The Case for the Spear

[NocturniaUzuki]

Those scenarios are a little artificial and mainly demonstrate that, in order to get the most use out of a Spear, the AST may well have made several inefficient decisions beforehand.

Re scenario 1. Why are Lucid and CO off cooldown? Are you holding them to wait for a Spear? Easy to see that this is going to cost you more than you gain pretty quickly. How long does the fight last - is there even any value in the reduced cd?

Re scenario 2. Why do you have a Spear just as you decide to blow all you cooldowns? Are you just lucky or have you been holding a Spear throughout the entire fight, potentially missing out on holding a balance for a dps check? What if that 'oh shit' moment never comes - you've essentially given up on you spread slot. Why are all your cooldowns available at the same time - would using some of them earlier have helped to stabilise the party and avoid the critical situation in the first place?

Spear is not useless. All things being equal I'd rather have my abilities have a shorter cooldown. But it's very situational and the opportunity cost of delaying or even missing out on an aoe balance is severe. Even from a defensive standpoint, damage equates to mitigation and mp economy by reducing fight times/phase transitions happening sooner etc.

You're misinterpreting a bit, so I'll correct this:

First of all, the ones making the bad decisions are the players who get hit, causing the AST to have to use the Spear. If your party is not in dire need of healing and never will be due to a high level of mechanical competence, then I agree that use Spear is completely unnecessary. I believe I mentioned in the original thread that if you judge that you won't need to use Lucid Dreaming again within 120 seconds, then there is no reason to use Spear to reduce its cooldown.

1. Lucid and CO are not off-cooldown. I'm not holding the skills to wait for a Spear, but rather holding the Spear until such a time as I need to use it. In this case, I'm in a fight where I am under a large amount of MP strain (likely a solo healing situation where my party is taking a lot of avoidable damage and/or dying a lot). Lucid and CO are on cooldown, but as soon as they come off cooldown, I need to use them again, and put them on a reduced cooldown.

2. Answered in #1. I'm intentionally holding a Spear. From my perspective, at least, the power of Spread is the ability to hold a card indefinitely, which resolves any issues of a card being situational. Spear is a situational card, so holding it allows me to use it whenever it becomes necessary, like in this example. Of course, I won't be holding Spear if I'm playing in a party that I deem unlikely to run into any major disasters. However, I work on the assumption that every party has the potential to fail. Even if I join a farm party, during the first run I am likely going to be holding Spear. If the run goes well, I will switch to a more DPS-centric approach.

3. The chances of missing an AoE Balance specifically are reduced, but the chances of simply acquiring Balance are not (you are still drawing twice, aiming for a Balance and a RR effect). The main difference is that if you get Balance on your first Draw/Redraw, you have to use it immediately instead of holding it. I would also argue that the cost of missing out is not severe. Even if you're using an AoE Balance every 60 seconds throughout the fight, that only amounts to an overall 10% clear time reduction. So in an average 10-minute fight, it would only save 1 minute. And since you will never realistically draw an AoE Balance on every set of two draws, that number is actually significantly lower (likely a 20-40 second reduction in clear time). In my mind, I compare this to the prospect of a party wipe (that may have been preventable if I had been using Spear throughout the fight) and its potential 5-9 minute clear time increase. So if you want to look at it mathematically, it would take at least 10 successful duty completions in a row to match the time-saving power of using the Spear to prevent a single party wipe, assuming the party wipe caused a 5 minute delay and using Balance instead allowed for a 30 second clear time reduction.

Of course, there are so many unpredictable factors in play here (including the fact that the Spear may not always have made a difference in preventing party wipes, depending on the party) that it really just comes down to personal opinion. Personally, I deem Spear valuable up until the point at which I feel the party is capable of consistently clearing. But since I'm an Immaterial Goal Achiever and tend to avoid farming parties, my experience is with parties that are far less reliable. Alternatively, I could be challenging myself. For example, I enjoy doing 4-man runs of Royal Menagerie. And seeing as I PUG the members for these parties, or just let friends in who want to try (but who may or may not really have the mechanical competence to seriously attempt it), I usually find myself in situations where I can clearly see the value of Spear... because I literally have to use it just to keep the party afloat and sustain my MP. In most of my 4-man RM runs, I literally have to prioritize Ewer and Spear (for Lucid/CO combo) just to not run out of MP. I typically prefer Spear because it comes with the added benefit of being able to reduce other cooldowns while regening MP, rather than the isolated personal effect of using Ewer on myself.

