If we don't have initiative, we take a hit either way, then we get back to previously described thing where after 2 turns, anthem is flat out better.
Except actions are still narratively limited, and it's probably better to get up, say, TRU or PLR, both of which provide even stronger defensive effects than the Anthem's Pipers. By a substantial margin.
Our opponent hit doesn't significantly surpass our avoid*. Very different as as a dodge tank this will almost always be true (exception made for stinking cheaters like the blood bimbo). That make two conditionnal only, one of which is going to be true as we will need to do some duels to go up in the rankings.
A conditional is a conditional; if it's mostly true or not is immaterial. It
won't always be true, that's what a conditional means.
And yes, we'll be in some duels as we rank up. That's expected. But EANP isn't a duelist's art, either. For all that the Pipers are at their best in the narrow situation described, there are other options that obtain a greater effect that are already in LQ's toolkit.
For all that the pipers boost FVM and FSS, Joyous Toast does the same thing - to a known greater extent - and PLR is flat-out superior defensively to the Pipers, especially as FVM and PLR layer their perception checks.
No, EANP is a
battlefield Art. A true War Art. The niche where the pipers manage to match our other defensive Arts is really missing the point of the Art, I believe, and
that is to provide the soundtrack to a bunch of Demons of the Night marching to War.
Sure. But it is better yet to do neither, if that is an option.
We shouldn't stick to arts that don't make sense for us, or feel like we HAVE to finish arts we started - but neither should we be picking up every other art we see because it is "fine" to discard arts.
Certainly. But an Art that looks good initially may not be, and even if it is any given Art
will be surpassed at a later date, either by something directly in line (FVM -> FVM+) or by an upgrade to the field we used the Art in (FSA -> FSS). There is literally no way to know in advance, and in the meantime if we need coverage in an area, then we need coverage in that area.
It's pretty much why we're grabbing CDE and HDW for Perception, and SES for Resist.
Having additional options for our domain is a decent reason to get new arts, yes. However, it is hardly an urgent reason - there are any number of current arts that many of the voters are thinking of slotting already, many of them coming to completion soon. And it isn't like this is a limited time opportunity; any art that we can grab now, we can also grab in a month or three. Why rush into it?
The sooner we know what's available the easier it is to make longer term plans.
But a bigger deal is that many of those Arts have the occasional Theme issue, like TRF and SCS, or we may simply dislike the lesson slotting a given Art might mean.
Because we need ~3 more Arts to reach Foundation, and we have six options at the moment: SCS, TRF, FSS, FVM, AFL, and CDE. And of those, SCS, TRF, FVM, and FSS are the most likely to make it, and
none of those share any theme keywords.
And while I don't think it's a problem
yet, it will be as we advance our Cultivation.
For the first point, I contest that. Sure, we could spend time training Arts "just to see what they do", but I think that is a terrible waste of time. If you want to learn more about what arts could do, go to the archive to research what is there instead of going to pick things up.
For the second point, you are missing half the story. Yes, waiting until we've slotted lots of other things means we may not be able to slot a given new art because of incompatibility. But it is equally true that if we slot the new art first, then one or more of the other arts might not fit due to incompatibility. The only way you get to sample more arts is being more discerning about their insights - and we should be just as able to do that starting with a new art as with an old art.
Stuff like AENP doesn't appeal to me as a part of LQ's Art Suite or Domain due to the Theme keywords (Fear, Summons), but it's eminently plausible that a later Tech may change my mind about using it as a side board or even as a primary tool.
We only see the first level of an Art fresh from the Archive. In order to know what the Art
really does we need to advance it. I mean, SCS grew quite a bit as it leveled up - the merger of the earlier Techniques into GCD was
huge, and not something readily visible from the first level of the Art.
Your second point is true, it is a two-sided issue and we do need to be discerning about what Insights we pick up. We need to be in a position to be capable of being choosy before it becomes problematic, however. Getting Arts to just shy of maximum is a reasonable goal to get ahead of that potential problem, I think.
And we need to find out what Advanced Insights do and how we obtain those, and we'll find out more about how 'Cultivation and domain intermingle' as we progress. Only so much we can really do right now.
Something to note is domain xp. For example, next turn we are getting enough Art XP to give us a real shot at +1 Domain. Having arts to train semi-constantly means this will go up, and that helps a lot. Ling Qi also 'learns' things narratively with arts, helping her to find exactly how elements and 'keywords' means. As such, even a 'wasted' art like SES will likely help Ling Qi learn more about Perserverance (which is a main FVM thing), and so on.
Yanno, I hadn't even noticed SES had Perseverance as a theme keyword? lol.
What would you even do with more green stones a month at this point?
Fart rainbows?
Edit: Need sleep... and food. I think food should come first.
