Quote Originally Posted by Mutemutt View Post
Well, I'd say there is a very big difference in opportunity cost here. Every ewer or spear you actually use on yourself to deal with your own mp issues comes at the cost of the expand/extend buffs from royal road or just possibly another buff (most preferably one to increase the parties dps) through the use of shuffle. Whereas the only drawback to freecure, and the other cost reducing traits, is perhaps extra enmity. That enmity, by the way, will be continuously cut in half by shroud of saints so over the course of a long encounter it is negligible.
To be fair, WHM has more reliable MP recovery (Assize + Shroud) than AST anyways; freecure is just icing on the cake, and more comparable to Ewer being drawn. Assize is it's own little tool, and AST doesn't have anything similar.