Using AST's Expand in Light Party Duties

[Arrius]

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".

Yet you still need a different card to play it out, and by the time you draw a better one, it's usually more useful to apply the buff single-target. That's what I mean.
And don't get tell me you use Expand Spires and Ewer, that's just sad.

Hmm, isn't it similar to use expand when compared to using any of the other RR?

Typical party damage output (actually on the low side because healer is AST T_T): DPS = 100% healer/tank = 50%
So DPS does 1 damage and tank and healer does 0.5

Using Balance:
With Expand you have 1.05+1.05+0.525+0.525=3.15
With Enhanced you have 1.15+1+0.5+0.5 = 3.15
With Extend there is no point because you are using up a spear or arrow for it

I don't see much difference of using any of the 3 RR so on average it should be best to burn all spire/ewer if you ever hit one on redraw because dropping it is just a wasted card.

You can talk about times when 1 dps does a significant amount more damage than another but thats all guess work and it is still only a minor difference. At least I don't believe the difference is big enough to call someone lazy or bad.

That's purely based on wishful thinking that each one of the member has a 100% damage uptime, which will never happen. Everyone has to dodge, healers have to heal, tanks have to reposition. The DPS have the least problems with that, since either they got gapclosers to get back to the boss instantly, can continue to dps right after stepping out of the aoe without a need for respositioning (casters) or aren't affected by movement at all (bards and mechanics).

You also can't tell me that applying Spear with Expand is a equal improvement than just giving it to the Bard, which we know they really get a kick out of extra crit compared to anyone else. Or that you use Expand Bole while the tank only takes damage.

And to top it off - Sometimes you 'miss' people with Expand and buff maybe only half the group due to positioning.