego likes the compliments I get, I think the most important aspect for me is the challenge.

I will also say, though, that regular dungeons like Bardam's are quite different from trials. I rarely actually save my cooldowns in such dungeons because when it comes to mob clearing, DPS actually does equate to less danger. If the mobs die fast, the tank doesn't run out of cooldowns, nor does the healer. I usually run WHM in leveling dungeons and use my cooldowns to enable Holy Spam. Occasionally on the largest of large pulls, I find myself having to use my cooldowns exclusively for keeping the tank alive though.

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Originally Posted by Fortune_Cookie

Out of interest, how do you determine that? How do even begin to work out the opportunity cost of holding the Spear? It may be that without a particular example in mind I'm overestimating the difficulty, but it really seems quite hard to me to be sure that one Spear made all the difference. (In particular, I think, because cooldowns in ffxiv are relatively weak compared to wow to begin with. An extra tranq can be massive; the value of an extra lightspeed just seems much more situational.)

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Well, the opportunity cost is a bit more estimated. I'm simply basing my view on two things:

First, a party wipe causes a huge loss of clear speed due to having to restart the entire fight. If I find myself regularly running into situations where using the Spear prevented a wipe, then it follows that I have been regularly saving large sums of time. Comparing that the the ~5-10% clear speed increase of using offensive cards, and it seems clear to me that preventing a wipe is better than just direct clear speed increase.

As for how I know the Spear prevented a wipe, that comes down to memory more often than a video. I think we can agree that we're able know whether we needed to use a skill to prevent a wipe. So when I look back at what happened over the course of the fight, even if it's only using my memory, and I know the following:

• I only use [skill] if I absolutely need to use it.
• I used [skill] while under the effect of the Spear.
• [Skill] came off cooldown just before I needed to use it again.

...then I think it's a reasonable deduction that Spear prevented a wipe.

And those sorts of situations seem to happen a lot to me. However, it's important to remember that I play in an uncommon niche of helping less experienced parties all the time.

Finally, I just like preventing wipes, and from the perspective of "just enjoying the raid" (remember, I am an Immaterial Goal Achiever, so I don't care about whether I do or don't get the rewards quickly). I would happily throw out large sums of DPS opportunity if it let me prevent a wipe.

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

If all the cards are useful? When are you going to use Minor Arcana?

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Very rarely, actually. I don't see Minor Arcana as being very useful. Lady of Crowns has its moments, but Lord of Crowns is not really strong enough to warrant throwing away a card for it unless the card is 100% useless at the time you draw it. And since the card you get is random, I will almost always prioritize using the card instead of converting it. I mostly get Minor Arcana via Sleeve Draw (which I typically try to have on reduced cooldown quite often. I will also occasionally put a card into Minor Arcana if I can't use it. For example, if I have Spear held and have a RR effect already, and I draw Spire when nobody needs TP (which is most of the time), then I will put the Spire into Minor Arcana. The same goes for Ewer, though sometimes I will just use it on myself.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

Very rarely, actually. I don't see Minor Arcana as being very useful. Lady of Crowns has its moments, but Lord of Crowns is not really strong enough to warrant throwing away a card for it unless the card is 100% useless at the time you draw it. And since the card you get is random, I will almost always prioritize using the card instead of converting it. I mostly get Minor Arcana via Sleeve Draw (which I typically try to have on reduced cooldown quite often. I will also occasionally put a card into Minor Arcana if I can't use it. For example, if I have Spear held and have a RR effect already, and I draw Spire when nobody needs TP (which is most of the time), then I will put the Spire into Minor Arcana. The same goes for Ewer, though sometimes I will just use it on myself.

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Then Spear doesn't need to be useful, just use it as fodder for Minor Arcana.

@AlphaSonic

I feel like you missed the point. The point of the thread wasn't to suggest that Spear needed to be useful, but that it already is. So I'm often not putting it in Minor Arcana because it has greater value used elsewhere.

I can see what you mean about carrying a party that wouldn't clear without such an experienced healer but personally even in those situations other cards seem preferable to Spear to me. An enhanced arrow on myself is like getting a mini lightspeed in, if an inexperienced tank is pulling big in a party with no AoE I would get in Noct stance, shield him and use Balance on myself to gravity spam the mobs down if my DPS are poor. Bole becomes more useful in that situation as well whether it is on the tank who is holding aggro but taking tons of damage or on myself/another party member who is "tanking" because that inexperienced tank can't hold their threat.