[NocturniaUzuki]

So I'm coming to the conclusion that the OP's post is a:

1) Thinly veiled snipe at raiders and people farming content.

2) Said snipe is then used as an automatic counter to pretty much any disagreeing response.

3) Try to think about using spear more.

4) Dropping it on a healer is likely good, dropping it on a DPS is likely bad

Regarding points one and two, I think you're missing one of the biggest factors that drives high end raiders along. Raid gear? Meh, we know we will get everything we want from a raid tier within a month or two now, most of it is ugly as sin and is just going to get glamoured over anyway. Rather the majority of us are there for the path of self improvement vs the limits of our own ability, the competition vs the limits of our peers, the banter with rivals as well as all the other social facets of the raiding scene and FCs in general.

Given that I spent most of my A10 farming sessions dodging troll button pushes and raising those that got caught napping, I find it kind of hard to agree with your assessment

Onto point 3 and the spear topic itself, it's a pretty legitimate point, the card does have it's uses (as do all the others that are invariably seen as RR/Crown fodder frankly). I also completely agree with point 4, dropping it on a DPS is a distraction that they likely neither want nor need, in a chaotic dungeon or 24 man run it's likely not going to be a big deal. In a Savage turn it's going to cause issues tho.

However, there's another aspect to this that the math always overlooks, quite simply, the time it takes for you to work out what to do with the card as well as the speed with which I can deal with a card appropriately and get Draw back on CD. If I waste a GCD or two flapping about what's best to do with a card that's not balance, I've likely lost any value that it would have offered and perhaps more. Any time spent with a card held waiting to be used is eating into my opportunities to pull a balance. I want to pull and use/dispose of cards as quickly as I can with as little thought as I can get away with.

In the end, it's usually more efficient to just auto arcana anything that's not conductive towards an AoE balance and instead concentrate on maximising your personal DPS.

I was certainly not trying to snipe at anyone here. I never made any claim that one type of player is better than another, or more "correct". I'm also aware that some high-end raiders are in it for the challenge. I think everyone plays for self-improvement, whether they are conscious of it or not, so it really can't be classed into either Material Goal Achievers or Immaterial Goal Achievers. Technically, it's an Immaterial Goal, but even Material Goal Achievers pursue it. The bottom line is that people always strive to self-improve so they can better reach their goals, whatever they may be. The high-end raiders you refer to sound like people who are Material Goal Achievers that tend to pursue immaterial goals when they've met their material goals. This is pretty common among this group of players, since they so quickly achieve their material goals. When there are no material goals for them to pursue, many of them start to dabble in their immaterial interests, and some of these people may even develop more of an interest in the immaterial than the material. Meanwhile, others will latch onto the infinite material goal: amassing wealth. And others still will just quit the game until new content comes out for them to pursue (this group is probably the largest contributor to the depopulation of the game between patches).

I like your point about the time taken in figuring out what to do with cards. I agree too many people overlook it and I don't think I actually mentioned it in my own analysis. If the player thinks quickly and plans in advance, it doesn't make that much of a difference. In other cases, it can cause long delays. For those who aren't overly concerned with DPS, though, it's a moot issue. Personally, I'll even sit there with a drawn card ticking down if I deem that it will be useful between 30-60 seconds from the time I draw it (e.g. I draw a Bole but have something held; I know that a major tank buster is coming in about 45 seconds and want to ensure it goes well, so I hold on to the Bole for about 20-25 seconds then use it on the tank). Such situations are quite rare though. Most tank busters in regular battle formats are not a threat. It really only starts becoming something to consider when you're doing things with odd party compositions - like trying to get a solo tank through one of the longer Akh Morns in Royal Menagerie when they've already used their best defensive cooldowns, or getting a low-geared solo tank through synced ShivaEX bow form.

Of course, the response that many people would give to such situations is: "Why are you even trying that. If the tank isn't geared enough, then get a new tank." But as long as I can fix it as a healer, I don't exclude players in that way (not that I'm blaming the people who do; I can fully understand the frustration of having a weak player dragging down a farming party, etc). I actually enjoy the challenge of dealing with such chaotic situations, which is why I can often be found helping parties with a very low level of mechanical competence to clear difficult battles.

