Quote Originally Posted by basketofseals View Post
What makes AST special? DRK and MCH were welcomed and in fact preferred to PLD/BRD on 3.0.

The DRK's being squishy was an amalgam of things. The starting level 30 gear they give you is awful and gave you no accessories, so almost every DRK was undergeared. At level cap we had lots of people confused about how to balance MP/Grit/Darkside which compounded with what you said as well as people going for full slaying accessories.
On release, Diurnal AST was worse than WHM, and Nocturnal AST was worse than SCH. This showed both on paper and in practice.

It was due to a bad balancing of its cooldown timers and potencies, as well as overall healing power. In short: AST was designed to be able to either replace a WHM or a SCH, but never achieved to be roughly as useful as the two jobs it wanted to replace.
So, it never really took off.

On the other hand, MCH had a better DPS and utility than BRD from the get go, and the DRK's toolkit was better suited for Gordias, making it better in every way compared to PLD.
AST wasn't better than anyone. It wasn't even on the same level as any other healer.

The 3.4 buffs are here to finally allow AST to perform at the same level as WHM/SCH, making it able to fit in any team composition. It was supposed to be able to do that from the beginning... but it took more than a year to reach that point (such a long time that people are actually still wondering "is it good enough now?").