Balance was balanced

[Sebazy]

You mean every spear and arrow I did use? Like throwing spears on tanks when they stop and burn cooldowns to survive through the pull, throwing Arrows on Ninjas, Black Mages, and Samurai? Or royal roading them so that I could give a nice long Bole on that squishy Dark Knight.

In situations where cooldowns actually matter, most tanks will figure out a specific rotation and stick to that like glue, I'd wager if I quietly speared my tanks in 3.4, there's a pretty solid shot they wouldn't even notice, and if they did, I couldn't guarantee that spear so they wouldn't be able to build a rotation around it. Bole has been very decent since 3.4. Not really news there.

Arrow seems quite a bit better now that TP isn't such a burning issue. But it's still not quite on par with balance (or crit spear) for most jobs. As for spearing yourself for sleeve draw? I'm not really convinced sorry =(

But eh, people complained spear was useless (because it only worked on skills cast during its buff time) when it was a DPS burst buff of its own.

DPS tend to have even more disdain for it than tanks as it'll put their cooldown rotations out of alignment. There might be a little merit in it for dungeons if you're with someone who hasn't built up a gameplan for the place yet, but in a 10 minute encounter you'll likely cause a DPS loss using it on a DPS especially if they're not expecting it.

Oh and, prior to it getting buffed a 5% AoE balance was not enough to give AST a place on raid groups.

Say what?

AST (5-10%) didn't get a spot on raid groups for Gordias because it was horribly untuned and didn't have the HPS throughput to catch up after a mistake. Every team on Ragnarok that ran AST/SCH either gave up or switched at A3S during the initial progression race.

AST (still 5-10%) had a decent even split with WHM for Midas. Noct sect was still subpar vs a SCH at this point, but Diu could keep up with the heat now as long as the group adjusted a little for it.

You'd think not a single person in this thread play AST or something. For them to call a 5% AOE 30/40s damage buff "useless"....Holy shit.

Oh god I'm agreeing with you again

I think it's a shame that SE forced this situation to come to a head by giving us that ludicrous 20% balance in the first place, but this puts cards in a much better situation now. There's legitimate variety rather than the 'balance or bust' that we had in 3.4. All that's left for SE to address is the button bloat the card system has now. Not sure how they are going to achieve that but eh. GL Yoshi!