Basically the cards still have more use in the situation you describe when they are something other than Spear. They are flexible and hold real benefit even when used in non-traditional ways. The use of Spear is really hard to justify when it is taking the place of some of these other effects though I do agrre in a carry type situation Spear could potentially be more useful as it's original effect than as a Lady/Lord.

So yes, in this specific scenario I can see at least not Minor Arcana'ing a Spear.... But only as a last resort and even then only if I am going to be able to trigger several oGCD abilities.

It doesn't make the Spear good really, more a very underperforming party makes the alternatives worse which makes the huge disparity between the effectiveness of Spear and Balance/Arrow seem smaller.

Also I find it hard to swallow that you consistently find yourself in these vastly underskilled parties unless you are somehow searching them out in which case your play experience differs so much from the vast majority of AST's (and indeed players in general) that the relavence if your experience degenerates considerably. It's like a Dark Souls player giving Skyrim advice - yeah, they're both open world RPG's but the similarities end there.

The only time I would use the Spear is when I am just about to use my long GCD skills like CO, LD...to boost my heals or restore my MP. But I will use it when they are ready whether I have spear or not.
Balance, tree and ewer are the only three useful cards. The other cards are just for RR to give you a AOE balance.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I can see what you mean about carrying a party that wouldn't clear without such an experienced healer but personally even in those situations other cards seem preferable to Spear to me. An enhanced arrow on myself is like getting a mini lightspeed in, if an inexperienced tank is pulling big in a party with no AoE I would get in Noct stance, shield him and use Balance on myself to gravity spam the mobs down if my DPS are poor. Bole becomes more useful in that situation as well whether it is on the tank who is holding aggro but taking tons of damage or on myself/another party member who is "tanking" because that inexperienced tank can't hold their threat.

Basically the cards still have more use in the situation you describe when they are something other than Spear. They are flexible and hold real benefit even when used in non-traditional ways. The use of Spear is really hard to justify when it is taking the place of some of these other effects though I do agrre in a carry type situation Spear could potentially be more useful as it's original effect than as a Lady/Lord.

So yes, in this specific scenario I can see at least not Minor Arcana'ing a Spear.... But only as a last resort and even then only if I am going to be able to trigger several oGCD abilities.

It doesn't make the Spear good really, more a very underperforming party makes the alternatives worse which makes the huge disparity between the effectiveness of Spear and Balance/Arrow seem smaller.

Also I find it hard to swallow that you consistently find yourself in these vastly underskilled parties unless you are somehow searching them out in which case your play experience differs so much from the vast majority of AST's (and indeed players in general) that the relavence if your experience degenerates considerably. It's like a Dark Souls player giving Skyrim advice - yeah, they're both open world RPG's but the similarities end there.

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Well first off, I don't typically use Spear in non-trial/raid dungeons. It's not necessary unless maybe if I have a tank that is doing full area pulls (max size), forcing me to use Spear just to have cooldowns back for the next pull. However, a tank that is doing pulls that large and can manage cooldowns well enough to actually pull it off isn't going to be stupid enough to not notice that the healer literally had to blow everything on the last pull.

I agree that the major cards have benefits in other ways. I often use Arrow on myself if I have it and happen to be a bit behind on healing. But using Arrow on myself isn't the same as specialized cooldowns. Bole is also something that helps in much the same way as Arrow. But those two cases are more like an alternative to Largesse than an alternative to the utility of Lightspeed, Swiftcast, or Synastry.

As for why I consistently find myself in these situations, you hit the nail on the head, more or less: I search them out. I intentionally join learning parties as an experienced player. Why? Because as a healer who doesn't care about material goals, it's more fun. I play the game to challenge myself. I also play healer because I like saving people, not because I want to repeatedly heal a perfect party at the same times every fight just to counteract the bare minimum raid damage. I host undersized challenge runs, but don't put heavy restrictions on them. Usually my only requirement is just a vague "know the fight". I don't boot people who aren't performing to par either. I just try my best to compensate. And if I can't, the party wipes a few times and disbands, but I still had my fun.

I agree with your core concept here I really do. I like what you're doing and your philosophy of helping new players I just feel like these situations are so few and far between for the rest of the playerbase that it does not amount to a compelling argument for the Spear to stay in as it's current iteration. Healing recieved, healing output, a debuff over all enemies currently engaged... There are a ton of ways that the slot that the Spear currently takes up could be filled by something more useful and worthwhile.

Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm not someone calling for the Spear to be changed right now. As it stands the Spear is maybe the only cement block tied to AST's feet and I have called for nerfs to Balance and/or raw healing power in the past for AST. I don't think they need another good card right now. I also don't think that they will stay this OP forever though and as someone who has had their opening AoE Balance overwritten by an AoE Spear I think I speak for the majority of the AST playerbase when I say that this card holds no value for most players of this class since most people are not in your specific set of circumstances.

This actually reminds me a bit of Cleric Stance - it's removal made me sad for both practical and impractical reasons. I was proud of my ability to stance dance and for the damage bump it gave me when I used it but at the same time I understood that for the majority of casual healers it was a huge gateway in terms of them trying to effectively DPS in their role. It worked for me, sure, but for the good of all healers it needed to be changed. The Spear is just appealing to an even smaller niche market.

The main issue with the logical gymnastics you made in the OP is that even if the criteria laid out are met, chances are you would have been significantly better off completing whatever activity you describe 10% faster via a spread balance.

You provide examples of when the spear might be beneficial (mostly revolving around personal cooldowns, which are largely low-impact in the first place as an astralogian), but fail to provide math to back up their impact. Specifical examples are: If you need to use Lucid Dreaming at 96 seconds instead of 120 seconds, and that will actually make a difference, then you are almost definitely better off with a spread balance to get you into out-of-combat mana regen earlier, and even Ewer is significantly better.

Healer cooldowns just don't work like that; it's the same reason why Lillies are essentially an ignorable mechanic on WHM - you use the cooldowns when you need to, and it's almost impossible to gain practical benefit from a one-off cooldown reduction. There actually are many cases where dps can benefit significantly from spear if you can negotiate with them on timing (bard is one that comes to mind where the potential gain from a well-timed spear is incredibly high), but it's far too situational. Situational cards are ok, but there are too many and they are too weak even when the situation arises; that's why not only spear, but also ewer and spire are effectively non-existent as primary-use cards.

That is to say; even in the best-case scenario, there are exceptionally few examples where spear isn't still worse than balance or even arrow.

I've basically stopped playing astralogian now because I just hate the card system. You need upward of 8 binds (with two more to come in 4.05) to manage a 30 second cooldown, which in practice is frustrating far more often than it is rewarding. I love every aspect of astrologian except the cards, which keep getting expanded instead of paired back. The best experience with the cards for me is way back early in the leveling roulette, when you have ONLY draw, and you're stuck with what you get. You make a decision based on what you get, and that's that; it's done. Sometimes it can be high impact, sometimes it's not, but it doesn't take up so much of your time in consideration and keybinds.

If it were up to me, I would:
Remove undraw
Remove minor arcana
Remove spread (possibly not, it might be ok to hold a card with the following rr change)
Make royal road a toggle that cycles between aoe > power > duration with no cooldown
Remove sleeve draw

In a world with a draw system like this, there is far less onus on drawing a balance, because you just cant rely on it (you're stuck with what you get). You also don't get into awful situations where you can't dump your spread without wasting your royal road which you want to use on your draw. You draw a card, you choose how you want to use it via a modifier toggle instead of another random draw on another 30 second cooldown, and if you want to hold a card for later you can. Less rng reliance, more decision making around what you have now rather than what you might get next time.

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Originally Posted by Furious

You provide examples of when the spear might be beneficial (mostly revolving around personal cooldowns, which are largely low-impact in the first place as an astralogian), but fail to provide math to back up their impact. Specifical examples are: If you need to use Lucid Dreaming at 96 seconds instead of 120 seconds, and that will actually make a difference, then you are almost definitely better off with a spread balance to get you into out-of-combat mana regen earlier, and even Ewer is significantly better.

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You are assuming here that the combat situation is against mobs, not a boss. As I mentioned in response to @MoroMurasaki, I am primarily talking about trial/raid situations. Not that the Spear is necessarily useless in mob dungeons, but the situations in which it is actually useful are so few and far between that it's not really worth trying to argue for.

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Originally Posted by Furious

Healer cooldowns just don't work like that; it's the same reason why Lillies are essentially an ignorable mechanic on WHM - you use the cooldowns when you need to, and it's almost impossible to gain practical benefit from a one-off cooldown reduction. Situational cards are ok, but there are too many and they are too weak even when the situation arises; that's why not only spear, but also ewer and spire are effectively non-existent as primary-use cards.

