The Case for the Spear

[Fortune_Cookie]

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

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.)

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

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