Quote Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo View Post
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.
I replied to a post a bit below yours about how I don't agree with that. I think AST has to think more than any other job. As a SCH main you aren't really thinking about your aetherflow stacks and after you map out the fight your stacks are consistent and you generally won't use them outside of the mapped spots. Most of the time you're dumping all your stacks into trick attack in the form of Energy Drain. Trying to get 3 Energy Drains under trick. Bio > Energy Drain > Broil > Miasma 2 > Energy Drain + Swiftcast > Broil > oGCD + Energy Drain. Not much else to think about stacks there. Even if you aren't in a kind of environment where you can utilize that there's still not too much to think about because you should know the threshold on where you need to dump the rest of your stacks because Aetherflow is coming off CD.