Healers, then and now:

[ty_taurus]

If we really want to talk about useless cards, remember when Spear was a cool-down reduction that only affected cool-downs already used lol, so it would only work if you like, just so happened to use it on someone who’d used a cool-down lol. That effect didn’t last very at all before they replaced it

Actually it was the other way around. It only reduced the cooldown of OGCDs used during the duration of Spear, which could actually be incredibly powerful if timed correctly. I don't recall exactly, but I believe you could reduce the cooldown of Hallowed Ground by an entire minute with Spear. But that came with several problems: it desychs rotations aggressively when used effectively, and also requires a lot of team communication to use properly, which the longer you held onto Spear, the longer it'd take to get Draw's cooldown ticking again. It would actually have been way smoother if it also reduced the cooldowns of used OGCDs like you suggest as it wouldn't require highly specific situation knowledge and knowledge of every other job's kits to actually know when and what it affects to best utilize it. Imagine trying to decipher which of our 18 jobs most benefits from a card during your 30 second windows, 1 minute windows, 90 second windows, 2 minute windows, and 3 minute windows back during late SB and ShB.

[Sebazy]

If we really want to talk about useless cards, remember when Spear was a cool-down reduction that only affected cool-downs already used lol, so it would only work if you like, just so happened to use it on someone who’d used a cool-down lol. That effect didn’t last very at all before they replaced it

That's the card I was thinking of!

I pretty much got threatened with literal violence if I used it on some of my DPS lol =(

It had theoretical potential but for the most part, it just throw rotations and cooldown alignments out of the window causing things to pop when they didn't expect them.

[Connor]

I guess I’m mixing up what Spear used to be, and what it should’ve been (at the time lol) I do remember it having some synergy with Hallowed Ground, but mostly I just remember using it for Royal Road (assuming aoe wasn’t already up) to save myself the trouble lol

[Zakuyia]

People can say what they want. Yet i miss when my cards were not just Balance + and Balance O o. o like Astro cards did things. Its funny how that system exist but only in pvp would love for it to come back to open world but be more fleshed out. Now im stuck doing RNG against Melee dps vs Range DPS XD when back then cards could be more fun even if RNG was involved.

[Osmond]

Thought about bringing back the old card system…somewhat. It wouldn’t make sense to bring that back now other than PvP. What they can do is add a new hot bar where you can spread your card for AoE dmg buff at a reduced % for….every 90 secs.

[MintnHoney]

I guess I’m mixing up what Spear used to be, and what it should’ve been (at the time lol) I do remember it having some synergy with Hallowed Ground, but mostly I just remember using it for Royal Road (assuming aoe wasn’t already up) to save myself the trouble lol

Sadly, if the game wasn't so fixated on burst windows and choreographed timing, the original Spear would have been a beautiful card to have in later expansion. So many good abilities to reduce the cooldowns for, so many possibilities.
Then again, if the game wasn't so fixated on burst windows and choreographed timing, we probably wouldn't be having any of these conversations, as we'd probably have more to work with than what we've been left with after what basically amounts to multiple expansions of cut aways and shakedowns.

[Osmond]

Have to stop you there. You can blame the devs for focusing on burst windows, but I wonder. How did burst windows came to be? Hmmmmmmmmmmm, oh I know! I was back in ARR with all these bloated buff abilities, poison pots, SMN’s contagion before pull on the boss. Was it the community that created burst windows? Yes, the community did. HW’s AST with multiple extensions of their cards before/during boss fights? All community there. The community made it a norm so devs said, “let’s do that!” Now we’re upset. Can’t have nice things……

[ty_taurus]

Here's the thing... the gaming community has changed significantly over the last 20 years. In 2003, skill and knowledge regarding a game was something you developed largely by yourself, with the help of a strategy guide produced by the developer, or by a tight nit community if real-life friends or online fiends in multiplayer games. Now, information is vastly accessible. Most people don't go into a fight and try and find the solution, we look up a guide on YouTube. Not sure what the proper use of Reprise is on RDM? Google it. Even in the last few years, The Balance discord didn't exist. And this isn't a FFXIV thing, it's a gamer thing in general. We are a different breed of people who, by in large, are always looking to be better--to improve our skills, and over time, the incredibly accessible methods of communication and development of gaming content allows the most optimal--the shortest and easiest paths to success--become public knowledge.

