How could you do this to AST?

[MintnHoney]

They don’t have to say that Sects are a problem. Anyone that goes back to look at all the adjustments and tunings AST has had to undergo in the last six years knows how much of a problem balancing the job has been. It has either been too strong (most of its lifespan has been it blatantly overshadowing WHM in healing, damage, or utility aspects) or horrible to the point of being unplayable (3.0 release, early ShB when its healing was super bad). A lot of AST’s balancing issues comes from the hybrid nature while some used to come from the card system—and the fact that WHM had no answer to how strong it was. They can’t make either sect “too good” without threatening the other healer that shares the same healing type. Usually, it’s WHM that is threatened. We’ve seen this time and time again in every expansion since AST was introduced. Early SB AST actually threatened SCH until they buffed the latter prior to Deltascape’s release. They also cannot make Diurnal and Nocturnal equally as good. One has always been better than the other, and it has always been Diurnal. Nocturnal has been adjusted so many times I’ve honestly lost count. All to try and make it more appealing. And it’s failed with the general healer population at large. I enjoy Noct, but I know Diurnal is just straight up better.

Personally, I think both Sects will be removed, with AST just inherently taking on the Diurnal qualities of most of its actions. They will likely leave Neutral Sect as it is, CU, and likely CI as a baby Divine Benison. But I don’t expect them to make the Sects into cooldowns or something. More than likely, they will be axed like most stances have been axed.

Considering we had to wait until a specific sound-related error happened during a livestream for Yoshi-P (and/or the Dev team) to acknowledge that it was an actual error, and only then finally started looking into a fix for it (and finally fixed it), among various other examples I'm sure you and I and others could possibly bring up, I do think it's necessary for them to acknowledge issues (not to mention, it at least gives us the peace of mind to know that they really are aware; unlike that statement Yoshi-P made at the reveal of Dancer, where he stated he was completely unaware that people wanted another healer, or the lack of comments about healer's malcontent over this entire expansion). To me, refusing to acknowledge an issue presents an inherently higher chance that the issue won't get fixed, because it implies that there is no issue at all.

The problem with implications is that they can go in any direction, and although you choose to view it that way, others can choose to view it as a proud company that doesn't want to say that something is an issue, or I can even think that they don't even believe it was an issue in the first place, since you can heal as a NOCT AST successfully in content (and that's all they care about, in the end). He didn't acknowledge it as an issue during this reveal, live letter, or interview, or with recent interviews, etc.; but, I also concede that I may just be forgetting where and when he has presented the job as an actual issue in the past (it's been a long road, so he certainly might have said something specific to it), so there's that, if it pleases you.

Which brings us to what might come our way with the AST update.
There's a chance that they'll remove Diurnal Sect, making the regen effects a permanent effect on the spells and abilities that it normally affects, and either removing Nocturnal Sect with it or turning Diurnal Sect into an ability which converts the Regen Effect into a momentary Barrier effect for either x amount of spell casts or for a time period (knowing their track record, just removing Nocturnal outright seems likely, for the same reasons that you think). Should both sects be removed as actions, then Neutral Sect becomes... weirdly defunct, since there's no other sects to be neutral from, so I would hope that they'd at least change the name if they even leave that in.
But it really depends on what they want to do to further reinforce this split. So, again, we're at their mercy and wait for them to reveal whatever else they've planned for us.