[Sebazy]

I'm interested in why you feel that "there are more useful cards to hold." From my perspective, I've always found the idea of holding Balance a little silly, actually.

Spread is a great tool for maximising your gains from balance. A11S was a fantastic example of this where throwing a balance out at the wrong time was a complete waste, rather you'd want to delay your balance often by as much as a minute to really get the most value out of it.

The other big problem is getting back to back balance cards.

Picture a couple of different situations where I pull 2 balance cards on back to back Draws.

If I start with an AoE RR, I can AoE the first Balance, 30 seconds later I Spread the second Balance, immediately use Sleeve Draw, if Sleeve Draw gives me an AoE RR I immediately AoE the second Balance if not then RR/Crown the middle slot card accordingly, worst case I keep drawing until I get the RR I want, it's not until I get 3 balances in a row that I start wasting anything (and theoretically you could throw out 3 back to back aoe balances with this approach if you got lucky enough with Sleeve Draw).

In the same situation but lets assume a Bole in Spread already. In the best case scenario with an AoE RR already on hand, again, I immediately AoE the first Balance, 30 seconds later I can't Spread the second Balance so I have to use Sleeve Draw, not having the middle Draw slot open means it only gives me one shot at the RR I want instead of two, I have no choice but to go with the RR that it gives me even if it's not of any benefit and lastly, any time I spend figuring out what's best for the second Balance+RR I get is time that Draw isn't on cooldown.

In the worst case scenario without an AoE RR on hand but a Bole in Spread already, I'm at the mercy of Sleeve Draw right from the first balance, with the second Balance I've got no choice but to either throw it at someone without an RR, or throw the Bole at a tank and CO the second Balance so I can Spread it at the cost of an entire Draw chance. A 3rd Balance in a row would likely have me in tears under the desk at this point.

Don't get me wrong, there has been situations where I actually fished for Boles, A12S was a fine example of this where my first 3 draws were gunning for AoE Balance, but after that I'd pocket a Bole if I got one, even if I had an AoE RR I'd click that off and single target Bole the Warrior on the last two adds so that they could safely tank it in Deliverance with only myself healing (leaving the SCH to pretty much DPS all out in the process). I've got to say though, the thought of using Spread on a Spear boggles my mind though. That's a massive waste in my eyes

[NocturniaUzuki]

@Sebazy

You have written out one of the problems with that approach, though: "theoretically you could throw out 3 back to back aoe balances with this approach if you got lucky enough with Sleeve Draw."

Regardless of that, though, even if we assume your analysis is right (and I will cede here and assume it is), there is still the question of just how effective constant AoE Balance even is. Even assuming the impossible outcome that you have AoE Balance up for literally the entire fight, you're only actually increasing the clear speed by 10%. That's actually a very small number. Granted, if you're doing this fight 10 times in a row, you save yourself an entire battle's length in time. But then a single wipe caused by not having a spell off cooldown when you needed it (which could have been fixed by a Spear) can instantly cancel out that entire amount of time saved.

There's also the simple question of whether you actually care about speed to begin with. I think the majority of players do. Certainly, a large portion of Material Goal Achievers do, and some Immaterial Goal Achievers do too (the speedclearers and others who care about speed as a goal). But there's also a not-insignificant number of players who don't care how fast they clear something, but just want to actually clear it. Most people don't enjoy wiping.

I know one common counter-argument to this is that "killing the boss faster reduces the chance of a wipe." There's a certain element of truth to this, but I don't think it's as significant as some people seem to believe. Especially since bosses in FFXIV are entirely scripted, the same section of the fight that people may wipe on is typically going to happen regardless of how fast the boss dies (except in a few circumstances, like ThordanEX's late phase knight combos, and even this is mainly due to the fact that people no longer practice those sections due to the average clear time being before those mechanics appear). Overall, I consider mistake recovery to be much more tangible than indirect mistake prevention via mechanic-skipping.

[HyoMinPark]

@Hyomin Park

I'm interested in why you feel that "there are more useful cards to hold." From my perspective, I've always found the idea of holding Balance a little silly, actually.

