Using AST's Expand in Light Party Duties

[Zojha]

I can not be the highest DPS, but still be #2 just because BRD is ridiculous with regards to the amount of aggro it produces.

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

[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!

[Ghishlain]

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

I'm not a Bard main but if I would take a guess it would be a combination of the following:

1. Bard openers are very powerful from what I understand, leading to huge spike in enmity at the beginning
2. DPS opening with Diversion - this means they can open hard but still generate less aggro overall resulting in a lower starting enmity compared to BRD
3. BRD only have enmity dumps where as melee DPS only have the ability to lower their enmity accumulation temporarily (DRG being an exception due to Elusive Jump). This can lead into BRD aggro going above melee DPS before being dropped suddenly from use of Tacticians or Refresh. This is especially true when you compare BRD to NIN given the number of enmity tools NIN have available, allowing them to maintain very high damage with little fear of over taking the tanks. In a boss fight in a 4-man dungeon, I can definitely see BRD having a higher enmity than NIN but the NIN still doing more damage. Likewise for a DRG making liberal use of Elusive Jump to do mechanics as that's a 30s CD with an enmity dump attached.

[HyoMinPark]

Out of curiosity: Care to elaborate how this is possible?

From my understanding, you generate aggro from using abilities (which gives a flat amount of aggro) and doing damage, where the damage you do = the aggro you generate. Tank abilities and healing abilities are the only abilities I know of that have modifiers. Where would the Bard aggro come from?

Bard burst is insanely high. Take my static for example. A lot of them can pop Diversion (MNK and NIN can), but BRD doesn't have such an ability to use during its opener (we can only pop Tactician/Refresh after the fact for it to have any effect on our aggro). By our MNK and NIN quelling their initial aggro, BRD can easily surpass them in terms of enmity because we don't have Diversion (because we don't need to give a job with an 8k burst any form of aggro quelling, no...absolutely not >.>). The MNK or NIN can be top DPS, but be lower than me on the enmity list because they have quelling options for their opener. I do not. (Funnily enough, the NIN in my static actually has to Smokescreen me so that I don't rip the boss off of the MT during my opener. The times he forgets to, I usually always rip hate... getting bopped by Hali or Exdeath = not fun.)

[Zojha]

I'm not a Bard main but if I would take a guess it would be a combination of the following [...]

Well, you're explaining a different phenomenon entirely. The person I quoted claimed you can be top of the aggro without being top of the DPS as Bard solely because the job generates a lot of enmity - Not because other people have used their enmity tools, those tools were mentioned separately. And that confuses me because it goes against how I thought enmity in this game works.

A bursty opener generates a lot of aggro because it does a lot of damage - that makes perfect sense. A DPS simply generating a lot of aggro without also generating DPS... less so. To me anyway. But going over that in great detail would just derail the thread I guess.


Edit: I see. It was bad phrasing.

[Risvertasashi]

Well, you're explaining a different phenomenon entirely. The person I quoted claimed you can be top of the aggro without being top of the DPS as Bard solely because the job generates a lot of enmity

You're right in that it's the other way around. Modifiers are negative, otherwise all DPS jobs would be equal, and aggro actually would be a "better than nothing" way to gauge relative DPS.

[Kyeria]

While Expanded has reduced potency and is less effective than Extended in Light Parties, all I have to say is this; Using any buff is better than doing nothing and hoarding cards for 3 minutes trying to get the perfect setup to last for 30 seconds. I cannot tell you how many Astrologians I've played with that go through 3-6 waves of enemies not using cards because they only want Extended Balance. That's honestly, what I call a bad Astrologian.

Obviously, I don't recommend throwing an expanded Spire/Ewer due to the useless nature of the cards, but if you've shuffled and it's all you got I don't see it as being a "Bad" Ast to buff the team when you can.
Now, if you're intentionally storing terrible cards that's a different story...

[Silver-Strider]

Bard burst is insanely high. Take my static for example. A lot of them can pop Diversion (MNK and NIN can), but BRD doesn't have such an ability to use during its opener (we can only pop Tactician/Refresh after the fact for it to have any effect on our aggro). By our MNK and NIN quelling their initial aggro, BRD can easily surpass them in terms of enmity because we don't have Diversion (because we don't need to give a job with an 8k burst any form of aggro quelling, no...absolutely not >.>). The MNK or NIN can be top DPS, but be lower than me on the enmity list because they have quelling options for their opener. I do not. (Funnily enough, the NIN in my static actually has to Smokescreen me so that I don't rip the boss off of the MT during my opener. The times he forgets to, I usually always rip hate... getting bopped by Hali or Exdeath = not fun.)

Tell your NIN to stop being lazy and smoke bomb you lol

[Arrius]

There is nothing wrong with expanded balance and so forth, even in light parties. Well, unless one DPS is 5k and the other is 1k. But if they're close enough, and tank and healer and DPSing, it's still a good gain. And even if there is a large disparity, sometimes you just have to roll with what RNGsus gives you.

Or you actually play them out properly and pick favorites. Some observation is required, but once you know who performs better, you know who gets card priority (depending on the damage role, of course) since you want to have your cards used for maximum effect.

While Expanded has reduced potency and is less effective than Extended in Light Parties, all I have to say is this; Using any buff is better than doing nothing and hoarding cards for 3 minutes trying to get the perfect setup to last for 30 seconds. I cannot tell you how many Astrologians I've played with that go through 3-6 waves of enemies not using cards because they only want Extended Balance. That's honestly, what I call a bad Astrologian.

This is about people using Expand in light parties, not about 'lazy' Astrologians or ones that look for the perfect draw card combo. I only wonder about the obsession of burning Spire, while discarding it is a much better option 95%+ of the time.