Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

[Daws]

I'm happy they are working to make changes. However it also bothers me they have walk on eggshells to balance the class properly w/o it becoming overpowered. It baffles me they made it half a whm and half a sch in the first place instead of just making it its own unique class/playstyle. I feel like so much of this drama with the class could have been averted from the beginning if they weren't stupid about designing this class from the ground up.

I'm baffled that you find it baffling. Honestly. It seems pretty obvious to me. In creating a healer that can swap between regen and shields, they created a unique healer. Plenty of people love ast, it's just a matter of balancing and ironing out the rough edges.

They weren't stupid, they just approached a new healer differently than you would have. Doesn't make them stupid.

[Eudyptes]

I'm baffled that you find it baffling. Honestly. It seems pretty obvious to me. In creating a healer that can swap between regen and shields, they created a unique healer. Plenty of people love ast, it's just a matter of balancing and ironing out the rough edges.

They weren't stupid, they just approached a new healer differently than you would have. Doesn't make them stupid.

I like ast quite a lot too, but that's in spite of it being a hybrid. In a game like this where there is only two healer spots (on top of the fact that hybrid classes almost never work in MMO's), it's a very bad idea to make a class that can only be a watered down version of either at any given time. Imo, that's stupid. Especially considering most could have probably seen this coming.

And by unique I didn't mean "technically unique", I meant give it it's own playstyle. Something that would have given them a lot more freedom in situations exactly like this where they can balance w/o fear of making it OP.

[EchuKayu]

I'm baffled that you find it baffling. Honestly. It seems pretty obvious to me. In creating a healer that can swap between regen and shields, they created a unique healer. Plenty of people love ast, it's just a matter of balancing and ironing out the rough edges.

They weren't stupid, they just approached a new healer differently than you would have. Doesn't make them stupid.

Lol. Really? You define unique on the ability to switch between sects? That's like saying all of the tanks are unique because they can change between defensive and offensive stances, but there's that one tank that can't, so they're unique.

Unique are cards, unique is Synastry, unique is that side of AST. It is most definitely not creating a job that is a ripoff of a WHM/SCH, while leaving out the things about those two healers that give them their strength. (Crit shields/High potency spells and aoes)