Suggested changes to AST Design to bring it in line with WHM/SCH

[Mibgestalt]

There are lots of situations in whicn Synastry make life easier, and the prey mechanic in A1S is one of those times. The challenge back when the fight was new was not healing the prey target but keeping the tank in a good state to prepare for the tank buster. ASTs have always done that easily even when Synastry didn't give a healing buff. WHMs and SCHs could do it (they had to be able to do it), but each of them had to put a little more effort into it. The point is not doing something that would be impossible to do eith the other healers; it's having multiple ways of achieving the same/similar results. Just like the three melee DPS in the game do something unique and bring utility in different levels.

I am aware of that, I did qualify "when it comes to single target healing"! The burst split healing is one of the things it excels at. He was specifically citing AST's "tank healing", which to me means single target throughput.

Edit:
And (to respond to your post about math and DPS) as much as I enjoy a good theorycraft, I'm dubious of their value, because often times it just doesn't transition in practice. Especially with something as dynamic and changing as healing, it's significantly less valuable. Not to mention relative difficulty is something that needs to be considered. If a WHM has a more direct, simpler, easier to use kit, even if the results are the same, then it's going to be played more and preferred more (though personally I don't think that's a problem that needs to be fixed).
This tier in terms of competitiveness is kind of a wash when it comes to comparisons because the state of ASTs for the first bit was bad enough that people swapped out of it, but ideally this "high DPS check" meta would have been where ASTs were preferred. However on my server, even with groups catching up, WHMs are still by and large preferred. Whether this is just stubborn thinking or indicative of a larger problem is probably up in the air for now.