Is AST bad?

[Duskane]

Ast is fine outside of some of it's awkward tools it got in ShB

I think new card system(the buttons themselves) is good
While the card effects are just bland

[Brandedblade]

No, AST is great to play now, especially if you want a class that's busier then the other two healers, it's the only healer capable of using its ogcd heals without loosing damage, while with the current tier its card buffs are weaker, percentage based buffs do tend to get better as gear does.

The issue is that while it's good to play, some of the people who preferred the way it played prior to shb view it in a very negative light.

I say give it a try on your own terms, and dont let any of our opinions influence you.

[MitsukiKimura]

This is my opinion so take it as you will. Started out as a black mage main into a AST main. The Class has the most challenging gameplay of the three healers. If you play on Console, the Card system is going to be your worst enemy. I wouldn't say the class is "Bad" I will say it does need a lot of improvement and adjustments to it, especially with Divination and the cards feeling unique again. AST has some powerful tools in its kit, but there are some skills that are just lackluster or not even used at all Cough "Undraw". The main reason why I love and play AST is for the challenge and improvement in my play style with it, not to mention it is a really beautiful class that just feels underwhelming for all the hard work you have to do to just compete with the other healers. Pretty much how I feel it's like pre patch Ninja of healers, it needs a lot of Love and I hope Yoshi P takes our feedback into consideration about it. Hope this helps you understand a bit more about AST.

[Crushnight]

AST can heal perfectly fine in everything just gotta use cds effectively in big pulls.
AST pDPS is lower than the other two healers so things will take a little longer solo but it is still manageable.
Diurnal AST is stronger than Nocturnal AST especially at lv 80 (this could change in 5.1 who knows).
2 seal Divination is very marginal loss (only 1% difference) so if have to use that if unlucky (24% chance to get 3 seal divination without redraw goes up to 32% chance if use redraw for 2nd and 3rd seal).

The only thing i can say is bad about AST is its card system design from a controller user standpoint especially going for optimal setup, there are other issues but nothing else i would consider as abysmal as that.

Ultimately it is down to you if you find AST enjoyable or not, I'm fine with AST in dungeons/normal raids but i won't step foot in savage with it not because it can't do it but because of the horrendous time every opener and 6 mins into a fight i have to deal with that makes me want to throw my controller across my room for less gain than glare, glare, glare, glare, i may have projected there a little

[vtndll]

As a person who plays on a controller I can tell you ast feels absolutely awful to play. In the old system you could change the cards to AoE buff cards so you wouldn't have to press up and down on the d-pad so much. Even when you did single target buff someone you had the ability to extend the buff which resulted in less targeting as well.

If you are not using controller I heard the new ast plays "alright" but I can’t confirm that.

[Corbeau]

Doing the opener optimally does rather suck imo.

[Verlyn]

The new AST is a perfectly functional job that can do content. You can participate in the normal healer gameplay on it and be quite effective, with the only achilles heel being that MP management gets pretty tight.

It is also a complete mess of a design with little fantasy, a card minigame "mechanic" that barely engages the user or interacts with the kit it is a part of, and has precious few cooldowns that feel satisfying to use.

They'll go back to the drawing board eventually. In the meantime, it is something slightly different to do from Scholar or White Mage.

[Derio]

Its fine, it just requires the most effort out of the 3 healing jobs.

[kobe-sabi]

All Heals have no problem doing thier main job, but all heals are mind numbing boring to do when healing is not needed. 1 dot, 1 Aoe, 1 spell, is not fun, so to make sure we DPS less and heal more they increased our HP by 50%, took away the 15% increase in Magical and physical defense "Protect", and stealth nerf healing output.

AST was perfect the old card system allowed more DPS up time for the whole party, save cards that could be situational, and my favorite do i need Ewer to keep my weak dps up, or to raise the misfortune. Right now the AST cards are weak and bothersome to keep up, SE made AST a |Joke|r of all trades and a Master of none. Why is it so hard for SE to go back to the old Card System, stop trying to reinvent the wheel, when AST only needed a tune up. if they dont want AST to dominate with Balance, then lock it with Divination on a 60s CD with a percentage that reflects optimal damage in SHB. make the BALANCE and the SPIRE cards that effect the heals only, i like how the tanks can help each other with their niche abilities, do the same with the Heals but only give it to the AST. PLEASE once again make AST the Jack of all tades but a Master of none, I hope SE knows you cant balance three when healing content that people wait for is a couples thing.

SE neutered AST and SCH, to make WHM shine the brightest. I cant wrap my head around this, way before SHB dropped the Heal Forum for WHM had hundreds of thousands views, i think over 900k+ with thousands of comments. Mean while AST and SCH was Happy, just waiting on what will be added in SHB, not taken away.

[Billythepancake]

If you play on a controller, I wouldn't touch AST with a 10 foot pole. If you play on K+M, best advice anyone can give you is to try it for yourself and see what you think.