My Healer Wishlist

[YusiKha]

Astrologian
Rotation/Damage
AST has always been a bit of a weaving problem, and 1.5s malefic always seemed pretty boring to me. There's nothing to manage, aside from adapting to the awkwardness if you're used to full cast times.
Malefic goes back to 2.5, and AST gets an instant spell - let's call it Stella.
Every Combust tick has a 40% chance to upgrade Stella into Cluster. Cluster can stack up to 6 times (maybe have it show on you with a cool orbit, sorta like Neutral Sect does?)
Cluster does equal or more damage than Malefic, so AST now has a Ruin2/4 deal going on.
Managing weaving (because AST has a lot of that) and efficient proc usage in buff windows is a bit more interesting than a 1.5s cast time, methinks.

Healing
AST currently has the most interesting healing kit of the 3, since the a couple of the skills aren't just "+HP, +Regen, or +Shield". So I don't really know what I want. Other than removing Sects so that AST can shine on its own light rather than being
NotWHM or NotSCH.
I'd like to see more skills utilise the delay=stronger or lowhp=stronger. Those are neat.

Utility
Cards. Damage. Maybe utility too. I'll not delve too deeply into this, and you shouldn't either. Most of the suggestions I've seen on this forum recently are stupid and bad and if I see you discussing them in this thread too I will quote this part of the post and shame you for your lack of reading comprehension

Feel free to add what you like - I won't stop you from making suggestions, but I will point out why you are wrong.

[HyoMinPark]

Astrologian
Rotation/Damage
AST has always been a bit of a weaving problem, and 1.5s malefic always seemed pretty boring to me. There's nothing to manage, aside from adapting to the awkwardness if you're used to full cast times.
Malefic goes back to 2.5, and AST gets an instant spell - let's call it Stella.
Every Combust tick has a 40% chance to upgrade Stella into Cluster. Cluster can stack up to 6 times (maybe have it show on you with a cool orbit, sorta like Neutral Sect does?)
Cluster does equal or more damage than Malefic, so AST now has a Ruin2/4 deal going on.
Managing weaving (because AST has a lot of that) and efficient proc usage in buff windows is a bit more interesting than a 1.5s cast time, methinks.

Personally, I loved the Malefic change to 1.5s—it was an absolute godsend, and I wouldn’t revert it to give AST a carbon-copy of SMN/SCH weaving. Your idea is interesting, but it’s not something that I think the developers would ever really do (since they would rather simplify and streamline healers, giving them any sort of interesting DPS rotation/mechanic seems out of the question).

Despite your abhorrence at mentioning anything about the card system, giving AST a decent card system that requires active management and split-second decision making would make AST more interesting than giving it procs, in my opinion. 5.0 AST cards have no thought-process behind them and can basically be reduced from 6 cards to 2 (and the Seals are a poor mechanic that exist to make the other 4 cards relevant by giving each set of 2 a Seal spread). Give them more variety where one would be required to decide “should I make this Play or chance a Redraw” right then and there, and I think the job would become more engaging once more. You know, as opposed to “oh, I drew the ranged card” or “oh, it was the melee card this time”.

Healing
AST currently has the most interesting healing kit of the 3, since the a couple of the skills aren't just "+HP, +Regen, or +Shield". So I don't really know what I want. Other than removing Sects so that AST can shine on its own light rather than being
NotWHM or NotSCH.
I'd like to see more skills utilise the delay=stronger or lowhp=stronger. Those are neat.

After 4 years of never being able to get the opposing Sects right, I’m leaning towards their complete removal. Which makes me sad—but when Noct is basically only decent for solo-healing Savage/Ultimate (and an inefficient mana drain in all other scenarios), maybe it’s time to give up the dream. Would be nice if they would actually try to make Noct Sect competitive with SCH so that WHM/Noct AST wasn’t a comp to cringe at.

Feel free to add what you like - I won't stop you from making suggestions, but I will point out why you are wrong.

Hmm. I have to ask: wrong by whose standards?