Even if the Spear were to be redesigned in the way I wanted it redesigned, my Spread would still be better used holding other cards, which I already pointed out in my post.

I mostly hold Balances because a lot of the groups I join (and my static) want the extra DPS to push phases and maximize group DPS. I hold Boles for tanks or for a phase such as Susano Ex's Sword phase to minimize outgoing damage so that I may contribute to DPS, and not have to heal as frequently. I also hold Ewers for myself if I find myself in a group or piece of content where my MP is being strained. Occasionally, I will hold an Arrow if I cannot draw a Balance, and attempt to Expand the Arrow, or Enhance it if I am with a BLM, since a lot of them seem to ask me directly for Enhanced Arrows nowadays (all those Fire IVs, I suppose).

Again, my Spread is never used on a Spear. Because the card is too situational to use, especially with its current design, and you run into it taking up time in your Spread when you could be holding other cards. To expand on this: Lucid and Celestial both have 120 second cooldowns. Even if you were to draw a Spear and use it on yourself before using those two skills, and 30 seconds later draw another Spear and hold it in your Spread, there will still be an entire minute before you could even use the held Spear on Lucid+CO again. An entire minute where you could be holding a Balance to expand to the group for a DPS check, a Bole to toss on a tank that needs it for an upcoming tankbuster, or a Ewer to toss on yourself, your co-healer, or maybe even a SMN or RDM that were killed and need a little bit of MP to get back on their feet. To be honest, it's an almost selfish thing to do, because, like myself and others have said, you cannot know (especially when paired with randoms) when your party members are going to use their cooldowns, or when they would need or even want a Spear for them. So you would essentially just be holding the card for yourself, rather than using your Spread to try and optimize your team. And, to me, that is selfish.

Yes, I am one of those ASTs that DPS as often as I can. I do not like being forced into the "main healer" role, and I firmly believe that both healers in 8-man settings should contribute equally to healing and DPS, regardless of the job they are playing.


When you join, for example, farm parties in PF, most if not all of them are looking for clean, fast runs so that they can squeeze in as many clears as possible with the time they have to farm. AOE Balance, even if you think it's silly, achieves this goal. Plus, a lot of people care about their own personal DPS numbers, and will never ever say no to a Balance. That's a given, regardless of whatever potency Balance is changed to if SE decides that it needs rebalanced. The majority of the playerbase is the one with this mindset, and that is not something that will be easily changed.

While I always stress for people to learn mechanics and never expect to outright skip them (see: Zurvan Ex Soar), it is always a pleasant surprise when they are skipped. I have to respectfully disagree with your assumption that having one skill off of cooldown 20% faster is enough to prevent a wipe, and that it should take priority off of optimizing your group as a whole as often as you can. Call me DPS-centric if you want, but this is my opinion.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I have to respectfully disagree with your assumption that having one skill off of cooldown 20% faster is enough to prevent a wipe, and that it should take priority off of optimizing your group as a whole as often as you can. Call me DPS-centric if you want, but this is my opinion.

That's fine if that's your opinion. I would like to point out that it's not necessarily just 1 skill though. It's as many skills as you need to cast during the 20 seconds. And if you're holding the Spear, you may run into situations where you will actually have to use virtually every major cooldown as an AST within 20 seconds. Though actually, if your redesigned Spear was implemented, there would be no reason to hold it anymore. Instead, you'd use it immediately if you wanted your cooldowns to be reduced. Personally, I still prefer the old one a bit because if I wanted to reduce the cooldowns of all my skills consistently, I'd have to keep using every single Spear I drew immediately, just to get the same effect as the original Spear. So I'd actually have less cards available to use on DPS.

Also, if you'd like an example of where it is legitimately necessary to use Spear to maintain MP, here's a video of one of my 4-man Royal Menagerie runs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWoy2MxNDQ&t=3s

It was the first time I did it, and our first attempt as a party, so I was actually playing a little more defensively than I really needed to with this party, and not optimizing as well as I could have been (not that I claim to have perfect optimization even now though). But I've had parties since then that have put me under far more pressure, and in those parties I definitely had to be putting things on reduced cooldown at all times. Also, it's not from my perspective, unfortunately, but you can still sort of see my situation.

