Hmm, you know what. I'm gonna go slightly against the grain and say: I've come to like AST. I know before I was like, "it's the least boring" but it has grown on me more to be able to upgrade that to "I like it". There is a 'BUT' attached to that, so of course, don't get me wrong with regards to the complaints surrounding it.

But it's what's keeping me from quitting healing all together. Whilst there are things I would change, things I would see done better, see some love for my poor SCH and so on. And I see AST is still the least played of the three healers, so I'll qualify why I'm actually enjoying it.

I've mentioned in other posts that its busier and that's good for breaking up downtime, which SCH and WHM suffer worse from. A quick glance at the opener from The Balance Discord's AST guide and you have a good visual representation as to why AST feels more varied in its downtime versus SCH or WHM.



Because you get 1 or 2 abilities between each Malefic and those abilities vary and what you pick it dependent on how RNG treats you. So your ability/button presses are varied once cards get involved. I am still in the camp that the old card system was more engaging, but I am coming to AST from the perspective of a former SCH main, rather than a 3.0 or 4.0 AST main. I get the cards feel less impactful (and I agree with the sentiment), but I've also come from a point of debate where I've argued I'd rather have kept all my DPS moves on SCH even if the potenticies were nerfed than what we have now. So as you can see, I'm coming from the point of view of wanting more to do.


I also never really properly learned AST, but wiping to stuff I'd carry on SCH that I thought I'd look into more effective ways of playing it to find that actually, it's more complex than I've given it credit for. Not gonna lie, I've fallen into "SCH mode" or "WHM mode" mentalities with it before now. And I think that approach still works for most content, because not much pushes you to use your healing abilities properly. So I will accept there will be some level of AST's differences being newer to me may have some bearing on how I'm enjoying and it may be that I'll suffer more of the issues I had with SCH once I'm more experienced with the job.

In most content, I can still play it in a similar way to WHM or SCH. But after trying to look into how I can optimise my play of the job, particularly for SHB content, then I'm finding a different experience.

There's two AST complaints I think I'll dismiss...well, sort of, not dismiss them as a problem for other people, but instead as a problem for me. That is: Nocturnal sect is mathematically inferior to Diurnal Sect and MP management is an issue. My view? Good. To me MP management on SCH and WHM is too easy and if MP management is easy as pie, then what point is there having MP as a resource? To me, it's another dynamic to playing a caster. You can do great stuff, but your power is not unlimited.

As for Nocturnal, it's simple /because/ that its inferior to Diurnal that I like, I like that it's less efficient, because one of my complaints is that for a lot of content is that healers are so efficient it's boring. One design philosophy I like is the idea of sacrificing one strength to provide a reward elsewhere. It's why my main suggestion for SCH changes allows you to sacrifice healing for utility and will. It's also why I was a lover of old Cleric Stance, though there are less clunky ways of doing it than Cleric Stance. In this case, my reward is a slightly lower downtime. All right, it's not a good argument for Nocturnal to not be in line with Diurnal, but eh, it's something.


It still feel "blegh" for a lot of non-Shadowbringers content, but it's helping with my healer fix for Shadowbringers at least and it's not as fluid as WHM or SCH. And there are still issues and I still miss my SCH, but to me, AST is actually closer to where I think I'd like to see healers in terms of "fun", whilst is not there yet, it's close enough for me to be enjoying it.