5.3 COMPLETE patch notes

[Ilenya]

I certainly won't care about a slightly misaligned Divination in casual content. What I don't like, however, is the fact that they simplified something that only affected the skill ceiling while people not liking it or not wanting to go through the trouble of optimizing it never had to. Using Sleeve properly is incredibly low on the AST priority list, optimizing it an endgame content-only thing.

This makes it sound like every other healer change the past two expansions.

[Rilifane]

This makes it sound like every other healer change the past two expansions.

It pretty much falls in the same category, yes.
Things get simplified for accessibility. That's not inherently bad because you need to take every type of player into account, from new players to highly skilled top tier players. If the gap between skill floor and skill ceiling is too wide because the skill ceiling is too high it means that even if you want to play it on an average level you still have to bring above average skill compared to easier classes.
It leads to a lot of frustration among players because you feel like you work your ass of for nothing.

But constantly bringing down the skill ceiling will not suddenly get everyone to switch from WhM or SCH to AST. QoL changes are good, they did that with MP management. It makes leveling AST much less of a nightmare in ShB dungeons than it was on release.
But to also touch the skill ceiling just seems unneccessary. Before 5.3 you always had the option to ignore it if it felt too much for you or really use and potentially optimize it, if you wanted to. Now that choice has been taken away and the players it affected most are the ones who enjoyed it.

I'm salty, I know. And come Tuesday, I will probably jump off the platform as soon as we zone into e5s because I will thoroughly miss rushing through the busy openers and reopeners and feeling great when I nailed it.