DPSing as AST

[Teraluna]

In theory, yes. But with the nerf to Balance and the Spear change, not really. That's 3 cards out of 6 that are beneficial to use, as opposed to before when only the Balance was wanted.

As with anything gated by RNG, yeah you could go through an entire duty without getting a single Balance/Arrow/Spear, but in reality that's never going to happen. Especially when you factor in that the first card pre-pull can be a spread Balance guaranteed, even if it does take up time. Having that up while the entire party is doing their openers is a significant boost to raid DPS already. More than a WHM will be bringing themselves.

The issue for me is not whether you are going to pull x or y card so many/few times during a run, it is the fact that the randomness is there in the first place.

Playing a healing class that is at the mercy of ability rng should never have been introduced. To me it's a gimmicky mechanic that has been put there purely in an attempt to pad out the Ast.

What it's ended up with is:
Let's introduce randomness -> No don't do that -> Let's mitigate randomness

It's open to luck, is messy, cumbersome, and goes away from playing a class purely based on skill - not an out of your control electronic roll of a dice that decides what skill you are going to get when you press the button.

Remove the rng and let players pick which card to use - and of course some would never be picked - which just underlines the impact of this misplaced rng in the current set up.