The Case for the Spear

[Fortune_Cookie]

1. Your party is taking a lot of damage and you are burning through your MP. You want to use Lucid Dreaming + Celestial Opposition, but you know that, at the current rate of MP use, you will need to use Lucid Dreaming again before its 120 second cooldown is up.

Solution: Use the Spear to reduce your cooldown to 96 seconds, preventing you from running out of MP.

2. You need to use several major cooldowns in a row in order to save the party, including Lightspeed, Largesse, Lucid Dreaming, Celestial Opposition, and Swiftcast. You know if you use all of these cooldowns, you will be left largely incapable of dealing with anything more than a single death, and judging by how often your party members have been dying, you will need those cooldowns sooner rather than later.

Solution: Use the Spear to reduce all of the cooldowns, allowing you to get your party back on its feet and be more likely to have your cooldowns back up in time for the next problem.

3. Combine #1 and #2, or even #1, #2, and several cards. Look at your cooldowns: how many have a cooldown of exactly 120 seconds or less? Feel free to use the Spear, then use all of them at once, putting all of them on reduced cooldown while simultaneously allowing you to deal with a disaster situation.

Those scenarios are a little artificial and mainly demonstrate that, in order to get the most use out of a Spear, the AST may well have made several inefficient decisions beforehand.

Re scenario 1. Why are Lucid and CO off cooldown? Are you holding them to wait for a Spear? Easy to see that this is going to cost you more than you gain pretty quickly. How long does the fight last - is there even any value in the reduced cd?

Re scenario 2. Why do you have a Spear just as you decide to blow all you cooldowns? Are you just lucky or have you been holding a Spear throughout the entire fight, potentially missing out on holding a balance for a dps check? What if that 'oh shit' moment never comes - you've essentially given up on you spread slot. Why are all your cooldowns available at the same time - would using some of them earlier have helped to stabilise the party and avoid the critical situation in the first place?

Spear is not useless. All things being equal I'd rather have my abilities have a shorter cooldown. But it's very situational and the opportunity cost of delaying or even missing out on an aoe balance is severe. Even from a defensive standpoint, damage equates to mitigation and mp economy by reducing fight times/phase transitions happening sooner etc.