The Case for the Spear

[MoroMurasaki]

I agree with your core concept here I really do. I like what you're doing and your philosophy of helping new players I just feel like these situations are so few and far between for the rest of the playerbase that it does not amount to a compelling argument for the Spear to stay in as it's current iteration. Healing recieved, healing output, a debuff over all enemies currently engaged... There are a ton of ways that the slot that the Spear currently takes up could be filled by something more useful and worthwhile.

Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm not someone calling for the Spear to be changed right now. As it stands the Spear is maybe the only cement block tied to AST's feet and I have called for nerfs to Balance and/or raw healing power in the past for AST. I don't think they need another good card right now. I also don't think that they will stay this OP forever though and as someone who has had their opening AoE Balance overwritten by an AoE Spear I think I speak for the majority of the AST playerbase when I say that this card holds no value for most players of this class since most people are not in your specific set of circumstances.

This actually reminds me a bit of Cleric Stance - it's removal made me sad for both practical and impractical reasons. I was proud of my ability to stance dance and for the damage bump it gave me when I used it but at the same time I understood that for the majority of casual healers it was a huge gateway in terms of them trying to effectively DPS in their role. It worked for me, sure, but for the good of all healers it needed to be changed. The Spear is just appealing to an even smaller niche market.

[Furious]

The main issue with the logical gymnastics you made in the OP is that even if the criteria laid out are met, chances are you would have been significantly better off completing whatever activity you describe 10% faster via a spread balance.

You provide examples of when the spear might be beneficial (mostly revolving around personal cooldowns, which are largely low-impact in the first place as an astralogian), but fail to provide math to back up their impact. Specifical examples are: If you need to use Lucid Dreaming at 96 seconds instead of 120 seconds, and that will actually make a difference, then you are almost definitely better off with a spread balance to get you into out-of-combat mana regen earlier, and even Ewer is significantly better.

Healer cooldowns just don't work like that; it's the same reason why Lillies are essentially an ignorable mechanic on WHM - you use the cooldowns when you need to, and it's almost impossible to gain practical benefit from a one-off cooldown reduction. There actually are many cases where dps can benefit significantly from spear if you can negotiate with them on timing (bard is one that comes to mind where the potential gain from a well-timed spear is incredibly high), but it's far too situational. Situational cards are ok, but there are too many and they are too weak even when the situation arises; that's why not only spear, but also ewer and spire are effectively non-existent as primary-use cards.

That is to say; even in the best-case scenario, there are exceptionally few examples where spear isn't still worse than balance or even arrow.

I've basically stopped playing astralogian now because I just hate the card system. You need upward of 8 binds (with two more to come in 4.05) to manage a 30 second cooldown, which in practice is frustrating far more often than it is rewarding. I love every aspect of astrologian except the cards, which keep getting expanded instead of paired back. The best experience with the cards for me is way back early in the leveling roulette, when you have ONLY draw, and you're stuck with what you get. You make a decision based on what you get, and that's that; it's done. Sometimes it can be high impact, sometimes it's not, but it doesn't take up so much of your time in consideration and keybinds.

If it were up to me, I would:
Remove undraw
Remove minor arcana
Remove spread (possibly not, it might be ok to hold a card with the following rr change)
Make royal road a toggle that cycles between aoe > power > duration with no cooldown
Remove sleeve draw

In a world with a draw system like this, there is far less onus on drawing a balance, because you just cant rely on it (you're stuck with what you get). You also don't get into awful situations where you can't dump your spread without wasting your royal road which you want to use on your draw. You draw a card, you choose how you want to use it via a modifier toggle instead of another random draw on another 30 second cooldown, and if you want to hold a card for later you can. Less rng reliance, more decision making around what you have now rather than what you might get next time.

[NocturniaUzuki]

You provide examples of when the spear might be beneficial (mostly revolving around personal cooldowns, which are largely low-impact in the first place as an astralogian), but fail to provide math to back up their impact. Specifical examples are: If you need to use Lucid Dreaming at 96 seconds instead of 120 seconds, and that will actually make a difference, then you are almost definitely better off with a spread balance to get you into out-of-combat mana regen earlier, and even Ewer is significantly better.

You are assuming here that the combat situation is against mobs, not a boss. As I mentioned in response to @MoroMurasaki, I am primarily talking about trial/raid situations. Not that the Spear is necessarily useless in mob dungeons, but the situations in which it is actually useful are so few and far between that it's not really worth trying to argue for.