Are you someone who will sit down and spent 17 hours breaking down each GCD you can use in a 2 minute window and number crunch every job to figure out how to squeeze out the most damage, or create a program that runs those numbers for you? No? Me neither, but someone out there will do that and post that on reddit, and now everyone knows the best way to organize your tools. And this creates a dilemma for game designers, because how do you create a game that doesn't demand that level of obsessive perfection, yet also provides a challenge to the people that pursue that?

This pursuit of mastery is unavoidable, because gaming by its nature is an act of self-improvement in a sense. Games present challenges, and people who play them are always looking to overcome those challenges, and once they do, they want a new challenge to overcome, but it has to be harder than the last one or its no longer a challenge.

My point ultimately is that I don't think it's healthy to play the blame game on the community for wanting optimization, because that's the natural progression for this type of environment. What I think is the bigger issue is this desire for absolute balance--for everything to be meta and equal. There's nothing wrong with having a meta so long as every job is at least viable, and with the exception of a few hiccups that were resolved fairly quickly over the years, FFXIV has a very solid track record of ensuring everything is playable.

[ASkellington]

Have to stop you there. You can blame the devs for focusing on burst windows, but I wonder. How did burst windows came to be? Hmmmmmmmmmmm, oh I know! I was back in ARR with all these bloated buff abilities, poison pots, SMN’s contagion before pull on the boss. Was it the community that created burst windows? Yes, the community did. HW’s AST with multiple extensions of their cards before/during boss fights? All community there. The community made it a norm so devs said, “let’s do that!” Now we’re upset. Can’t have nice things……

I'm gonna stop you right there. The community came up with the burst windows, the devs came up with the idea to cater to that.

No AST asked for all the cards to be Balance. You can stop blaming the community there.

The problem with Old AST cards were that too many of them were too niche or too random to make good use of.

Bole for example is a fantastic card, but as mentioned earlier comes up too infrequent to use when you want to use it. Balance was good A L W A Y S because its always good to have more damage.

There were a good number of ways they could have fixed this without making all the cards Balance. The devs chose to make all the cards Balance because it was easier. Dare I say, the lazy way.

• They could have split the Damage and Support cards where Lord/Lady could have become Lord/Lady/Knave for instance and have the effects of Bole/Ewer/and a tweaked Spire.
• They could have made the cards move on a cycle where when you pressed play it would stop on which ever of the 6 you wanted and draw that card, making it so that if a mechanic was up that you wanted to use Bole on, you could time it and use it then.
• They even could have used their idea of the Seals system and instead of making it more damage could have given them different effects depending on the combination of which seals you had.

The devs chose the easy way out. Plain and simple. That's on them not on us. We give them the pain points, they come up with the solutions. The blame shouldn't be on the community for them making up garbage solutions. Especially when all through out Shb we gave them solutions to fix their screw up for Endwalker and they did NONE OF IT.

[Osmond]

I'm gonna stop you right there. The community came up with the burst windows, the devs came up with the idea to cater to that.

No AST asked for all the cards to be Balance. You can stop blaming the community there.

The problem with Old AST cards were that too many of them were too niche or too random to make good use of.

Bole for example is a fantastic card, but as mentioned earlier comes up too infrequent to use when you want to use it. Balance was good A L W A Y S because its always good to have more damage.

There were a good number of ways they could have fixed this without making all the cards Balance. The devs chose to make all the cards Balance because it was easier. Dare I say, the lazy way.

• They could have split the Damage and Support cards where Lord/Lady could have become Lord/Lady/Knave for instance and have the effects of Bole/Ewer/and a tweaked Spire.
• They could have made the cards move on a cycle where when you pressed play it would stop on which ever of the 6 you wanted and draw that card, making it so that if a mechanic was up that you wanted to use Bole on, you could time it and use it then.
• They even could have used their idea of the Seals system and instead of making it more damage could have given them different effects depending on the combination of which seals you had.

The devs chose the easy way out. Plain and simple. That's on them not on us. We give them the pain points, they come up with the solutions. The blame shouldn't be on the community for them making up garbage solutions. Especially when all through out Shb we gave them solutions to fix their screw up for Endwalker and they did NONE OF IT.

…………….man. I wonder all the complaints the community has made, the devs changed it, the community complained, the devs changed it, the community complains, the devs………..screw it. We’re doing it this way. Either you like it or you don’t.