Why people says AST is bad?

[Richiealvian]

Lightspeed is nice when you run around and spam helios/aspected.

Personally, one thing I think will fix AST for good is to lower card draw cooldown to 15 seconds. This means there's always a card in play.

[Cynfael]

Sometimes I suspect that SE spends a little too much time in the boardroom and not quite enough in actual healer gameplay outside the dev team.

Many of the AST features sound really cool on paper but are close to useless in practice (Lightspeed, Enhanced Benefic, most cards in most situations, and the entire Nocturnal Sect come to mind).

I adore this Job, but right now there is a lot of ineffectual fluff and huge liabilities to what could otherwise be useful skills (e.g. Lightspeed's potency loss and lack of GCD reduction, Enhanced Benefic's uselessly random instacast proc + no MP reduction...).

[Dalvy]

I feel like things will even out, and we will go back to WHM/SCH combo for raiding. AST for when the SCH can't make it.

[RiisWolf]

AST are naturally faster casters, and the their buffs are to die for. The playerbase is already plagued with so much stupid, even dumber than WoW's healers.
You know how dumb?
We got players Stragetically (never) use any of the good stuff or (never) do anything to make it easier on themselves, even in the long run. They don't even know when to apply a regen on the tank! REGENERATION! ON! THE! TANK! BEFORE ASTROLOGIAN!!!!

And now they can't even do something as simple as draw a card that's off global cooldown, even worse, some act like putting them all on the tank is the hardest thing to do. I'm not saying they should but they are targeting them, how hard is it to just mash the button!?

[Cynfael]

AST are naturally faster casters, and the their buffs are to die for. The playerbase is already plagued with so much stupid, even dumber than WoW's healers.
You know how dumb?
We got players Stragetically (never) use any of the good stuff or (never) do anything to make it easier on themselves, even in the long run. They don't even know when to apply a regen on the tank! REGENERATION! ON! THE! TANK! BEFORE ASTROLOGIAN!!!!

And now they can't even do something as simple as draw a card that's off global cooldown, even worse, some act like putting them all on the tank is the hardest thing to do. I'm not saying they should but they are targeting them, how hard is it to just mash the button!?

Two of the main issues are...

1) We've never been hurting for a "faster-casting" healer.
2) Most of the cards are in fact not very useful except in very specific situations. E.g. Bole sounds great, right? Well, if you would have had no difficulty keeping the tank or party up without it, it was useless. This is why SCH's Sacred Soil is almost never used outside of progression, and that skill can be whipped out without any dependence on RNG

[Mclyde]

But i, and surely other players, don't want our job become as "simple" as white mage is.
We don't want every of the "out of gcd action" be usefull. We want that it's stay very complicated to manage to heal while buffing and dps too. We want this job stay more complicated than Scholar too.
And we absolutly don't want that the "average veteran player" can well-manage this job.
A lot of veteran can't manage to heal and dps properly with Scholar yet... they still have a lot to learn before criticize Astro

[Crevox]

Astrologians shouldn't be commenting that AST is fine if you haven't played another healer, and you're not level 60. Yes, my AST is level 60.

The problems with the job show up more and more and more the higher level you get, and you can't compare its potency/ability to heal and perform to another healer unless you've actually PLAYED another healer. Astrologian struggles in comparison to the other two healers, who have a much easier time doing everything that they do (MP, healing the party, shielding, DPS, etc) Furthermore, a lot of people are poor judges on the potency of the buffs, which is why some people here on the forum are kind enough to do the math for you.

The buffs are not useful right now. The main gain is supposed to be an increase in party DPS, but AST's DPS is so poor compared to WHM and SCH that it's not. The buffs are so weak that Selene's haste buff is better. There's nothing about AST that is better than the other two healers.

Lastly, there's nothing about AST that makes it a "fast healer." Lightspeed (a long, bad cooldown that just makes you weaker) and an instant heal that is mainly used for its regen do not make us "a fast healer."

[RiisWolf]

Faster cause their regen stance increases attack speed which is your casting speed. Any AST that doesn't know that, needs to seriously re-evaluate their stuff

[RichardButte]

But i, and surely other players, don't want our job become as "simple" as white mage is.
We don't want every of the "out of gcd action" be usefull. We want that it's stay very complicated to manage to heal while buffing and dps too. We want this job stay more complicated than Scholar too.
And we absolutly don't want that the "average veteran player" can well-manage this job.
A lot of veteran can't manage to heal and dps properly with Scholar yet... they still have a lot to learn before criticize Astro

This isn't the issue. The issue is that you can do everything right as an AST, have every card come up Balance, and you will STILL contribute less to a fight than a SCH with their Selene out. We've actually mathed this out and even if the AST gets Balance EVERY...SINGLE...TIME, it's still only a ~1.6% overall DPS increase, which is less than a SCH with Selene which gives a reliable haste buff of 3% for 30 sec, every 60 sec.

I like the idea of a "run and gun" style healer that focuses more on instant casts and potent buffs, but the buffs are currently garbage and aren't worth being put on an RNG system.

You have a 17% chance to draw any one card, and only two of the six are really even useful. Ewer and Spire should never be needed because no one should be running out of resources during a fight. Bole is too random to call it a cooldown and all it does is offset the AST's crappier healing potency (since it has no cooldowns that increase its potency), and Spear is too situational to ever be useful because it basically necessitates that someone HOLD OFF on blowing a cooldown to wait until you draw a Spear, which just ain't gonna happen over the course of a fight.

Yeah, there's a lot of buttons you can press as an AST to min-max your situation to the best of your ability, but even doing that, you're STILL less potent than a WHM/SCH who can push half the buttons while still bringing more to the raid (including utility that AST lacks).

Basically, AST is a healer that pushes 2X the number of buttons for half the result, and that's why it needs buffs.

[Mclyde]

The buff are good enough. Some are usefull in dungeon, some in raid, some combo are quit helpfull in solo quest.
Do you use Cleric stance ? Do you optimize your use of Luminiferous Aether and Lightspeed in order to spam Gravity in a group of ennemies after you put your dot on them ? Keep a Spear card in order to use it when it's time to use these 2 abilities.

Personally, one thing I think will fix AST for good is to lower card draw cooldown to 15 seconds.

15 or 20 seconds wouldn't be op i think. 30 seconde is a bit too much when you don't draw the good cards.
And... it's too bad that it's not possible to double up different buff on th same target. I'd like to be able to in order to create a good burst on someone who just used his offensive abilities. Like Balance(royal road) + Arrow (one that i kept in my deck and the other that i just drew)