Korean fan fest translation says ast changes balanced healers, do you agree?

[Risvertasashi]

My fear is that I'm actually watching the same exact thing happening in FFXIV now, although at least Astrologian has more unique mechanics that would still retain their identity should Balance end up being nerfed. The Balance card can take a hit - it's Arrow and Spear that needed buffs in the first place, especially Spear. There's a reason why everyone sensible never ever imagined the devs would even buff Balance in the first place.

Very interesting story. But as someone already pointed out... Astro actually doesn't have much identity of its own. There's a few nuances, sure, but its core is a straight copy of white mage. That used to be weakened, and now is more powerful (Faster in Diurnal stance, flat out potency buff in Noct)

Basically, my argument is that if a party damage buff is the only argument for taking a healer to a raid, and people act like touching it at all is going to lead to the class being filed away as worthless, then it's a pretty clear sign that it's actually horrendously broken and everything else in the class' toolkit is grossly under-powered or poorly designed. Though many in this thread know the situation is a bit more complicated than that - WHM's fault is that it has no significant unique tools of its own that the other two healers can't copy in their own way.

Well, so that's the thing. AST is not underpowered anymore. SE buffed away literally every weaknesses. "OK AST heals are strong enough now, but the MP management is poor." Then SE buffs Luminiferous Aether to the point where it takes you from empty to full, even with the high piety levels we see now, even as you continue to spam heals. And so on.

And, SE specifically took away and/or nerfed WHM's unique utility at the beginning of HW. It didn't happen by accident.

Anyways I do see the parallels of your story. SE has talked about reigning in Scholar for the expac. If they do, and leave AST pretty much untouched, I do really think we'll start seeing a double AST meta. But it really depends on exactly what approach SE takes to balancing with the expac. And if Mr. Yoshi believes there's nothing much to worry about really, then that does not bode well for the healer community.