AST changes, where we're still weak, and why I'm not upset with Yoshi-P...

[Blood-Aki]

I always enjoyed using Spear back pre-3.07 to give my DRGs, NINs, and MCNs a nice small buff to their DPS, or get me a bit more MP faster.

Now that Balance, Arrow and Bole are both 30s buffs I'd rather just RR Spear and take a shot at the following:

• 60s long Balance (effectively two Balances back to back)
• 60s long Arrow (effectively two Arrows back to back)
• 60s long Bole (indirectly reducing my MP consumption due to lesser healing requirement)
• 300 Potency Refresh via Extended Ewer (25% weaker than 400 potency Luminous Aether)
• 300 TP restored to a DPS (I believe Spire is 30 TP / tick)

As much as I love Spear, I don't think the effect Spear gives now compares to the massive list of buffs the above gives. Sadly, I'm pretty much going to regulate Spear to RR fodder outside of a few niche uses when the RNG just happens to land me with a Spear that I just didn't need at the time.

Givin the fact extended now extends buffs past 1 minute if you use time dill that's pretty much what i'd use it for now, just RR food. a 1+ minute arrow or balance will go a longer way then spear.

[RichardButte]

As you said "In practice" i always had a cooldown to use within the 15 seconds of drawing a spear. When you find a use for it 90%, i don't call it situational anymore.

For healing, there are really only three situations that exist...

1. Light to no healing required: everyone is sitting at full or close to full HP. The tank(s) is taking regular, expected damage.

2. Anticipated mechanic healing: you will shortly need to heal the group for an anticipated raid wide AoE or a tank buster.

3. Emergency mode: something has gone wrong or a DPS race wipe mechanic is placing extreme stress on the healers.

The Spear can hypothetically be useful during 2 and 3, with 2 being the most likely situation in which a spread Spear would be beneficial.

In #3, however, no sane player is going to wait for a Spear, and you're doing a disservice to your raid by keeping a Spear spread all this time when you could've been setting up a far more beneficial combo instead.

The other issue here is that the Spear isn't a card with benefits that are felt immediately. As you said, the Spear makes CDs shorter, which helps long term but does little for the short term, unlike an Arrow which has tremendous benefit for everyone and can help you get emergency heals out there that much faster, or a Bole which can stop a tank buster from killing a tank or buy you some breathing room.

You also have to weigh the benefit of RRing the Spear instead, as being able to give a minute-long buff to someone is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. Considering that, is shaving 20% off of a CD more valuable that adding 30 seconds to a Bole? The emergency healing that you get from a CD reduction would probably pale in comparison to making a tank take 10% less damage for 60 whole seconds.

Maybe someone wants to do out the math of how much damage a tank takes in the course of being beat on for 1 minute by a boss, but I'd bet it'll be way more beneficial than getting your Synastry back 18 seconds sooner.

Also, prevention >>>> healing. All of the HP saved by that 60 seconds of Bole costs you 0 MP to heal.

The only time a Spear's benefit truly shines is when you can stack CDs into it, and as I've explained, being able to do that is still highly situational whereas all of the other cards have immediate benefits and will generally always be used to the utmost.

I'd like to see the math, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Spear was literally better used as RR fodder than actually being cast for single CD usage. I'd also like to know how many CDs (and which ones) would we need to be using during Spear to get more benefit out of it and which CDs would be worth it...

Actually it was never designed that way. The "debuff" was just mistranslated in a development build.

Ah, noted.

Though, I maintain that we had to have at least one card that we don't want to draw regularly.

As much as I love Spear, I don't think the effect Spear gives now compares to the massive list of buffs the above gives. Sadly, I'm pretty much going to regulate Spear to RR fodder outside of a few niche uses when the RNG just happens to land me with a Spear that I just didn't need at the time.

Agreed in full (we were basically writing up the same post at the same time, heh...).

