Using AST's Expand in Light Party Duties

[Zojha]

I can not be the highest DPS, but still be #2 just because BRD is ridiculous with regards to the amount of aggro it produces.

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

[Ghishlain]

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

I'm not a Bard main but if I would take a guess it would be a combination of the following:

1. Bard openers are very powerful from what I understand, leading to huge spike in enmity at the beginning
2. DPS opening with Diversion - this means they can open hard but still generate less aggro overall resulting in a lower starting enmity compared to BRD
3. BRD only have enmity dumps where as melee DPS only have the ability to lower their enmity accumulation temporarily (DRG being an exception due to Elusive Jump). This can lead into BRD aggro going above melee DPS before being dropped suddenly from use of Tacticians or Refresh. This is especially true when you compare BRD to NIN given the number of enmity tools NIN have available, allowing them to maintain very high damage with little fear of over taking the tanks. In a boss fight in a 4-man dungeon, I can definitely see BRD having a higher enmity than NIN but the NIN still doing more damage. Likewise for a DRG making liberal use of Elusive Jump to do mechanics as that's a 30s CD with an enmity dump attached.

[Zojha]

I'm not a Bard main but if I would take a guess it would be a combination of the following [...]

Well, you're explaining a different phenomenon entirely. The person I quoted claimed you can be top of the aggro without being top of the DPS as Bard solely because the job generates a lot of enmity - Not because other people have used their enmity tools, those tools were mentioned separately. And that confuses me because it goes against how I thought enmity in this game works.

A bursty opener generates a lot of aggro because it does a lot of damage - that makes perfect sense. A DPS simply generating a lot of aggro without also generating DPS... less so. To me anyway. But going over that in great detail would just derail the thread I guess.


Edit: I see. It was bad phrasing.

[Risvertasashi]

Well, you're explaining a different phenomenon entirely. The person I quoted claimed you can be top of the aggro without being top of the DPS as Bard solely because the job generates a lot of enmity

You're right in that it's the other way around. Modifiers are negative, otherwise all DPS jobs would be equal, and aggro actually would be a "better than nothing" way to gauge relative DPS.

[Kyeria]

While Expanded has reduced potency and is less effective than Extended in Light Parties, all I have to say is this; Using any buff is better than doing nothing and hoarding cards for 3 minutes trying to get the perfect setup to last for 30 seconds. I cannot tell you how many Astrologians I've played with that go through 3-6 waves of enemies not using cards because they only want Extended Balance. That's honestly, what I call a bad Astrologian.

Obviously, I don't recommend throwing an expanded Spire/Ewer due to the useless nature of the cards, but if you've shuffled and it's all you got I don't see it as being a "Bad" Ast to buff the team when you can.
Now, if you're intentionally storing terrible cards that's a different story...

[Arrius]

There is nothing wrong with expanded balance and so forth, even in light parties. Well, unless one DPS is 5k and the other is 1k. But if they're close enough, and tank and healer and DPSing, it's still a good gain. And even if there is a large disparity, sometimes you just have to roll with what RNGsus gives you.

Or you actually play them out properly and pick favorites. Some observation is required, but once you know who performs better, you know who gets card priority (depending on the damage role, of course) since you want to have your cards used for maximum effect.

While Expanded has reduced potency and is less effective than Extended in Light Parties, all I have to say is this; Using any buff is better than doing nothing and hoarding cards for 3 minutes trying to get the perfect setup to last for 30 seconds. I cannot tell you how many Astrologians I've played with that go through 3-6 waves of enemies not using cards because they only want Extended Balance. That's honestly, what I call a bad Astrologian.

This is about people using Expand in light parties, not about 'lazy' Astrologians or ones that look for the perfect draw card combo. I only wonder about the obsession of burning Spire, while discarding it is a much better option 95%+ of the time.

[Risvertasashi]

Or you actually play them out properly and pick favorites. Some observation is required, but once you know who performs better, you know who gets card priority (depending on the damage role, of course) since you want to have your cards used for maximum effect.

Sometimes RNG won't play nice. Yes, with all the RNG mitigation AST has gotten, a lot of the time you can move things around and end up with a strengthened/extended single-target DPS buff. Nonetheless, it's still RNG, and sometimes it doesn't play nice.

Expanded is not so horrible it should never be used. Especially if everyone in the party is contributing at a close to equal level, but even if not, it's better than minutes of no buffs when RNG doesn't play out the way you want.

[Kyeria]

Snip

I think you missed the entire point of my post. Quite a few people in this thread alone have called AST's who use Expanded in 4 mans bad, which is why my explanation touched on that level of play as well as explaining why some people may use Expanded.

I guess I can go more into detail though...

"Why do some people use Expanded?"

Q: "Why do people use Expanded in 4 Mans!?"
A: If you've drawn a card and shuffled and it's all you have, using the buff is better than doing nothing. Contrary to popular belief, using any buff benefits the progression of the party more than going through 3 minutes/6 waves of enemies doing nothing, because you didn't get the card you "wanted".

Q: "Don't RR Ewer/Spire in 4 mans! Use Minor Arcana!"
A: Well, depending on the dungeon you may not even have the ability unlocked, but let's play devil's advocate and assume you do, there's still a possibility that you already have an Arcana Card stored. In this event, RR/Using the card it is still better than doing nothing if you've shuffled and it's all the RNG gods have given you.

Do I think Ewer & Spire are awful? Yes, but I still fall back on my original post.
I'd rather see someone RR Ewer & Spire and use ANY card than do absolutely nothing.

[HyoMinPark]

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

Bard burst is insanely high. Take my static for example. A lot of them can pop Diversion (MNK and NIN can), but BRD doesn't have such an ability to use during its opener (we can only pop Tactician/Refresh after the fact for it to have any effect on our aggro). By our MNK and NIN quelling their initial aggro, BRD can easily surpass them in terms of enmity because we don't have Diversion (because we don't need to give a job with an 8k burst any form of aggro quelling, no...absolutely not >.>). The MNK or NIN can be top DPS, but be lower than me on the enmity list because they have quelling options for their opener. I do not. (Funnily enough, the NIN in my static actually has to Smokescreen me so that I don't rip the boss off of the MT during my opener. The times he forgets to, I usually always rip hate... getting bopped by Hali or Exdeath = not fun.)

[Silver-Strider]

Bard burst is insanely high. Take my static for example. A lot of them can pop Diversion (MNK and NIN can), but BRD doesn't have such an ability to use during its opener (we can only pop Tactician/Refresh after the fact for it to have any effect on our aggro). By our MNK and NIN quelling their initial aggro, BRD can easily surpass them in terms of enmity because we don't have Diversion (because we don't need to give a job with an 8k burst any form of aggro quelling, no...absolutely not >.>). The MNK or NIN can be top DPS, but be lower than me on the enmity list because they have quelling options for their opener. I do not. (Funnily enough, the NIN in my static actually has to Smokescreen me so that I don't rip the boss off of the MT during my opener. The times he forgets to, I usually always rip hate... getting bopped by Hali or Exdeath = not fun.)

Tell your NIN to stop being lazy and smoke bomb you lol