WHM new skill ideas!

[technole]

They were bad for numerous things actually.
Low healing (they had lower potency on their standard heals), cards barely did anything, and all around a worse healing toolkit compared to the other 2.
The issue was not raids or savage or something. The issue was that even in "standard" content AST was struggling with the damage where you cannot have someone else working harder cause you have worse healing. hence they got buffed.

Diurnal was fine was after the first Gordias buff to bring pure healing potencies up, and it hadn't changed ever since. Gear certainly helped over time though with having higher MP pools. Aether and aggro management got buffed for Midas and at that point it was already ahead of White Mage in MP refresh. It's been Noct, card buff QoL since then.

So from a healing standpoint it had been fine for awhile in Diurnal. I still remember players like myself and Staris getting slammed in this forum by White Mages telling us how of a crutch we were in Gordias Savage. That our SCHs was probably doing more work, etc. Of course they hadn't had the AST experience on the floor themselves and we were clearing A1S-A3S weekly at the time. Melee appreciated spire cards in A2S, and A3S any damage increase with balance and arrow was like a godsend. Staris went on to be our server first A4S and they were AST/SCH.