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

[LycorisSelunis]

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,.

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

Never make healing any moe rng than just having crits. Ever. I know we have some wow players around....rng spreading renewing mist anyone? How did having uplift tied to an rng feel? Pretty crummy right?! Add in this game has next to no smart heals (correct me if wrong but fairy's embrace is it, yeah?) and rng healing is simply unacceptable. In wow you had a number of smartheals to pick up slack/catch someone missed in aoe (or make healing very very lazy).

[YuiSasaki]

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

Never make healing any moe rng than just having crits. Ever. I know we have some wow players around....rng spreading renewing mist anyone? How did having uplift tied to an rng feel? Pretty crummy right?! Add in this game has next to no smart heals (correct me if wrong but fairy's embrace is it, yeah?) and rng healing is simply unacceptable. In wow you had a number of smartheals to pick up slack/catch someone missed in aoe (or make healing very very lazy).

Tbh, I highly doubt that fairy heals via smart heals, it's rather a come first serve first mentality. Plus smart heals are by far the worst thing blizzard could implement... "ZOMFG HEALS NEEDING TOO MUCH TIME TO DECIDE ON WHICH TARGET TO THROW THEM HEALS" "i got it lets take this out and let the mechanic decide" "YEA EVERYONE GUNNA LIKE MUCH"..sure on some casts it is nice (like Well of Light)....but I'm getting way too off-topic..

To summarize, yes i know what you are talking about, but i wonder why one would need cards that help "us" healing? Cards were meant to be buffs, so the only thing I could think of would be a flat percentage to healing via a card buff (play balance on yourself get 5% benefic heal and see dem dds cry xD)

[LycorisSelunis]

To summarize, yes i know what you are talking about, but i wonder why one would need cards that help "us" healing? Cards were meant to be buffs, so the only thing I could think of would be a flat percentage to healing via a card buff (play balance on yourself get 5% benefic heal and see dem dds cry xD)

I had thought this at one point- make balance give healers more healing and make bole increase healing received, but I worry that would make those too desirable compared to other cards (balance more than it already was). Personally I was hoping they would tack an aoe heal on CO (our assize/indom) and have diurnal increase healing received and noct reduce damage taken, or something like that.

As for lightspring, that and totems were what made the most sense as a 'smartheal', a deployable that ticked away, or did nothing if no one was THAT badly hurt. One or two of those is great. All your aoe heals? Not as great, haha. Though now that I think of it, I wonder if aoe healing being 'raid' targeted and not 'party' targeted has anything to do with that. This game doesn't have a lot of 24m content though....

[Assirra]

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

Never make healing any moe rng than just having crits. Ever. I know we have some wow players around....rng spreading renewing mist anyone? How did having uplift tied to an rng feel? Pretty crummy right?! Add in this game has next to no smart heals (correct me if wrong but fairy's embrace is it, yeah?) and rng healing is simply unacceptable. In wow you had a number of smartheals to pick up slack/catch someone missed in aoe (or make healing very very lazy).

The problem is they basically worked themselves in a corner and i really don't see how this class ever got passed the writing board tbh.
They needed a new healer that worked together with both current healers so they created the sect system. However that job was also not supposed to be as good in their respective specialty so they nerfed the output.
Then for some godforsaken reason instead of making a system around the weaker heals they decided to go with lolrng random buffs that barely do anything.
The card system should be part of our healing, but having an unreliable healer is just crap.
It's like 2 teams designed this job and just mashed ideas together and called it quits.

To summarize, yes i know what you are talking about, but i wonder why one would need cards that help "us" healing? Cards were meant to be buffs, so the only thing I could think of would be a flat percentage to healing via a card buff (play balance on yourself get 5% benefic heal and see dem dds cry xD)

Because that is supposed to be our "thing"? We are a healer first of all and should be designed so.
What are we besides the card system? A underdeveloped whm/sch.
We are currently a buffer class in a game that has no place for it.

[SuzakuCMX]

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

I disagree. Keeping our healing the same as it is now but making one card buff our healing? Trash. Increasing our healing by 5% for 20s everytime we use Draw? Very nice.

[LycorisSelunis]

I disagree. Keeping our healing the same as it is now but making one card buff our healing? Trash. Increasing our healing by 5% for 20s everytime we use Draw? Very nice.

That is making it tied to the draw action and thus that bit isn't rnged, so I can agree to this point :3

Personally I thought that giving 2% mp back whenever we used draw would have been nice but a small duration healing buff sounds grand. I wonder if this would lead to people constantly drawing to have a buff up a lot (even just throwing away cards they don't want just to have a buff) or if they would sit on 'draw' for when burst was needed and not have as many cards going out. I am always fascinated by the differences in mentality amongst healers for that sort of thing.

[YuiSasaki]

I disagree. Keeping our healing the same as it is now but making one card buff our healing? Trash. Increasing our healing by 5% for 20s everytime we use Draw? Very nice.

Why not create a stacking buff with draw that gives 1-2% of let's say increased healing, and stacks up to 3-5 times (depending if it gives 1% (->5times); if it gives 2% (->3times)) on a duration that barely suffices. Like 32-35sec (server lag might need to be taken into account). Therefore one would encourage players to use draw on CD.


Edit: rephrased stuff

[SuzakuCMX]

Why not create a stacking debuff that gives 1-2% of let's say increased healing, and stacks up to 3-5 times (depending if it gives 1% (->5times); if it gives 2% (->3times)) on a duration that barely suffices. Like 32-35sec (server lag might need to be taken into account). Therefore one would encourage players to use draw on CD.

That seems really boring and doesn't really do anything for Noct while it makes Diurnal exponentially more powerful due to their HoTs.

I'd rather one of the two happen:

1. Synastry becomes a permanent buff that you can place on your allied party member; while Synastry is on that member, their healing output is increased by 15%. That way AST as a solohealer isn't strong, but in a duo group they become much more powerful. By displacing their extra healing onto the other healer, they now have time and MP to DPS and throw out card buffs.

2. Switch the stance buffs; Diurnal now gives 10% Healing Potency and Nocturnal gives 10% Attack Speed. In addition, Diurnal regenerates 2% of their MP when using Draw. Nocturnal Stance gives +50% effect to all card buffs (RR still counts it from the original potency though, so Enhanced Balance gives 15% + another 5% from Nocturnal and expanded balance is +10% to everyone hit).

This way, Diurnal is now the sustained healer half of Astrologian while Nocturnal is for when you don't need the healing and want more damage/buffs to be thrown out.

Celestial Opposition and Collective Unconscious would still need to be changed, though.