[HyoMinPark]

That's fine if that's your opinion. I would like to point out that it's not necessarily just 1 skill though. It's as many skills as you need to cast during the 20 seconds. And if you're holding the Spear, you may run into situations where you will actually have to use virtually every major cooldown as an AST within 20 seconds.

Again, though. Situational, and very much so. Thus, why I do not waste my Spread on them. I've never been in a situation where I have to blow all of my cooldowns at once, and typically, I do not find that very effective gameplay. Even if it saves one mistake, what if there just happens to be another one 20 seconds later, and you have nothing? I find that when I'm in groups that mess up so badly I have to use almost everything in my arsenal to try and scrape people off the floor, generally the run is not going to end in a clear anyways, be it from more botched mechanics, or failing to meet the enrage timer because of decreased DPS from Weakness/Brink of Death. It is the same logic I apply to tanking: do not blow all of your cooldowns in one go, because then you are left with nothing.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I agree that blowing all of your cooldowns within 20 seconds leaves you vulnerable - just like tanks. But unlike tanks, healers needing their cooldowns depends on how well the party plays, not on a strictly timed, scripted fight. That's why I use Spear to reduce the cooldowns. True, I'm left vulnerable, but if it was the only way to save the party, then I had to do it. And I'll just have to hope that the reduced cooldown is enough that my party won't mess up badly again within the reduced cooldown time. Having them on reduced cooldown makes it more likely that I will have them off cooldown for the next disaster. As you say, if a group is messing up that badly, it will likely happen again. Where we differ there, though, is that I believe the run can still realistically clear. It's what I like about being the healer: we can push a group through to a clear, even in some of the darkest moments. I don't believe in "just wiping" a run because it is going badly, and because of that philosophy, I've had many miracle comebacks. It feels great when that happens, and I usually have to challenge myself to the extreme to pull it off. Of course, I've had tons of wipes too. Sometimes I can't fix that many mistakes. But when that happens, I don't just sit back and think "Well, there was nothing I could have done, the party just sucked." Instead, I share the blame. I look back at the run and think "Yeah, you know, I actually could have saved the party there if I hadn't used Lightspeed back there," or "If I had used that Bole instead of rerolling it to try to get Balance, the tank would have survived." And, of course, if the party is messing up this badly, I'm already at the point where I'm constantly looking for Spear to hold for my next Lucid Dreaming + Celestial Opposition combo, at the very least. And sometimes if I can wait 10 seconds on Lucid and throw in a couple extra cooldowns to get the reduced cooldown too, I'll do it.

There's a phenomenon I've noticed too, which is quite remarkable:

If you refuse to give and keep trying, you encourage others to do the same.

In a lot of the miracle comeback runs I've had, it hasn't ended up in a clear just because I managed to pull us back from a situation where 6/8 players were dead. It's because in doing that - in refusing to give up and giving those players a second chance - I encouraged them to try harder. When players get back up after dying, they tend to play better, due to reflecting on their mistake. This is especially true if they feel like they just got a second chance they didn't expect. They'll pull out all the stops to not mess up again, because they suddenly believe that they can actually win.

[Sebazy]

You have written out one of the problems with that approach

Oh aye, getting lucky enough to AoE three balances is pretty much lottery ticket time, I've not seen it first hand yet and I imagine it'll be a while until I do, the odds of managing two back to back AoE balances are much higher though which was the core of my point there.

I know one common counter-argument to this is that "killing the boss faster reduces the chance of a wipe." There's a certain element of truth to this, but I don't think it's as significant as some people seem to believe. Especially since bosses in FFXIV are entirely scripted, the same section of the fight that people may wipe on is typically going to happen regardless of how fast the boss dies (except in a few circumstances, like ThordanEX's late phase knight combos, and even this is mainly due to the fact that people no longer practice those sections due to the average clear time being before those mechanics appear).

Actually I think that opposite is a surprisingly common misconception IMHO. A lot of people don't realise how important it's been to hit certain DPS thresholds throughout FFXIV's endgame (Aka Savage). As Hyomin mentions, ZurvanEX's Soargate saga is probably the most widely seen example, A12S was very much in the same vein as ThordanEX, the last two mechanics were significantly nastier and even with echo, having enough DPS to skip those final mechanics was pretty much mandatory if a pug or casual group was going to clear it smoothly.

