Why people says AST is bad?

[Krixus]

Been running constant dungeons to get my pld to 60, just about there. I've seen many sch and whm now who are having a terrible time handling the last boss of vault and other random pulls. I only mention this part cause everyone before was going on about astro not being any good for this fight. Hardly any of these sch/whm dps, max ive seen was about 100dps though a dungeon. The astro's on the other hand are kicking ass, spamming gravity, buffing our group. Im sad when I see a sch/whm now.

Im running neverreap/frac doing 300-350 dps now as i170 ast, so that shits any talk of ast not being able to dps. That is also without cards benefit. This is obviously things that dont require acc, but both our DoT's have no accuracy requirement so I have no worries come alex time.

I just like to throw these things in here cause I'm sure alot of could-be astro's are looking at threads like these and decide to go sch/whm instead. Astro needs slight tweeking and nothing more, the heals are plenty, the potency of our insta cure is ridiculously high if you let the tank get real low before using it. I just dont see any need for a buff to heals themselves, just focus on card tweeks.

[PetiteMalFleur]

snip

The job functions great in a small party and in shorter fights such as what you see in dungeons. Many opportunities to buff one of 4 people making a considerable difference. There's also no need to self buff as astrologian to sustain yourself in short fights. It's when taken in to raid content, with tank busters and high raid-wide aoe damage the job falls short. Buffs must be used to maintain mana. Heals are weaker with fewer tools to bring a group back from mistakes. Also less mitigation tools like virus or E4E.

Our insta cure is the lowest potency ability of all the classes. Scholar has lustrate and indomitability and emergency tactics Whm has benediction, assize and tetragrammaton. A 400 potency heal is nothing. It's our only emergency heal and really needs to be used on CD to help combat the mana issues.

[Cynfael]

To be fair, Essential Dignity is the strongest thing this side of Benediction if correctly timed.

That doesn't make the most prominent criticisms of the class' overall power and utility less valid, though.

[MidnightTundra]

snip-.

I'm 59 on SCH and I've been doing vault with ease so those WHM and SCH you're probably running into are bad. This place is such a massive cake walk for SCH it isn't even funny. The last boss is also a joke for SCH because I don't have mana issues on this class like I do on AST when I want to do dps. If I even think of doing gravity between pulls, I'm just out of mana and I don't even do respectable numbers for how much mana I'm burning per GCD. My Regen is pitiful so that means less uptime to DPS.

I DPS on bosses in my expert runs with ease and I easily do over 400 DPS because ASTs single target DPS is actually good (only slightly weaker than SCHs until they start Energy Draining). I've been doing 600+ DPS on grouped pulls and 350+ on bosses since Aery on SCH and it's only going to get better when I can throw on my i180 gear. And please stop mentioning these random cards. Your card benefits are actually worse than Selene's Fey Wind (I always have Selene out). Your Expanded Arrow card is actually weaker than Selene's Fey Wind (In 8 man) unless you blow a 2 minute cooldown on it. Only then, your expanded card gets marginally better. Even then, you're dealing with RNG. You're dealing with RNG and your cards aren't even powerful.

I love AST but it's absolutely frustrating running through these dungeons yet again and pondering on why SE made a healing class so damn weak in every. single. area. I was so hyped for AST since December 2014; The date they announced it. Now? I'm almost turned off of from it because I feel handicapped for absolutely no reason.

[PetiteMalFleur]

To be fair, Essential Dignity is the strongest thing this side of Benediction if correctly timed.

That doesn't make the most prominent criticisms of the class' overall power and utility less valid, though.

Except lustrate is 600 potency with a chance to use 3 times every minute and tetragrammaton is 700 potency. It's nice to have something but when competing for a static position it really falls short with offsetting our numerous other handicaps. It should be buffed or placed on a shorter CD along with numerous other buffs the job needs.

I love AST but it's absolutely frustrating running through these dungeons yet again and pondering on why SE made a healing class so damn weak in every. single. area. I was so hyped for AST since December 2014; The date they announced it. Now? I'm almost turned off of from it because I feel handicapped for absolutely no reason.

This is really me as well. I loved the who idea of a time mage, support healer. Was so excited I leveled it to 60 and worked hard to learn all the nuances of the job. Then I started raiding and the amount of time I spent just sustaining myself with card buffs was so frustrating it just ruined the job for me. It defeats the entire purpose of having a support class when all their reserves have to be used just sustaining themself at the expense of any potential benefit the job may bring.

[DarkmoonVael]

I love AST but it's absolutely frustrating running through these dungeons yet again and pondering on why SE made a healing class so damn weak in every. single. area. I was so hyped for AST since December 2014; The date they announced it. Now? I'm almost turned off of from it because I feel handicapped for absolutely no reason.

This is also where i am at with the AST job. For a healer, it is lacking in some major departments, non more so than its ability to recover a raid from situation that occur whilst progressing through the raids. Its emergency heal is pretty meh as well. I want this class to be good and viable for progression raids, but sadly at the moment it just isnt there. WHM and SCH sadly make a mockery of it in terms of healing and the contribution to raid dps. I wish they would have made AST a unique healer in terms of its healing abilities, rather than mashing WHM and SCH together in one class and then reducing potencies and have no healing buff cooldowns.

All that said, OMG <3 Synastry.

[Kelya]

Well anyway now Alexender Raid is up!
And for the first and second Alexander Raid "normal mode" at least AST has no worries to have since that's really... Easy xD