Using AST's Expand in Light Party Duties

[HyoMinPark]

The easy answer for Balance targets is to get a crystal ball.

There really is a lot of truth in this statement. Giving a Balance to a DPS that is performing the lowest out of the 2 or 4 other DPS is just a waste. Never forget the AST that kept feeding Balances to the DRG in a v1s PUG group I did one week... when I was top DPS on BRD... and the DRG was true to his DRG name and died 3 times... But hey! Have a Ewer, my BRD friend! (May still be just a little salty about that still lol.). If you're going to single-target a Balance, you need to give it to the top DPS in a group. Anyone else is just a waste (especially if it's Extended/Enhanced!!!).

Honestly though, the ASTs that use Expanded Royal Road (or cards in general) poorly probably don't care, or they did so by accident (I know I have sometimes... sometimes my controller glitches out on my PC, randomly disconnecting or Device Manager refreshes it, and I accidentally use a card on someone when I didn't mean to). The amount of times I've had Expanded Balances or Spears overrode by something useless like a Spire, Bole, or Ewer and the other AST didn't even care or try to pay enough attention to not overwrite my cards again... there aren't enough phalanges to count them...

[Jim_Berry]

There really is a lot of truth in this statement. Giving a Balance to a DPS that is performing the lowest out of the 2 or 4 other DPS is just a waste. Never forget the AST that kept feeding Balances to the DRG in a v1s PUG group I did one week... when I was top DPS on BRD... and the DRG was true to his DRG name and died 3 times... But hey! Have a Ewer, my BRD friend! (May still be just a little salty about that still lol.). If you're going to single-target a Balance, you need to give it to the top DPS in a group. Anyone else is just a waste (especially if it's Extended/Enhanced!!!).

But, how can you tell who's top if you're on console?

[Sebazy]

But, how can you tell who's top if you're on console?

You can usually get a good idea by looking at who's 'try harding' the most.

Hounding the tank with sprint, engaging immediately, AoEing hard and minimising time lost to disconnects and AoEs are all things that are easy to look for and generally will give you a good idea of where to throw those cards.

[Trunks]

But, how can you tell who's top if you're on console?

Well the general rule of thumb is that the one with the bigg- wait wrong game.

In that case just go with whomever put more effort into their glamour and/or whomever is better-looking. 9 times out of 10, that person won't be the one spamming Scatter on a single target.

[Silver-Strider]

The easy answer for Balance targets is to get a crystal ball. I've had complaints when I gave the DPS cards to the tank before. They shut up when I told them said tank was at the top of the charts.

So much truth to this statement it hurts.
Love getting complaints by DPS that say I shouldn't give the Tank the DPS cards but once they see the numbers, they're quick to shut up.

[Spiroglyph]

I try to expand Balances (especially at the start of a boss fight, or if I have a Balance held and draw Ewer/Spire after with shuffle on CD), so no one gets butthurt :^)

"why are you always buffing the other guy"
"this is why I hate premades" (when I'm simply trying to buff someone with highest DPS without actually knowing them from anywhere).

It's not a thing that always happens, but this kind of commentary kind of throws me off, lol.

Besides, I want to DPS as well, but I'm not just gonna go ahead and throw myself a Balance. Tank might appreciate it as well.

I do see some strange card usages that have little to do with placating teams, though - like the odd expanded ewer/spire, and, something I saw a lot in HW that kind of made me chuckle, ewer on DKN :P It's always a tad baffling when I see these.

[LeeraSorlan]

I do see some strange card usages that have little to do with placating teams, though - like the odd expanded ewer/spire, and, something I saw a lot in HW that kind of made me chuckle, ewer on DKN :P It's always a tad baffling when I see these.

Ewer/bard MP regen can actually be good on DRK with coordination.

I always drop darkside during susanos sword phase when im holding the sword, hoping the bards toss out the regen there so i can be full MP by the times its over.


Or ill drop darkside inbetween pulls if i know refreshes/ewers would be going out.
its not an often circumstance and its obviously rarely going to happen in pugs cos they dont expect you to drop anything, and it happens even rarely with ewers because most asts use it on themselves, the healer, the mage dps, use it for aoe, crowns or toss it. but it could stil lbe applied to drk sometimes!

[SleepyNeko]

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.

[Risvertasashi]

At least I don't believe the difference is big enough to call someone lazy or bad.

Welcome to FFXIV, where if you don't play MY way...

[NobleWinter]

It's wishful thinking but I would love to see Spire and Ewer get condensed into one card that refreshes MP or TP based on whichever pool is lower. So if you expanded the card it would benefit everyone by refilling whatever resource they are currently using. Then the card wouldn't feel wasted if it was all you had to expand. I would like to see the card lost by condensing these two replaced with a card that can do something interesting and unusual like increasing movement speed. The RNG of that makes me happy.