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

[AlphaSonic]

I have an idea that would make AST more desirable to take.

What about making Celestial Opposition stop the time. Instead of stunning the enemies it would froze them in time (including all bosses). It wouldn't interrupt casts, it would just froze them and after it finishes the freezing the cast would continue.
With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

[Rox_Unlimited]

I have an idea that would make AST more desirable to take.

What about making Celestial Opposition stop the time. Instead of stunning the enemies it would froze them in time (including all bosses). It wouldn't interrupt casts, it would just froze them and after it finishes the freezing the cast would continue.
With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

it would either be too OP or still underwhelming. Btw froze is past tense Freeze is what you would use in your post.

[Geardagas]

With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

So whats the difference between FROZEing and stunning? Seems like FROZEing the boss is literally the same exact thing as stunning the boss. Unless it isn't diminishing returns, which is op.

[AlphaSonic]

That if the boss is casting an ability it doesn't stop the cast. The cast would continue after the freezing.

[Saseal]

Less RNG or no RNG on buffs would be good, as would looking at the lack of healing potency AST has compared to WHM and SCH.

It would be awesome to be able to choose our buffs, depending on the situation T^T. We could easily pre-prep fights (Royal road a AoE buff, spread a spear, draw a bole.... right before boss pull or first dungeon pull, toss the spear on all, use Bole on the tank..... hells, in a mid-fight known for a raid-wide AoE (megaflare, etc), Royal Road an AoE card, spread a bole sometime earlier..... use the Bole right before the AoE hits (even if SCH/Noct AST can use shields...). Just extra mitigation. Heavy DPS checks - pre-Royal road an AoE card, spread a Balance, draw an Arrow... AoE the party with Balance, Arrow the slowest or lowest DPS to give them a boost (BRD/MCH/PLD). Or AoE Ewer on healers in something like A4. Or throw a RR'ed potency buff with a spread or drawn whatsitsface TP card on WAR/Constantly AoEing melee DPSes, knowing there's a WAR tank in a dungeon with big pulls.
But it's just not that easy to plan when it's all RNG. I've had fights where the only thing remotely useful drawn was a bole. For the entire fight. Spears and ewers e'rrywhere! I ended up just Royal Roading everything or just throwing Spears on tank/DPS in hopes of catching a CD not yet used. It would be a lot of planning and predicting and timing if they let us choose our cards.

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening ._.

I would so take being able to pick my cards over buffed healing power - if in a party with another healer, I can easily help the other healer out, using the buffs... throw extended or potent Bole on the tank if they're getting slapped around and we're having a hard time keeping up, throw raised potency ewer on the healer if their MP is low. Throw a spear on them right as someone dies if they're the type to SC+Raise right away (or, even better, if they indicate BEFORE they pop shroud and I can throw a spear on them so Shroud comes back sooner.... assuming I have one in spread or Draw isn't on CD)...

In this case it would still be a wanted healer for the buffs, but would not overwrite the need for healing ability from WHM or SCH...

But I really shouldn't say much about the healing potency, as I haven't hit anywhere near end game content on AST, yet x.x It's just all I got, on keeping the balance

[winsock]

Glad to see this. It doesn't seem like AST needs HUGE modifications to be on par:

Def agree that cards need to be addressed. If AST could get the cards they need, it could solve many healing issues.

On the healing end, nocturnal AB should be modified in some way IMO

[Lastelli]

Being able to freely pick your cards would make this job truly unique and much more interesting. Of course we'd need cards that actually help us healing, so when we need high healing throughput we can just buff ourselves or use damage mitigation buffs and in less healing intensive phases we can use cards to improve our comrades' dps instead of directly dpsing. This is more or less what SCHs do when switching fairy, but in our case it would be much more important to optimally use our unique feature because we can't "sic" cards. Unfortunately, the rng nature of cards makes 4 out of 6 cards useless. Need to mitigate that tank buster? Well too bad, here's a spear for you! Wanna help your just revived dps with tp? Take this bole.
I really hope they reconsider how cards work, but I'm not setting my expectations too high.

[Akava]

I would much rather see a buff now, be found to be OP and get a slight nerf later. This mentality of "Let's make sure not to overshoot things, so we never have to make people unhappy with nerfs" is lame. Yeah, NIN was a bit OP when it was released and it got some nerfs and people were upset. I'm sure most of them are over it now.

[YuiSasaki]

I would much rather see a buff now, be found to be OP and get a slight nerf later. This mentality of "Let's make sure not to overshoot things, so we never have to make people unhappy with nerfs" is lame. Yeah, NIN was a bit OP when it was released and it got some nerfs and people were upset. I'm sure most of them are over it now.

The funny thing about being OP is, that it does need a slight nerf but a drastic one. So - at least I think so - I rather wait some weeks and get a buff that has been thought through, and not been made in some kind of haste. I had that kind of "buff-nerfing" for way too long while playing wow and it just makes me sick...

[Geardagas]

I would much rather see a buff now, be found to be OP and get a slight nerf later. This mentality of "Let's make sure not to overshoot things, so we never have to make people unhappy with nerfs" is lame. Yeah, NIN was a bit OP when it was released and it got some nerfs and people were upset. I'm sure most of them are over it now.

Actually, anyone who has played wow for any length of time knows that this mentality is spectacular. There is nothing worse then logging in and finding out that your class has been randomly rendered useless, then next week it's fixed again, then the week after its rendered even more useless than before and you lost a fun ability too, and so and and so on. It just kills the fun.