So, what's your opinion on current healer jobs

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Population balance will never happen. SE going "Well tons of people are playing WHM so it must be fine" is exactly what, in past expacs, lead to out of control buffing of AST and SCH that then left WHM in the dust, as all but the most diehard WHM fans leave the job to reluctantly play the others because otherwise they get frozen out of raid parties and statics.

Mind you, we're not out the woods yet either. around x.3 is, historically, about where SE messes it up like so. If they buff the already-grossly-overperforming AST and the weaker-indivually-but-very-strong-with-AST SCH in the next patch or two...

Well, heavensward and stormblood will repeat once again. WHM will be left in the dust, and become the healer no one wants to take if they can at all avoid it.

It could happen. SE has a tendency to do this. But I really hope ShB marks a change in the trend and they don't.

[Synaesthesia]

Population balance will never happen. SE going "Well tons of people are playing WHM so it must be fine" is exactly what, in past expacs, lead to out of control buffing of AST and SCH that then left WHM in the dust, as all but the most diehard WHM fans leave the job to reluctantly play the others because otherwise they get frozen out of raid parties and statics.

Mind you, we're not out the woods yet either. around x.3 is, historically, about where SE messes it up like so. If they buff the already-grossly-overperforming AST and the weaker-indivually-but-very-strong-with-AST SCH in the next patch or two...

Well, heavensward and stormblood will repeat once again. WHM will be left in the dust, and become the healer no one wants to take if they can at all avoid it.

It could happen. SE has a tendency to do this. But I really hope ShB marks a change in the trend and they don't.

Of course population balance will never happen, there are more popular jobs throughout every role type. But if you drive away like 40% of a population it's a sign you've done a really bad job.

I don't think they should do anything to increase Astrologian's power, they should possibly remove stressful and undesirable aspects of the job like the huge disparity in mana efficiency between the 3 healers and smoothing out the opener because it's simply driving controller users away, but..

What do you mean by "grossly overperforming" though? There's like a 3% difference between AST and WHM.

In order to achieve that difference, an Astrologian has to manage 3 extra cooldowns involving constant target switching and micro decision making in between casts, an extremely hectic opener, slide cast and weave constantly, pre-plan earthly star, panic about their mana, and generally put in a lot more effort than a White Mage. When I do savage runs on White Mage compared to AST it's like taking a vacation.

There's a small power difference between the two classes that isn't enough to keep players from bringing WHM but is enough to incentivize players to keep doing AST, and WHM is still the most popular healer right now in Savage. If you removed that advantage Astrologian carries in output, you'd go back to killing off the class like in 5.0. In order to remedy that situation, they'd need to literally give Astrologian an overhaul to make it a more desirable class to play, which is partly why I think they've done such a terrible job at achieving balance.

I do agree with you that they really don't need to give AST more output in order to bring up its numbers. If you're creating an undesirable class and then buffing its power to obscene levels in order to get people to play it that's also an awful situation, because those players *don't even want to be playing that class*