How could you do this to AST?

[ASkellington]

That´s actually the biggest issue. That 100 guys here or some streamer doesn´t represent the whole community. There are millions of players of players who were fine with certain class mechanics. Of course you can´t count voices, when nobody is saying a word. But it´s in nature of humans to stay silent if they´re staisfied and to moaning if something goes wrong.
We´ve elistists, decent players, casuals and completely noobs out there. Everyone has an own opinion and everyone should be catered in some way. I´m fine with it. But i´m not fine with the fact, that every subclasses are going to be the same. They could always go the way to pick one subclass for each category of gamers. A simple one for whose who can´t or don´t want to do better. 1 or 2 who have some unique mechanics. The last one could be way more complex to cater the upper 10% of players who enjoy more challenging classes. FF14 has enough classes to go that way, but no, everything is getting simplified until everything plays nearly the same.

Nocturnal might haven´t been always perfect, but it´s something which is up to the players decision. If someone doesn´t like it, why should it get removed? Just stay on Diu and let the players play Noc, who actually wants to play it. It´s not even a big work in the background since it´s implemented and SE just had to adjust some numbers here and there with new patches.

Btw we´ve a similar discussion in the DPS section already. This guy nails it in some way: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5502976

I saw that post and I agree with it, but I don't think it fully applies here. For one, the whole reason people wanted Noct removed wasn't just because it was inferior to Diurnal. The hope of Noct's removal was to give things back to SCH and rebalance the healers (why anyone thinks it would force SE to do this I have no idea but that's the idea) not to get rid of it because they hated it.

For another, even if they kept Nocturnal it still doesn't change the fact that AST is by design a 1:1 copy of WHM (and in some ways SCH with Noct stance). While I'm not in favor of Noct's removal at all, nor AST's concept of switching between shield/regen healer if it means this gets changed, you can bet I will happily board the train that gives us more unique healing abilities like Horoscope and Synastry.

The issue is the word "if".

If Square actually decides to make 4 unique healing playstyles.
If Square gives AST something to replace Noct sect that isn't just potency fixes we don't need.
If SGE actually plays differently to SCH and isn't a reskin like AST.

If, if, if, if. Noct being removed itself isn't the problem, at least in my opinion. Its still an unwanted change, but not the underlying problem. The problem is that Square keeps removing things and not changing or improving what's left so there is no good trade off.

[ssunny2008]

snip.

I´m fully with you.

What i care about are those "if´s" aswell. Too many if you ask me and SE has proven more than once, even in the recent past with monk, that they´re not willing to go deeper with the classes. In the last years, too many classes got simpler and similar to others. I would lie if i say, i still trust in Yoshi and his team.

Yes Noc is just a little thing cross over the board, but it let the player decide. It´s pretty much the last variation SE gave us, which is in our hands. Synastry is cool, but tbh... i don´t use it that often. Even when i heal savage here and there, i normally has one instant heal up. The rest is getting carried by horoscope or the star anyway. Yes, all of them are unique in some way and you can use them for "what´s coming". But it´s still too similar to the other classes.
I would highly welcome more deeper class mechanics or directions like "tank healer, group healer". Maybe even with buffs here and there and a rework from the role-skills.

I can just give swtor as example here again. You had only 3 healer, but all played completely different. e.g. Sage had shields, an aoe with a hot similar which worked similar to whm shield. If you wanted to heal a tank, you had to cast for some seconds, meanwhile the tank got a heal tick each second. If you ran oom, you had to sacrifice your own HP to gain force again. On the other hand you´d the mercenary with less aoe, but a lot of single target burst heals and less casts. But you had to care about overheat. The last one was a mobile hot-healer with a drone you can lead to players, but you still had to take care about your energy. All of them had some raidbuffs.
In the early days you even had 3 debuff types and each heal was only able to cleanse one of them. Two were able thanks to the skilltree, but the Sage was the only one who was able to cleanse force debuffs. But that was too hard at some bosses if you had double classes or whatever with you, so it got changed later.

Of course, this is not swtor. But any MMORPG i´ve played has way deeper and unique playstyles related to the background of the jobs. The soul was real and any healer was different from the others, not just 2-3 buttons barely within the whole kit. SE should take other games as example to improve the classes and to adjust the boss-mechanics to it. AOE heals every 30s, here and there a tank instant and lucid dreaming on cooldown isn´t that big of deal right now. As i said, if you can play 1, you can play all. Maybe not perfect in DPS directly, but heal is definately not an issue.

[Absurdity]

The issue is the word "if".

If Square actually decides to make 4 unique healing playstyles.
If Square gives AST something to replace Noct sect that isn't just potency fixes we don't need.
If SGE actually plays differently to SCH and isn't a reskin like AST.

If, if, if, if. Noct being removed itself isn't the problem, at least in my opinion. Its still an unwanted change, but not the underlying problem. The problem is that Square keeps removing things and not changing or improving what's left so there is no good trade off.

Pretty sure this is gonna make or break the next expansion for a lot of people, it certainly will be the deciding factor for me.
Because we all know content in this game rarely lasts until the next patch, so the only thing that keeps me playing is whether or not the gameplay is engaging enough, and for a lot of jobs it currently just isn't.