Thoughts from a 60 AST & 60 WHM

[Vill_Castiglioni]

AST really isn’t as inferior or as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Shuffle could be more reliable, sects changeable during battle, and the unfortunate boredom during synced content where I cant use Gravity or Time Dilation which I like to use with the Bole + regen on the tank so I can DPS longer.

Synastry is great to use appropriately in a long fight where you know you need to heal 2 targets at the same time. Essential Dignity has a short CD and can heal crazy amounts when people are low on hp. If you know someone is or will take a lot of damage and time everything right, youc an both buff them with a card and use Time Dilation with regen(s). Celestial Opposition can extend ALL your effect timers including regens, which can also help you save mana if you let them keep ticking. Collective Unconcious is also good, use during boss downtime to top off the party, pop that- effectively healing the party and giving you time to regenerate mana without using any more.

Even Lightspeed isn’t useless, it’s amazing during movement heavy fights in making it extremely easy. Like someone else said either in this thread or another, you will gain more HoTs during a movement heavy section of a fight using it than a healer who can’t heal at all or less during all that movement.

Basically, by knowing what’s coming, being preemptive, and being ready for any situation by paying full attention, AST plays just like I would play any other healers. Those are the methods I use, and I just think people don’t know how to use the class properly. I don’t know if I’ve just been with crappy healers in 8 man content, however there have been many instances where I was the one carrying and fully capable of doing so, without fear that things would go south.

[Risvertasashi]

AST really isn’t as inferior or as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

My biggest issue under 'viability' is that, healing the same thing, it just seems to run out of MP so much faster. I'm not exactly a new healer and do everything I can to maximize efficiency.

Kinda what I meant in my OP: Buffs may well be worth that drawback. It's something raid groups have to decide for themselves.

My other criticisms don't really matter as far as gameplay/raiding goes, I just personally don't like the bolted on feel of the card system. I'd still raid on it if I didn't think I would be making things harder on my team (and still might experiment with it a few times).

But I do think some people are being a bit overreactive, kinda like with BRDs/MCHs. Someone posted a parse on reddit of the MCH doing over 900 DPS in Ravana EX, for example...