Quote Originally Posted by Ghishlain View Post

[edit] I'm also going to add here that I feel the reward-to-effort ratio for AST is far too high and needs to be knocked down for the sake of healer balance.
So much this. Cards are supposed to add this element of choice to the kit that makes up for a lot of fast casts/instant cast tools and general strength of the AST healer kit, but it's simply not there because of how binary the buffs are. A SCH at least has to think about using their stacks, and even in a raid situation sometimes you have to compensate with your stack usage to get your group out of a tight spot, no matter how well you plan out the encounter. AST doesn't have to do that with cards - there's never a time where you think, "I'll forego AOE Balance here for AOE Bole instead because [reasons]", making the whole concept of 'juggling' AST cards complete hogwash for the most part.

This might be an ugly opinion here, but tbh I feel like AST's original healing strength was fine relative to the utility they brought, it's just that their original card system sucked nuts and the healing aspect was buffed first, then the card buffs came later. Imagine if they fixed all the issues with the card system first, like Shuffle not giving you the same card again and Spear actually being a crit buff instead of the weird CDR gimmick it had, as well as the reduced CDs we got on things like Shuffle and tools like Minor Arcana to seal the deal on making a use out of "dead" draws. Then the card system would be as valuable as it is now, but as a healer AST might have to work a little harder to produce results, instead of gently rolling their face from one side of the keyboard to the next like they do now.

Can't wait to see how SE will ruin Dancer, if the rumors are to be believed that it's the next healer job. /trollface