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!

[Scarletelf]

I say balance decreasing back to 10% should have happened during the release of SB. When that buff originally came out you would see Astrologians throwing other cards away for balance. Balance was not very balanced imo. For the Raiding astros out there the card mechanics turned into a mini-game of "Find the balance!" Though with the buffs to other cards implementing afterwards Astro's started to have some fun picking and choosing cards again. But Balance itself was still leagues stronger than the others. I do believe tho SPEAR has finally found it's mark. Unlike Balance, Spear was a weak card that you would always eat. Now you have a card Bards and Monks will kill you for!

[Eyvhokan]

Sounds like Astrologian and Magic the Gathering had a lot in common.

[Maxilor]

Sounds like Astrologian and Magic the Gathering had a lot in common.

Except Astrologian's can't win on turn 1.

(Yes, i'm still salty)

So what are the new card priorities then?

Is Spear more powerful than Balance?

Should you redraw Balance now and try to fish for Spears or are they of equal value DPS wise?

And which classes benefit the most from each card now.

[loreleidiangelo]

Balance is still your best card by far, but I'd hazard it's no longer worth shuffling or discarding Spear and Arrow to fish for it. In my O1S/O2S runs last night I found I used a lot of my cards as I drew them, even Bole, since Balance is no longer the busted mess it was. (I tell the MT to feel free to drop tank stance with Bole up if the situation allows, so in some ways it's a DPS gain even there!)

[Rhyn]

Is Spear more powerful than Balance?

Should you redraw Balance now and try to fish for Spears or are they of equal value DPS wise?

And which classes benefit the most from each card now.

Monks and Bards benefits the most from Spear due to their mechanics. Spear is atm around 30% the dmg of Balance, and towards the end of the expansion when people start meldingc crit (3000+) it wil be 41-42% of balance. Balance is still BY FAR the best, and Arrow is better than Spear.

[RichardButte]

It's not a problem. If you're an AST. Your shields cost less mana, shield higher, and are instant, of course you don't see where the problem is.

They don't see where the problem is because you don't evaluate a class based upon one single ability. You evaluate it by its entire toolkit.

The aspected benefic that people love to whine about so much is actually a sub-par method of healing for ASTs as it's far less mana efficient than the HoTs.

AST being able to create larger shields in one of its two stances (that cannot be changed in combat) than SCH doesn't make it superior to SCH. SCH still has more overall shielding ability and better emergency buttons than AST does and likely ever will.

No one's arguing that SCH needs/needed some buffs, but acting like the SCH class was invalidated because of ONE shield comparison is ridiculous.

[Yorumi]

SCH still has more overall shielding ability

Um, sch has aldo, weaker than asp. benefic, and succor, weaker than asp. helios. How do they have more shielding than ast?

[SnugglesD]

Um, sch has aldo, weaker than asp. benefic, and succor, weaker than asp. helios. How do they have more shielding than ast?

Because of deployed adlo and crit potential.

[Yorumi]

Because of deployed adlo and crit potential.

The ONLY works on a crit, a deployed non-crit adlo is weaker than asp. heilos. I stand by my point.