If you feel ambitious, Ghishy, you can try mathing out the overall benefit of a Spear reducing a CD vs. a Spear adding 30 seconds to one of the big three buffs.

We can probably determine exactly which buffs would be more beneficial to Spear if we had values of healing done.

Also, they could simply buff Spear just by making it also reduce CDs that are ALREADY ticking and then it wouldn't be situational at all...

[Ghishlain]

Though, I maintain that we had to have at least one card that we don't want to draw regularly.

In general, that's the nature of the beast when it comes to mechanics like these. No matter how they balance it, there will always be "one thing in the pool of potentials" that is less desirable than the others. The challenge is making it so all the "potentials" will still be functional and acceptable regardless of their optimal-ness level. In this case, being RR Fodder is still better than a person staring at the card and blanching, so I find it acceptable in my mind.

Agreed in full (we were basically writing up the same post at the same time, heh...).

If you feel ambitious, Ghishy, you can try mathing out the overall benefit of a Spear reducing a CD vs. a Spear adding 30 seconds to one of the big three buffs.

We can probably determine exactly which buffs would be more beneficial to Spear if we had values of healing done.

Also, they could simply buff Spear just by making it also reduce CDs that are ALREADY ticking and then it wouldn't be situational at all...

LOL, oh God, I don't think I could Theorycraft that out in an hour, it'd probably take me sometime to figure out ALL the permutations of that. I could try to think up something but don't hold your breath on it any time soon, lol.

Though if they buffed Spear like that, it would certainly make Spear significantly more desirable. I got a feeling actually programming that in though is much more difficult than us discussing it is.

[EDIT]
Some food for thought since Richard brought it up and made me think about. Let's discuss Spear over the duration of one minute:

Ninja can Ninjutsu 3 times in a minute for a total of 1,080 Potency in that time frame.
Assuming you draw Spear twice in a row and do it just as their Ninjutsu goes on CD, they'll get Ninjutsu's going off every 16s seconds. Effectively they'll get four Ninjutsu's in 64s, giving them a 360 Potency Increase in that about one minute time frame.

Ninja's most damaging combo is their Aeolian Edge combo, which is a total potency of (150 + 200 + 320) = 670 Potency. Assuming no haste, no poisons, no slashing debuff, no buffs, absolutely nothing - Ninja can perform this 670 Potency combo every 7.5s for a total of 5,360 potency. Add 10% from double Balance (or Extended Balance) and you get an additional potency of 536 which is much better than what double Spear can give your Ninja DPS. This also doesn't include the fact that Raiton itself will be affected by Balance as well and you'll up with an additional 108 Potency over those 60s.

Just a bit more food for thought in terms of probability:

Drawing two Spears in a row is a 2.77% chance of occurring (Extended Spear is not the same as double Spear due to how the spacing of Ninjutsu - spear would wear off after the third Ninjutsu and push the 4th Ninjutsu to 68s)
Drawing two Balances in a row is a 2.77% chance of occurring. Drawing Spear and RRing it for Extend then drawing Balance is also 2.77% chance (you'll probably end up using Arrow unless TP is tight at the time) - this effectively makes drawing double Balance / Extended balance a 5.54% occurrence.

Neither of these probabilities take into account the usage of Shuffle.

[Elth]

Hop

Note that I agree with you !

I wouldn't say that Spear should be Spread at all times. If anything, it's interesting to do so when LA's LS' Synastry's CDs are over 80% done and you'll need to use them on spot. OR right before engaging the boss, i'm pretty sure we can all agree that an Expanded Spear on the whole group right at the beggining of a fight is super strong.

I'm just saying that without considering Spreading the card, there a lot of situations where the 15s window of the card drawn and waiting can be used on you to reduce at least one of your healing CDs.

In that, it's definitely not the card that should make you say "sh*t, gotta shuffle that crappy thing". You could say it's situational to use optimally, but overall can find its uses pretty much everytime.