Creator in particular was riddled with similar cases throughout, skipping late mechanics in A9S absolutely trivialised the fight. In A10S you could skip key debuffs and tank busters allowing you to solo tank the encounter or at least ignore fairly significant mechanics. In A11S you could skip an entire (annoying) phase. This isn't a recent trend either, many turns such as T12, T6S, A8S and even good old Titan HM rewarded good DPS with easier healer checks.

I definitely feel you on the risk adverse side of things though, I've always been super cautious and conservative with my raiding methodology (Thus my DPS was pretty awful when compared the calibre of healers I play alongside), but I think there's better ways to play it safe than overthinking our card mechanics. Both A3S and A4S made me appreciate the value of optimising DPS where I can whilst introducing as little risk as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGUMzl2cV0

This was a video I uploaded for a different thread here a little while back, it's not a cherry picked run and it was far from perfect on my part, rather it was a random shadowplay capture from a PF pug that evening to seek some suggestions. A few points are relevant to this discussion though.

@3:18, having spread open for that balance meant I could immediately get Draw ticking again and promptly hit the jackpot with an AoE RR just in-time for when Alexander reappeared after the intermission.

@4:50 I get a balance with no RR on hand, using it at that point would have been a complete waste both due to the mechanics at hand and the bard's death adding to the distraction. Instead I saved it for a full minute to keep it for the time gates where it was much more useful.

Another thing to note is how quickly I try to get Draw back on cooldown after pulling a card, this is maximise my card throughput and counteract the windows where I actively choose not to pull a card in the interests of avoiding risking a death in certain situations (@0:30 to @1:00 is a good example of this).

Pps, quality debate btw. Much <3 even if it's not immediately apparent!

[Galvuu]

I'm not going to read all of this (sorry everyone qq) but as a former dedicated speedrunner and primarily a ranged dps player, let me tell you what the issueswith the Spear are (I'm almost sure someone already told you this, but I might as well say it for confirmation).

The Spear suffers from the same issue as the Bole. Due to the rng nature of cards, you cannot ensure you're going to Spear your party at a time where they'll use a relevant cooldown.
This is the first big issue.
The second is that such a small cd reduction won't net you an extra cd usage over the course of the fight. It may come earlier, but if it doesn't, then you don't net any advantage over the course of the whole fight.
Third, even if you cut my cooldown by a set amount, it doesn't mean I'll use it earlier. Sharpcast will be used in a UI>AF transition, Aetherflow will be used after Bahamut- things like that. Sometimes the relevant cooldown will simply become available at an inconvenient time, and I'll push its use back anyway.
Lastly, it's just inferior to any other damage card (Arrow and especially Balance).

You can come up with an arbitrarily contrived scenario in which the Spear is worth it, but I raided with an AST for the end of the Midas cycle and all of 3.4, and I've never seen this card do anything good- on a party where everything was timed to the last second so all buffs stacked at the same time for openers.

Edit:... I read all the intro post. I also heal. Spearing myself is... kinda useless. Most raid damage is scripted so heavily I can just preplan my cooldown usage and when I'll heal and dps and go with that plan and make it work. I almost never run dry (you're realistically gonna have a caster and/or range to feed you mana).
If the situation is so catastrophic that my planning and my improvisation cannot salvage it, then I doubt it's the random spear that will make much of a difference. At best it magically allows me to keep someone alive/revive them... and then we probably enrage.
I mean, if the Spear would be of any use, then everyone would have to play perfect and the stars would have to align (hah, AST pun) for it to be used at the right time... there's just no way this card does anything useful except that one time in a million x)

(I'm pretty sure most people who speedkill do it because they enjoy the game to a point they want to play it as well as they can- the reward is just playing it like that and the feeling of achievement.)

Edit 2: the more I read, the more contrived the situations where this card would hypothetically be useful become, most of them at the expense of you actually holding a spear (instead of a more powerful card that's also always "live"). Just Occam's Razor this. If the Spear needs all this psychology and specific situations where people are killing themselves... it's probably best to use a Balance that's always useful.

Edit 3: Have your RDM mana shift you or just Ewer yourself if you're going to 4-man Royal Menagerie with a godawful comp >.>