Please do not nerf Astrologian instead buff WHM/SCH

[Raikai]

^^^^^^^

Failing that though, Balance at the LEAST needs to be looked at/addressed. A flat 10% DPS increase on everyone in the raid is something no other healer comes even close to emulating in value.

Instead of messing with Balance, wouldn't be better to improve Chain Stratagem and/or whatever utility WHM has? (I don't have the job)

[Verdan]

Instead of messing with Balance, wouldn't be better to improve Chain Stratagem and/or whatever utility WHM has? (I don't have the job)

(they have none)

(I'm not even being sarcastic)

(they have an AoE stun, a knockback/bind, and a sleep, but Square decided that CC isn't a thing in dungeons or raids)

[loreleidiangelo]

Instead of messing with Balance, wouldn't be better to improve Chain Stratagem and/or whatever utility WHM has? (I don't have the job)

Say they buff Chain Strategem so that somehow it maths out to be a 10% raid-wide DPS increase. Okay, then what? If you play with classes that don't stack crit you're gonna take WHM/AST maybe because SCH's healing and MP issues are kinda busted and they're just not worth it. But let's say everyone is still stacking crit because it's still a bongos-good stat and the devs have seemingly learned nothing from HW about it as a stat. Well, WHMs are now taking the piss over being left out of raids again, so what do we do? We give them some kind of haste that equals a 10% raid-wide DPS increase? Except haste still consumes resources, so SCH/AST is the go-to still. Give them personal DPS so high it makes up for the lack of AOE Balance? Congrats, they're now busted for 4-man and solo content.

Easiest solution is also the most boring: EVERY healer gets a flat 10% raid-wide DPS increase every two minutes. Even then though, ASTs will still be taken because Bole and Arrow, while nowhere near as good as Balance, are probably still better than most WHM and maybe current-SCH things, to say nothing of the potential of actual well-coordinated Spears on certain DPS.

In my opinion, the best solution is also the most labor-intensive one: rework AST so that it doesn't just copy WHM and SCH, and is instead a unique healer job with unique strengths and weaknesses so that they're not always a good choice healing-wise for an encounter over a WHM:SCH combo, even taking Balance into account. This is an expac's worth of work though, so that's why I'm mostly suggesting just nerfing or removing Balance in the interim.