MCH is a disaster until 64; it's fun at 70 but also an epic mess if you're not on top of your GCDs. I'm pretty sure it's harder than HW MCH was at this point; getting the most out of Overheat involves delaying an oGCD until like 75% of the way through your GCD, then hitting the next GCD before the impact of the next oGCD has fully registered, but not too early such that the server never gets it.
Alright, I just thought I would ask as I am confused about what my healer partner in the static asked of me yesterday for next raid. She said my drawing cards is low on AST during raid and she said I like to redraw whenever I get a crappy card. She suggests using bole.... which to me is kind of useless but she did say I should use bole if I have no other options as it is better than praying for lord. Should I take her advice? All the years I played ast usually consisted of not using the trash cards unless I really have nothing to use. Obviously, she suggests bole being used last in the "useful" cards. In my opinion... I would rather NOT use bole as the damage reduction is already in effect by shields. What really needs bole that I dont know of? Anyway, she just wants me to use cards more often than just rolling for good ones so I can become versatile. I don't necessarily agree with her but it's something that did catch my eye.
This is bad advice. This was bad advice before we had Minor Arcana for card recycling, and it's even worse now.
Disclaimer: None of this applies to disaster clears where you're mid-wipe, everyone's cool downs are jacked up, and you're just trying to limp along in the fight to whittle health down. Everyone does unorthodox weird stuff trying to survive the unsurvivable, and nobody's going to judge you for dropping an Enhanced Bole on a tank about to take a buster they had no plan for.
However: Cards are only good if you can point to them and say "this accomplished X in the fight." Balance and Arrow and Spear are easy--people did X more damage or had X% better crit rate while the card was out, improving raid DPS and letting us kill the thing faster!
Single-target Bole on your tank is useless because your tank should be planning cool downs such that he doesn't drop dead if you don't draw a Bole, and your healing plan for him is unlikely to change as a result of the Bole. Most ST healing is done via oGCDs this tier; Bole is only a gain if it gains a healer DPS cast in place of a GCD spent on a heal; if you drop a Bole on the tank and you don't gain a Malefic and your cohealer doesn't gain a Broil or Stone, it's a wasted card and you'd have been better of Minor Arcana'ing it for 50% shot at a Lord and a bonus free oGCD heal if you 'lose'.
AOE Bole is considerably worse--not only is it super unlikely that it's going to save you a heal cast, it actually costs you a draw because you lose the RR effect and will need at least two draws to get an RR card out, and even then it's not guaranteed to be an AOE card. Raid DPS will suffer, and if that Bole didn't gain damage casts for your cohealer or you (and it is super unlikely that it would), it ends up costing you rDPS in the end. Minor Arcana preserves your Royal Road for the next card, gives you a 50% shot at an oGCD nuke, and the 'failure' state is a decent free oGCD heal what it is very easy to get some real usage out of.
Generally the handful times I intentionally use a Bole are when I've got zero RR, no active cards, and a Bole sitting in Spread. It gets used there because a useless Bole isn't measurably worse than just throwing the card away, and if I get something good I'm just going to overwrite it anyway; if I could Minor Arcana spreads it'd be a different story.
But, no, seriously: Redraw and Minor Arcana are incredibly good and important tools, and you should feel free to use them aggressively unless you get a Bole at a perfect time you have a concrete usage for it (i.e., you get an AOE Bole just as you'd be expecting somebody to chuck up 10% mitigation on a raid wide attack you're used to barely surviving, and that person is currently decorating the floor.) Using an AOE Bole to bring the damage back down to in-line with what you're expecting and prepared to heal makes sense and is probably worth the 'cost' of not getting to use that RR on a future DPS increase card; using it Just Because and creating a situation where you just overheal 10% more makes less sense. Lady is at least a nice ohshit emergency heal that you can sit on until your next draw.
It does lead to incredibly frustrating runs where I don't get out nearly as many cards as I'd like, but at the end of the day there's no spot where I'm like "if everyone just took 10% less damage there, I wouldn't have to Helios!"
