Balance was balanced

[Rhyn]

Reality check, spear is still garbage. +10% chance to crit is nowhere near +10% damage. Crit multiplier is 1.4x now. So it is just above 0.4x (due to crit dmg scaling) of the new balance. 0.2x of the old balance. It should have been 20% if it was supposed to be competetive. That way it would have been 0.8% of the new 10% balance, and won't pass it even at the end of the raid tier. Or 15% if it was supposed to be around 0.6x of the new balance.

[RichardButte]

Reality check, spear is still garbage. +10% chance to crit is nowhere near +10% damage. Crit multiplier is 1.4x now. So it is just above 0.4x (due to crit dmg scaling) of the new balance. 0.2x of the old balance. It should have been 20% if it was supposed to be competetive. That way it would have been 0.8% of the new 10% balance, and won't pass it even at the end of the raid tier. Or 15% if it was supposed to be around 0.6x of the new balance.

...And maybe it'll get that adjustment in the future, but this is a massive step in the right direction for the Spear card in general.

They either needed to make it speed up the CDs of abilities that were already on CD or do something else with it entirely and they chose option #2.

Again, healers don't benefit from damage increase but they do from crit increase, so factor in that 2 members of an 8 person party weren't getting anything from Balance.

And unlike with Arrow, crit is free damage AND healing that doesn't come at the cost of spending your resources faster.

It's not perfect, but this is a big change for Spear and they could very well still adjust it again at a later time.

[Wilbow]

Reality check, spear is still garbage. +10% chance to crit is nowhere near +10% damage. Crit multiplier is 1.4x now. So it is just above 0.4x (due to crit dmg scaling) of the new balance. 0.2x of the old balance. It should have been 20% if it was supposed to be competetive. That way it would have been 0.8% of the new 10% balance, and won't pass it even at the end of the raid tier. Or 15% if it was supposed to be around 0.6x of the new balance.

Yeah, I get the impression that people forget that crits are 1.4x and NOT 2x, a fact that completely changes how you look at spear's usefulness. At best, we're looking at it being around half as good as balance with the right comp at the end of this tier.

As somebody who mains WHM rather than AST, my question is (with the new SB skills) if it's statistically worth it to use AoE spear or just to throw it away for another chance at AoE balance.

Because if AoE spear isn't worth throwing if you get unlucky enough to get it, AST QoL hasn't really improved at all has it?


@Richard: While heals don't benefit from Balance, HEALERS definitely can. If an expanded Balance comes along, I'm totally snapshotting my Aero II/III ASAP and then again right before it drops. So for me as a WHM, it's about ~45 seconds of doing ~7-10% more damage on average (depending on how many Stone IVs I can throw out).

If we assume I'd hit the 75th percentile for WHM on FFLOGs, I'm doing ~1k DPS, so that Balance is giving me ALONE an extra 4k damage (8.5% damage increase for 45 seconds). It's not much compared to DPS, but it's not nothing.

[Furious]

Reality check, spear is still garbage. +10% chance to crit is nowhere near +10% damage. Crit multiplier is 1.4x now. So it is just above 0.4x (due to crit dmg scaling) of the new balance. 0.2x of the old balance. It should have been 20% if it was supposed to be competetive. That way it would have been 0.8% of the new 10% balance, and won't pass it even at the end of the raid tier. Or 15% if it was supposed to be around 0.6x of the new balance.

Yeah, I get the impression that people forget that crits are 1.4x and NOT 2x, a fact that completely changes how you look at spear's usefulness. At best, we're looking at it being around half as good as balance with the right comp at the end of this tier.

As somebody who mains WHM rather than AST, my question is (with the new SB skills) if it's statistically worth it to use AoE spear or just to throw it away for another chance at AoE balance.

Because if AoE spear isn't worth throwing if you get unlucky enough to get it, AST QoL hasn't really improved at all has it?


@Richard: While heals don't benefit from Balance, HEALERS definitely can. If an expanded Balance comes along, I'm totally snapshotting my Aero II/III ASAP and then again right before it drops. So for me as a WHM, it's about ~45 seconds of doing ~7-10% more damage on average (depending on how many Stone IVs I can throw out).

If we assume I'd hit the 75th percentile for WHM on FFLOGs, I'm doing ~1k DPS, so that Balance is giving me ALONE an extra 4k damage (8.5% damage increase for 45 seconds). It's not much compared to DPS, but it's not nothing.

Crit multiplier scales with crit% from rating, which means that it is universally the best stat for dps for every class in the tiers to come thanks to quadratic growth, and that everyone's crit multiplier will be higher than 40% by a margin as much as their rating-based crit-chance.

At 3000 crit rating, for example, crit multi is 62%.

Many classes also benefit nondirectly from critical strikes even when it isn't a direct damage increase. Bard breaths from crit, monks have some interaction with crit, scholars need to crit for good shields.. is that it? I don't know enough to know other classes quirks. All of these are non-direct gains from crit that aren't visible in a pure direct damage comparison, and that don't "double dip" from balance in the same way.

Giving up a spear for a chance at a balance mid-fight would be an extremely bad choice. Even if we assume that crit damage is only 40%, the chance of rerolling a spear to get a balance is 20%, with a 20% chance at the mostly-neutral arrow and 60% chance of something worse (in most cases).

Spear is definitely not as good as balance and probably never will be, but it's good enough to use rather than using nothing.

[Wilbow]

Giving up a spear for a chance at a balance mid-fight would be an extremely bad choice. Even if we assume that crit damage is only 40%, the chance of rerolling a spear to get a balance is 20%, with a 20% chance at the mostly-neutral arrow and 60% chance of something worse (in most cases).

Spear is definitely not as good as balance and probably never will be, but it's good enough to use rather than using nothing.

Good to know, and I kind of expected (hoped?) as such. I never expected or wanted it to be as good as Balance, but just good enough in comparison that it's a good idea to just use it instead of playing the odds in most situations. "Balance or bust" was just not a good system imo.

I still wish that Spear was 15% crit chance, but that's a minor gripe and overall these changes to cards are exactly what I think most people were looking for. Both Spear and Balance were major sticking points for AST, and these changes are way better for the health of the job in the long term.

[Rhinos]

Reality check, spear is still garbage. +10% chance to crit is nowhere near +10% damage. Crit multiplier is 1.4x now. So it is just above 0.4x (due to crit dmg scaling) of the new balance. 0.2x of the old balance. It should have been 20% if it was supposed to be competetive. That way it would have been 0.8% of the new 10% balance, and won't pass it even at the end of the raid tier. Or 15% if it was supposed to be around 0.6x of the new balance.

And that's not even counting spears shorter 20 sec duration. Adding that to the equation, the nerfed balance is more than 3 times as potent spear 2.0 in most circumstances. While I like the new spear effect and I think it's okay for balance to be stronger, spear's duration really should be bumped up to 30 seconds.