5.0 AST is a failure

[tesni_g]

So I am just a casual player so my opinion means little. When I first heard about AST changes I was excited. I had it in my head that AST was playing like XI's RDM or WoW Cassic's PLD where it was a buffer job that also healed. Obviously jumping into the class it was very much not the case. With long cooldowns buffing still takes a large backseat.

So what if they removed cooldowns entirely ? If AST main job was to maintain 100% uptime on both Cards and Divination with healing in between ? Obviously numbers can be tweeked but I am more so talking about the playstyle.

I would really like to disagree with you on your first point--casual players have just as much a right to offer feedback as anyone else. Most of FFXIV's millions of subscribers are casual and I do feel that such serious problems with AST are much harder on casual players than they are with "hardcore," because the hardcore already came into the expansion with the mindset that they will level several jobs, and will play what best meshes with their established group. Most serious raiding healers I've encountered are omni, because that flexibility is valuable.

So the casual player will struggle a lot more -- keeping up on the heals, but also, what are they going to do? A casual player levels their jobs a lot slower and the prospect of leveling another healer to see if it doesn't suck as bad is overwhelming. They won't think "the problem is the class."

I am super concerned about a toxic meta this time around. There will always be a meta but I never felt like the SCH/AST meta in SB was toxic. I was WHM main when I first jumped in to savages (Delta) and I rarely encountered any exclusion of WHM. If anyone harbored resentment I never got that vibe, because WHM could do the content. It wasn't fun or engaging on WHM, but doable. I feel that AST right now is not really doable. I'm afraid that this meta will be more pervasive. The actual hardcore raiders will switch mains quietly and play. The midcore/pug raiders will vocally disown AST, and that will bleed down to casuals who don't really understand why AST is bad, just that "everyone" hates it.