[Elth]

As to using it as RR fodder now that Balance/Arrow's base duration as been doubled... theorycrafting this is gonna be a pain indeed and it's way too soon to talk about it without proper numbers.

(damn character restriction)

[TraeSnow]

How is spear bad?
My raid group has an Astro main as it's healer, since the start of expansion, and I'm always telling her how much I love her spear cards as a SMN.
Lowered Aetherflow CD, which in turn increases my own dps, lowered Rouse/Spur + Enkindle, Lowered Tri-Disaster.
Spear is one of the best cards I've seen.

[RichardButte]

In this case, being RR Fodder is still better than a person staring at the card and blanching, so I find it acceptable in my mind.

Unless we've already got one RRed, which seems to happen a great deal, heh...

Though if they buffed Spear like that, it would certainly make Spear significantly more desirable. I got a feeling actually programming that in though is much more difficult than us discussing it is.

True, though I think I'd still like to see this change.

I think EVERY card should create a debate in the AST's mind: "Do I use this, or do I RR it?"

Spear is a no-brainer. If by some chance I'm about to use a CD, I use it on myself, unless there's a ninja, then I always dump it on the ninja. Otherwise, I RR it. CDs tend to either be used in a rotation and therefore instantly or in the event of an emergency, and neither of those are situations where a CD can be held off for a Spear.

If it reduced existing timers, it'd be perfect: you could fire it off on anyone and odds are that you'd give them some serious benefit because they either will have a CD to cast in the next 20 seconds or they'll have existing abilities on CD.

Maybe they'd need to make it so you couldn't double dip or something (ie an ability cools down faster while under the effect of spear and you use it again).

Another idea would be to make spear last 60 seconds and have 2 charges, where each CD used spent a charged and reduced it by 20%...

I'm just saying that without considering Spreading the card, there a lot of situations where the 15s window of the card drawn and waiting can be used on you to reduce at least one of your healing CDs.

If you're in a situation where you're rotating healing CDs for big mechanics, yeah, spear SHOULD always be useful there.

Also, you can make a post, then edit it and paste in your post and save to bypass the character limit.

I don't know why they have it, TBH...

[Ghishlain]

Another idea would be to make spear last 60 seconds and have 2 charges, where each CD used spent a charged and reduced it by 20%...

I really like this idea. It also makes the target think about how they want to use Spear too.

[Dervy]

I just can't take seriously anyone saying Spear is a bad card...
It may even be one of the best of all. NIN gets a huge benefit from it, not mentionning tanks and their Hallowed Ground with a little coordination.

But most of all, it's the best card we can cast on US ! LA CU CO LS all benefit greatly from it, allowing for a very decent MP conservation/regeneration, Synastry aswell is enhanced by a spear, even moreso now that it boosts our healing potency.
And what most people usually forget about, it allows to draw MORE cards, reducing the cooldown on Draw and Shuffle.

With THAT much oGCD benefiting from it, it doesn't seem so situational anymore, to me.

Thank you. There's times where even I prefer a Spear over a Balance. Spear is an amazing card. I've never understood why people dislike it or think it's a junk card. From a Dragoons perspective:

a) Allows me to get a fully buffed up "4th" after my FT
b) As the buff is now 30s, I can change my rotation ever so slightly to not clip my buffed CT ticks, giving me a huge boost in DPS
c) Times where I really need the decreased in GCD to help me catch up with my BotD otherwise it'll fall off

[RichardButte]

I really like this idea. It also makes the target think about how they want to use Spear too.

And it would let them do it at their own pace, when they're ready to fire the CD instead of feeling pressured into firing it.

b) As the buff is now 30s, I can change my rotation ever so slightly to not clip my buffed CT ticks, giving me a huge boost in DPS

Spear's duration hasn't changed: it's still 20 seconds.

And the problem is more from an AST's perspective: if one of the classes that it's good to throw Spear on isn't in our party, then we have a harder time using the card.

Also, which is better: More CD usage, or 30 more seconds of 10% damage?