The Case for the Spear

[NocturniaUzuki]

@Sebazy

You have written out one of the problems with that approach, though: "theoretically you could throw out 3 back to back aoe balances with this approach if you got lucky enough with Sleeve Draw."

Regardless of that, though, even if we assume your analysis is right (and I will cede here and assume it is), there is still the question of just how effective constant AoE Balance even is. Even assuming the impossible outcome that you have AoE Balance up for literally the entire fight, you're only actually increasing the clear speed by 10%. That's actually a very small number. Granted, if you're doing this fight 10 times in a row, you save yourself an entire battle's length in time. But then a single wipe caused by not having a spell off cooldown when you needed it (which could have been fixed by a Spear) can instantly cancel out that entire amount of time saved.

There's also the simple question of whether you actually care about speed to begin with. I think the majority of players do. Certainly, a large portion of Material Goal Achievers do, and some Immaterial Goal Achievers do too (the speedclearers and others who care about speed as a goal). But there's also a not-insignificant number of players who don't care how fast they clear something, but just want to actually clear it. Most people don't enjoy wiping.

I know one common counter-argument to this is that "killing the boss faster reduces the chance of a wipe." There's a certain element of truth to this, but I don't think it's as significant as some people seem to believe. Especially since bosses in FFXIV are entirely scripted, the same section of the fight that people may wipe on is typically going to happen regardless of how fast the boss dies (except in a few circumstances, like ThordanEX's late phase knight combos, and even this is mainly due to the fact that people no longer practice those sections due to the average clear time being before those mechanics appear). Overall, I consider mistake recovery to be much more tangible than indirect mistake prevention via mechanic-skipping.

[Sebazy]

You have written out one of the problems with that approach

Oh aye, getting lucky enough to AoE three balances is pretty much lottery ticket time, I've not seen it first hand yet and I imagine it'll be a while until I do, the odds of managing two back to back AoE balances are much higher though which was the core of my point there.

I know one common counter-argument to this is that "killing the boss faster reduces the chance of a wipe." There's a certain element of truth to this, but I don't think it's as significant as some people seem to believe. Especially since bosses in FFXIV are entirely scripted, the same section of the fight that people may wipe on is typically going to happen regardless of how fast the boss dies (except in a few circumstances, like ThordanEX's late phase knight combos, and even this is mainly due to the fact that people no longer practice those sections due to the average clear time being before those mechanics appear).

Actually I think that opposite is a surprisingly common misconception IMHO. A lot of people don't realise how important it's been to hit certain DPS thresholds throughout FFXIV's endgame (Aka Savage). As Hyomin mentions, ZurvanEX's Soargate saga is probably the most widely seen example, A12S was very much in the same vein as ThordanEX, the last two mechanics were significantly nastier and even with echo, having enough DPS to skip those final mechanics was pretty much mandatory if a pug or casual group was going to clear it smoothly.

Creator in particular was riddled with similar cases throughout, skipping late mechanics in A9S absolutely trivialised the fight. In A10S you could skip key debuffs and tank busters allowing you to solo tank the encounter or at least ignore fairly significant mechanics. In A11S you could skip an entire (annoying) phase. This isn't a recent trend either, many turns such as T12, T6S, A8S and even good old Titan HM rewarded good DPS with easier healer checks.

I definitely feel you on the risk adverse side of things though, I've always been super cautious and conservative with my raiding methodology (Thus my DPS was pretty awful when compared the calibre of healers I play alongside), but I think there's better ways to play it safe than overthinking our card mechanics. Both A3S and A4S made me appreciate the value of optimising DPS where I can whilst introducing as little risk as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGUMzl2cV0

This was a video I uploaded for a different thread here a little while back, it's not a cherry picked run and it was far from perfect on my part, rather it was a random shadowplay capture from a PF pug that evening to seek some suggestions. A few points are relevant to this discussion though.

@3:18, having spread open for that balance meant I could immediately get Draw ticking again and promptly hit the jackpot with an AoE RR just in-time for when Alexander reappeared after the intermission.

@4:50 I get a balance with no RR on hand, using it at that point would have been a complete waste both due to the mechanics at hand and the bard's death adding to the distraction. Instead I saved it for a full minute to keep it for the time gates where it was much more useful.

Another thing to note is how quickly I try to get Draw back on cooldown after pulling a card, this is maximise my card throughput and counteract the windows where I actively choose not to pull a card in the interests of avoiding risking a death in certain situations (@0:30 to @1:00 is a good example of this).

Pps, quality debate btw. Much <3 even if it's not immediately apparent!