Healer cooldowns just don't work like that; it's the same reason why Lillies are essentially an ignorable mechanic on WHM - you use the cooldowns when you need to, and it's almost impossible to gain practical benefit from a one-off cooldown reduction. Situational cards are ok, but there are too many and they are too weak even when the situation arises; that's why not only spear, but also ewer and spire are effectively non-existent as primary-use cards.

It sounds like you're only taking into account smooth runs. Yes, we only use certain cooldowns, like our 'emergency' spells, when we need to. But who is to say that "when we need to" isn't more often than the spell's base cooldown? Sure, if you're in a farming party and you use a major cooldown to fix someone's mechanic error, then it's not likely to happen again a few seconds later. If it does, then someone is going to post the "I thought this was a farm party" macro and leave, leading to a disband.

If it were up to me, I would:
Remove undraw
Remove minor arcana
Remove spread (possibly not, it might be ok to hold a card with the following rr change)
Make royal road a toggle that cycles between aoe > power > duration with no cooldown
Remove sleeve draw

In a world with a draw system like this, there is far less onus on drawing a balance, because you just cant rely on it (you're stuck with what you get). You also don't get into awful situations where you can't dump your spread without wasting your royal road which you want to use on your draw. You draw a card, you choose how you want to use it via a modifier toggle instead of another random draw on another 30 second cooldown, and if you want to hold a card for later you can. Less rng reliance, more decision making around what you have now rather than what you might get next time.

This sounds unbelievably boring to me. I like that we can control it to some extent, but not entirely. If I desperately need to find a Ewer because I'm out of mana and Lucid is on cooldown, I actually have a decent chance at rolling it. A roughly 1/3 chance with just Draw/Redraw, and if that fails I can throw out all my cards and use Sleeve Draw for another 1/3 chance. Of course, people try to do the same thing with Balance, but that's just those people. There's never a situation where you genuinely need Balance. People just want it. Hyper-simplifying the system the way you want just to get rid of people fishing for Balance would kill off the genuine usefulness of having some control over the cards just to try to stop something that is the fault of the players' mindset, not the system itself.

Edit: Actually, I suppose you could have a DPS check situation where you "need" Balance just to clear the check.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I agree with your core concept here I really do. I like what you're doing and your philosophy of helping new players I just feel like these situations are so few and far between for the rest of the playerbase that it does not amount to a compelling argument for the Spear to stay in as it's current iteration. Healing recieved, healing output, a debuff over all enemies currently engaged... There are a ton of ways that the slot that the Spear currently takes up could be filled by something more useful and worthwhile.

Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm not someone calling for the Spear to be changed right now. As it stands the Spear is maybe the only cement block tied to AST's feet and I have called for nerfs to Balance and/or raw healing power in the past for AST. I don't think they need another good card right now. I also don't think that they will stay this OP forever though and as someone who has had their opening AoE Balance overwritten by an AoE Spear I think I speak for the majority of the AST playerbase when I say that this card holds no value for most players of this class since most people are not in your specific set of circumstances.

This actually reminds me a bit of Cleric Stance - it's removal made me sad for both practical and impractical reasons. I was proud of my ability to stance dance and for the damage bump it gave me when I used it but at the same time I understood that for the majority of casual healers it was a huge gateway in terms of them trying to effectively DPS in their role. It worked for me, sure, but for the good of all healers it needed to be changed. The Spear is just appealing to an even smaller niche market.

We can agree there, then. It is definitely reminiscent of Cleric Stance, though I hope they never just effectively remove Spear the way they effectively removed CS. I would be okay with either nerfing AST's other cards, or possibly a change to Spear that maintains its current identity. There have been some suggestions that call for changing Spear to instantly reduce cooldowns by a percentage. This is a decent compromise, although what I don't like about it is how, from a safety-first player's perspective, it encourages us to do nothing but fish for Spear all the time just to use it on ourselves to have our cooldowns up at all times. If this change was made, I'd probably find myself still holding a Spear, and/or just using any Spear I find on myself.

[Furious]

You are assuming here that the combat situation is against mobs, not a boss. As I mentioned in response to @MoroMurasaki, I am primarily talking about trial/raid situations. Not that the Spear is necessarily useless in mob dungeons, but the situations in which it is actually useful are so few and far between that it's not really worth trying to argue for.

It's not any better in trials, I'm not sure how you could argue that it is

It sounds like you're only taking into account smooth runs. Yes, we only use certain cooldowns, like our 'emergency' spells, when we need to. But who is to say that "when we need to" isn't more often than the spell's base cooldown? Sure, if you're in a farming party and you use a major cooldown to fix someone's mechanic error, then it's not likely to happen again a few seconds later. If it does, then someone is going to post the "I thought this was a farm party" macro and leave, leading to a disband.

