balance through Balance

[MoroMurasaki]

Stepping back from the numbers for heals...

If we have a 10% Balance, then we can safely use The Arrow as a useful card (compared to fishing for Balances). At this potency, they'd have roughly the same effect. I'd argue that, barring TP and MP issues, Arrow would be better situationally because it means you can both buff healing at the same time as well as fit more GCDs into the same attack window. Heck, I'd argue that the values for The Arrow and The Balance could be swapped. Mainly because The Arrow with a high attack speed potency would cause TP/MP issues unless your party comp has good self-sustain

Thank you for getting back on topic!

I love all these ideas. Personally I don't think 15% from 20% is enough, it really needs to be reduced to 10% at most. Basically the damage gained by Balance would need to be something that a strong player of another healing class could conceivably output on top of that AST's personal DPS.

The end result of this conversation is basically summed up in a few points.

All healers must be able to heal all content with all party compositions assuming sufficent player skill.

AST is just as (if not more in terms of their comparison to SCH) capable of healing anything in the game right now.

AST brings the most DPS to the table with Balance, more at this point than either other healer could generate even with max DPS uptime.

AST can perform the same essential function that WHM/SCH do but then has this buff ON TOP OF THAT.

There is no change necessary to the rest of AST's kit at this point. If they're having trouble healing without the quicker clears brought on by Balance then tune their kits up but I don't think that should be necessary aside from perhaps some care around their MP management. Either way the changes need to start at Balance.

Edit: I want to play AST. I am leveling it right now. The thing that keeps me from fully enjoying myself is the idea that I am just keeping everyone up while fishing for Balance. I want to use the whole kit and I don't want to feel like a poor player just because RNG didn't give me my one viable card.