Sorry, I'm pretty much of the same mind as Gideon on this. Brief reasons:
- Lightspeed is now a decent efficiency buff, but remains fairly weak as a healing CD since the "emergency" benefit is almost entirely front-loaded. Sure, it can be nice if you want to move while casting for a few GCDs, but the nature of a healing emergency is almost always "need burst now" rather than "need to chain-cast as I perform the hokey-pokey."
- While AST healing potency is more than sufficient, WHM and SCH are both superior burst healers and multi-taskers. In the case of SCH you have not only the SCH's heals but the fairy with her own GCD.
- I don't play WHM past 50 yet, but comparing AST to SCH is a little depressing from a numbers standpoint. AST is a functional healer, sure, but in my experience thus far, raid DPS and total healing is always higher with SCH+WHM than with AST+WHM. Even allowing for the possibility that I'm amazing on SCH and not as good as I think I am on AST, I'm not alone in making this observation.