So you want to use emergency situations as an argument for spear being useful, which is a card you don't want to get in the first place.. which lasts half as long as other more useful cards. Are you holding spear incase you have an emergency, thereby delaying your other draws or blocking your spread if you get a followup balance? Are you talking about using spear when you get it just in case you have an emergency?

I hope you can see how futile it is to argue that spear is fine because it allows you to reduce your cooldowns by 20% for 15 seconds, and you MIGHT need those abilities again some time in the last 20% of their cooldowns to respond to an emergency. It's even worse in this scenario than it is in a planned scenario or when using it on a dps to reduce their rotational cooldowns.

This sounds unbelievably boring to me. I like that we can control it to some extent, but not entirely. If I desperately need to find a Ewer because I'm out of mana and Lucid is on cooldown, I actually have a decent chance at rolling it. A roughly 1/3 chance with just Draw/Redraw, and if that fails I can throw out all my cards and use Sleeve Draw for another 1/3 chance. Of course, people try to do the same thing with Balance, but that's just those people. There's never a situation where you genuinely need Balance. People just want it. Hyper-simplifying the system the way you want just to get rid of people fishing for Balance would kill off the genuine usefulness of having some control over the cards just to try to stop something that is the fault of the players' mindset, not the system itself.

Edit: Actually, I suppose you could have a DPS check situation where you "need" Balance just to clear the check.

This is an irrational argument that stems from a self-sustaining belief that balance being much stronger than everything else is "just in people's heads". It's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible says so.

We can agree there, then. It is definitely reminiscent of Cleric Stance, though I hope they never just effectively remove Spear the way they effectively removed CS. I would be okay with either nerfing AST's other cards, or possibly a change to Spear that maintains its current identity. There have been some suggestions that call for changing Spear to instantly reduce cooldowns by a percentage. This is a decent compromise, although what I don't like about it is how, from a safety-first player's perspective, it encourages us to do nothing but fish for Spear all the time just to use it on ourselves to have our cooldowns up at all times. If this change was made, I'd probably find myself still holding a Spear, and/or just using any Spear I find on myself.

There is absolutely no reason you would ever logically do this. There are almost no healer cooldowns that have as measurable an impact as cooldowns of a dps or tank and certainly not astrologian ones. Healing is a zero-sum game, you only need to do "enough". DPS is a no-ceiling game; you can always benefit from more.

[NocturniaUzuki]

It's not any better in trials, I'm not sure how you could argue that it is

@Furious

Read the thread.

Judging by your responses, you either didn't read it or if you did you are choosing to ignore everything I said and discredit my argument without actually trying to counter-argue any of the points I made. If that's the case, then there's no point trying to argue. Like you said: it's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible said so. Or more to the point, because they believe in it strongly and won't be shaken by anything. To me, that's what your responses sound look like: "Spear is bad because Balance is better. Why? Because I believe Balance is better." And nothing I can say will change that opinion.

[Hyperia]

Originally, AST was going to have bad cards. They removed that but added cards of very low desirability, hence spear.

[Furious]

@Furious

Read the thread.

Judging by your responses, you either didn't read it or if you did you are choosing to ignore everything I said and discredit my argument without actually trying to counter-argue any of the points I made. If that's the case, then there's no point trying to argue. Like you said: it's like when religious people claim god exists because the bible said so. Or more to the point, because they believe in it strongly and won't be shaken by anything. To me, that's what your responses sound look like: "Spear is bad because Balance is better. Why? Because I believe Balance is better." And nothing I can say will change that opinion.

It's not an opinion; it's a fact based on currently available evidence. Until such a point that you provide evidence (rather than conjecture) to the contrary, it remains the currently accepted theorem.

I have read the thread, and that is why I know that you are yet to provide supporting evidence to support your statements. That is to say, it's not enough to say "I can use lucid dreaming in 96 seconds rather than 120", but rather why that is objectively superior. Or, why in the hell you would EVER think that 20% reduction to astrologian abilities would ever be better than almost any other class. You say I am coming from a place of belief, but that is where you are coming from. Evidence exists to support the strength of balance and the weakness of spear; yours is the burden to prove otherwise when you make this thread.

Nothing you have said so far has come close to doing so. You can absolutely convince me that spear is better than balance (or even better than the opportunity cost of not using spear), if you provide the proof that shows it. For the record, I don't think anyone would argue that you should discard spear rather than use it if there is no opportunity cost. If it's not delaying your next roll or consuming a potential spread on a better card, have at it.

[Averax]

Spear = Minor Arcana fuel.

Unless your party has really good coordination, the spear isn't that good, and i'd probably only use it on myself before using my own cooldowns, but not for much else.