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It sounds like you're only taking into account smooth runs. Yes, we only use certain cooldowns, like our 'emergency' spells, when we need to. But who is to say that "when we need to" isn't more often than the spell's base cooldown? Sure, if you're in a farming party and you use a major cooldown to fix someone's mechanic error, then it's not likely to happen again a few seconds later. If it does, then someone is going to post the "I thought this was a farm party" macro and leave, leading to a disband. :p

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Originally Posted by Furious

If it were up to me, I would:
Remove undraw
Remove minor arcana
Remove spread (possibly not, it might be ok to hold a card with the following rr change)
Make royal road a toggle that cycles between aoe > power > duration with no cooldown
Remove sleeve draw

In a world with a draw system like this, there is far less onus on drawing a balance, because you just cant rely on it (you're stuck with what you get). You also don't get into awful situations where you can't dump your spread without wasting your royal road which you want to use on your draw. You draw a card, you choose how you want to use it via a modifier toggle instead of another random draw on another 30 second cooldown, and if you want to hold a card for later you can. Less rng reliance, more decision making around what you have now rather than what you might get next time.

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This sounds unbelievably boring to me. I like that we can control it to some extent, but not entirely. If I desperately need to find a Ewer because I'm out of mana and Lucid is on cooldown, I actually have a decent chance at rolling it. A roughly 1/3 chance with just Draw/Redraw, and if that fails I can throw out all my cards and use Sleeve Draw for another 1/3 chance. Of course, people try to do the same thing with Balance, but that's just those people. There's never a situation where you genuinely need Balance. People just want it. Hyper-simplifying the system the way you want just to get rid of people fishing for Balance would kill off the genuine usefulness of having some control over the cards just to try to stop something that is the fault of the players' mindset, not the system itself.

Edit: Actually, I suppose you could have a DPS check situation where you "need" Balance just to clear the check.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I agree with your core concept here I really do. I like what you're doing and your philosophy of helping new players I just feel like these situations are so few and far between for the rest of the playerbase that it does not amount to a compelling argument for the Spear to stay in as it's current iteration. Healing recieved, healing output, a debuff over all enemies currently engaged... There are a ton of ways that the slot that the Spear currently takes up could be filled by something more useful and worthwhile.

Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm not someone calling for the Spear to be changed right now. As it stands the Spear is maybe the only cement block tied to AST's feet and I have called for nerfs to Balance and/or raw healing power in the past for AST. I don't think they need another good card right now. I also don't think that they will stay this OP forever though and as someone who has had their opening AoE Balance overwritten by an AoE Spear I think I speak for the majority of the AST playerbase when I say that this card holds no value for most players of this class since most people are not in your specific set of circumstances.

This actually reminds me a bit of Cleric Stance - it's removal made me sad for both practical and impractical reasons. I was proud of my ability to stance dance and for the damage bump it gave me when I used it but at the same time I understood that for the majority of casual healers it was a huge gateway in terms of them trying to effectively DPS in their role. It worked for me, sure, but for the good of all healers it needed to be changed. The Spear is just appealing to an even smaller niche market.

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We can agree there, then. It is definitely reminiscent of Cleric Stance, though I hope they never just effectively remove Spear the way they effectively removed CS. I would be okay with either nerfing AST's other cards, or possibly a change to Spear that maintains its current identity. There have been some suggestions that call for changing Spear to instantly reduce cooldowns by a percentage. This is a decent compromise, although what I don't like about it is how, from a safety-first player's perspective, it encourages us to do nothing but fish for Spear all the time just to use it on ourselves to have our cooldowns up at all times. If this change was made, I'd probably find myself still holding a Spear, and/or just using any Spear I find on myself.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

You are assuming here that the combat situation is against mobs, not a boss. As I mentioned in response to @MoroMurasaki, I am primarily talking about trial/raid situations. Not that the Spear is necessarily useless in mob dungeons, but the situations in which it is actually useful are so few and far between that it's not really worth trying to argue for.

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It's not any better in trials, I'm not sure how you could argue that it is :o

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It sounds like you're only taking into account smooth runs. Yes, we only use certain cooldowns, like our 'emergency' spells, when we need to. But who is to say that "when we need to" isn't more often than the spell's base cooldown? Sure, if you're in a farming party and you use a major cooldown to fix someone's mechanic error, then it's not likely to happen again a few seconds later. If it does, then someone is going to post the "I thought this was a farm party" macro and leave, leading to a disband. :p

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So you want to use emergency situations as an argument for spear being useful, which is a card you don't want to get in the first place.. which lasts half as long as other more useful cards. Are you holding spear incase you have an emergency, thereby delaying your other draws or blocking your spread if you get a followup balance? Are you talking about using spear when you get it just in case you have an emergency?

