Thoughts from a 60 AST & 60 WHM

[GideonHighmourn]

You're right, it's not necessary. I didn't say it was. I just thought you were severely underplaying the power of a cost reduction buff. It's a huge help, and it lasts for 20 seconds, not 15. It's not going to buy them a spot unless they have a baseline healing, which they currently don't. But if they can baseline heal about the same as SCH/WHM and provide a range of powerful buffs on top of that, then they can vie for a spot. Right now they can't, because they just don't even have as powerful healing as either WHM/SCH.

Even at equal healing potency, I'd still find their range of "powerful" buffs severely underwhelming, most of all since they're reliant on RNG. In my eyes, AST's buffs are only powerful on paper. Since paper doesn't account for RNG, or actually NEEDING one of the buffs AT A SPECIFIC TIME, AST's range of "powerful" buffs is anything but "powerful". It feels tacked on and poorly thought out, especially RR/Shuffle which almost always result in a "loss" compared to just using the original card in the first place. I've drawn Ewer 8+ times in a row in a group with no MDPS. Spear is iffy at best, and I usually just let it expire (so I don't get another CD from RR, since it's also a "loss" with Spear).

I love the idea and concept of AST. I was super excited for it before launch; however, I'm severely underwhelmed at the gimp WHM with RNG cards tacked onto it. It doesn't feel complete, at all. Especially since Nocturnal Stance is so awful and lacks synergy with the baseline toolkit that Dirunal has. The distinct lack of healing cooldowns and poor MP efficiency is terribly evident even at level 50 (compared to WHM/SCH); let's not even talk about Lightspeed. I'm not hating on AST, but the vehement defense of such an underpowered, incomplete class makes me sad; it could have been really awesome, but what we got was a gimp WHM with "meh" RNG buffs.

To me, a perfectly AST being only "passable" in content with a perfectly played group is unacceptable.