Never healed before in my life in a game until now and I gotta say....

[Valic]

There are lots of jobs built like that, though. Lv30 is your first step into a job but they often give you "half an ability" at that point.

I'm not sure what the setup now is, but previously warrior got tank stance at Lv30, which gives you the Beast Gauge... but you don't get the skill Inner Beast (ie. the thing you spend gauge power on) until Lv35 so the gauge just sat there and you couldn't do anything with it.

It can even happen later, eg. summoner getting Dreadwyrm Trance (Lv58) but not immediately getting Deathflare (Lv60) so you just let your trance fizzle out at the end.

I mean, everyone else actually gets something to go with that ability even when it's by itself. WAR's defiance before was their tank stance, so they could generate enmity to begin with. So that has a function.... Diurnal without anything else, literally doesn't increase anything you do lol. Dreadwyrm is the same, it still resets tri-disaster and reduces your cast time by 2.5 seconds.... So it still functioned to actually do something even if it was by itself. I'm saying giving us a stance at that level... does LITERALLY nothing, no passive attached to it, no halved portion of the skill, it's just literally useless by itself. Seems like flawed design imo.

It's a vestige of the HW/SB days when Sects buffed your healing magic potency and reduced enmity generation for all spells, in addition to the Aspect-specific effects. General buff to healing at 30, then Aspected Benefic a few levels later.

That's why Diurnal Sect feels anachronous now that the Sects strictly only add regens or shields to Aspected and Celestial actions.

That explains a lot...

I understand your frustration and believe me.. I've been very vocal about how AST got changed with its card abilities. 2 years of playing since before Stormblood was when AST felt amazing and fun, now it's just pure damage. You won't feel like you're contributing to anything outside of a savage/ultimate raid. Some people say it was for balance but for it to change to something like this, just feels rushed without thinking outside the box. When the expansion of 5.0 came out, AST was horribly awful. It's been receiving buffs lately but I'm still waiting on some answers about any feedback they're willing to provide for this card system. Hopefully we'll hear something in the next live letter to come out on Feb 6. We might have to be patient but hopefully good things come to those who wait.

If they could keep the seal system how it is to a less tedious degree and give us back all those buffs (maybe substitute spire for crit and arrow with d.hit or determination?)... I feel like I'd at least be useful and diverse in that sense. If they made it so you just need 3 different seals used too, I feel like that would even lessen the amount of "fishing" needed to be done and would provoke more usage of different cards like the bole for the tank, balance for a dps, and some mana for yourself.

[MitsukiKimura]

If they could keep the seal system how it is to a less tedious degree and give us back all those buffs (maybe substitute spire for crit and arrow with d.hit or determination?)... I feel like I'd at least be useful and diverse in that sense. If they made it so you just need 3 different seals used too, I feel like that would even lessen the amount of "fishing" needed to be done and would provoke more usage of different cards like the bole for the tank, balance for a dps, and some mana for yourself.

What I've suggested and many others have as well, is for the shire card to be replaced with Direct hit % increase. I've also suggested that the balance card be cut down to 5%. Testing out suggestions takes time and work put into it. Hopefully they've taken in some suggestions and been testing things out so we can have our different card abilities, without it being too over the top. It made AST unique and really engaging in my personal opinion.