I hope you can see how futile it is to argue that spear is fine because it allows you to reduce your cooldowns by 20% for 15 seconds, and you MIGHT need those abilities again some time in the last 20% of their cooldowns to respond to an emergency. It's even worse in this scenario than it is in a planned scenario or when using it on a dps to reduce their rotational cooldowns.

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This sounds unbelievably boring to me. I like that we can control it to some extent, but not entirely. If I desperately need to find a Ewer because I'm out of mana and Lucid is on cooldown, I actually have a decent chance at rolling it. A roughly 1/3 chance with just Draw/Redraw, and if that fails I can throw out all my cards and use Sleeve Draw for another 1/3 chance. Of course, people try to do the same thing with Balance, but that's just those people. There's never a situation where you genuinely need Balance. People just want it. Hyper-simplifying the system the way you want just to get rid of people fishing for Balance would kill off the genuine usefulness of having some control over the cards just to try to stop something that is the fault of the players' mindset, not the system itself.

Edit: Actually, I suppose you could have a DPS check situation where you "need" Balance just to clear the check.

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This is an irrational argument that stems from a self-sustaining belief that balance being much stronger than everything else is "just in people's heads". It's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible says so.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

We can agree there, then. It is definitely reminiscent of Cleric Stance, though I hope they never just effectively remove Spear the way they effectively removed CS. I would be okay with either nerfing AST's other cards, or possibly a change to Spear that maintains its current identity. There have been some suggestions that call for changing Spear to instantly reduce cooldowns by a percentage. This is a decent compromise, although what I don't like about it is how, from a safety-first player's perspective, it encourages us to do nothing but fish for Spear all the time just to use it on ourselves to have our cooldowns up at all times. If this change was made, I'd probably find myself still holding a Spear, and/or just using any Spear I find on myself.

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There is absolutely no reason you would ever logically do this. There are almost no healer cooldowns that have as measurable an impact as cooldowns of a dps or tank and certainly not astrologian ones. Healing is a zero-sum game, you only need to do "enough". DPS is a no-ceiling game; you can always benefit from more.

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Originally Posted by Furious

It's not any better in trials, I'm not sure how you could argue that it is :o

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@Furious

Read the thread.

Judging by your responses, you either didn't read it or if you did you are choosing to ignore everything I said and discredit my argument without actually trying to counter-argue any of the points I made. If that's the case, then there's no point trying to argue. Like you said: it's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible said so. Or more to the point, because they believe in it strongly and won't be shaken by anything. To me, that's what your responses sound look like: "Spear is bad because Balance is better. Why? Because I believe Balance is better." And nothing I can say will change that opinion.

Originally, AST was going to have bad cards. They removed that but added cards of very low desirability, hence spear.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

@Furious

Read the thread.

Judging by your responses, you either didn't read it or if you did you are choosing to ignore everything I said and discredit my argument without actually trying to counter-argue any of the points I made. If that's the case, then there's no point trying to argue. Like you said: it's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible said so. Or more to the point, because they believe in it strongly and won't be shaken by anything. To me, that's what your responses sound look like: "Spear is bad because Balance is better. Why? Because I believe Balance is better." And nothing I can say will change that opinion.

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It's not an opinion; it's a fact based on currently available evidence. Until such a point that you provide evidence (rather than conjecture) to the contrary, it remains the currently accepted theorem.

I have read the thread, and that is why I know that you are yet to provide supporting evidence to support your statements. That is to say, it's not enough to say "I can use lucid dreaming in 96 seconds rather than 120", but rather why that is objectively superior. Or, why in the hell you would EVER think that 20% reduction to astrologian abilities would ever be better than almost any other class. You say I am coming from a place of belief, but that is where you are coming from. Evidence exists to support the strength of balance and the weakness of spear; yours is the burden to prove otherwise when you make this thread.

Nothing you have said so far has come close to doing so. You can absolutely convince me that spear is better than balance (or even better than the opportunity cost of not using spear), if you provide the proof that shows it. For the record, I don't think anyone would argue that you should discard spear rather than use it if there is no opportunity cost. If it's not delaying your next roll or consuming a potential spread on a better card, have at it.

Spear = Minor Arcana fuel.

Unless your party has really good coordination, the spear isn't that good, and i'd probably only use it on myself before using my own cooldowns, but not for much else.