Quote Originally Posted by Roeshel View Post
All healers now have 1.5 cast times which seems like a small change but for that change to happen a lot of balancing needs to be done especially for Scholar with their strong oGCD healing. They locked the utilization of the full healing kit behind DPS loss in raids and nerfed the fairy because the numbers are really off if the pet doesn't get nerfed. The only reason AST ended up stronger than WHM was not because they have neutral DPS healing, but because of severe scaling issues caused by the card's buffs that were taken into consideration upon release but due to lack of popularity AST ultimately got buffs in 5.1. Astroligians with 45 potency on DoT and 1600 AoE neutral healing can only dream of out-dpsing & out-healing WHM & SCH despite their DPS losses for healing. AST had no strengths anywhere in the game. Playing the job instead of WHM was basically doing more work for weaker results. AST was not WHM+ as people like to refer to it, it was WHM- in every way imaginable. Playing the job probably felt like trading usefulness for fancy cards.
You don't recall when it first came out, AST was out doing WHM at healing and DPS. I remember that in 3.5. I remember being kicked from 24 man raids because I was running WHM. I remember trying to get clears on EXs and joining a party, then getting kicked with an "Oh, we forgot, we don't want WHMs".

AST is just as powerful as WHM, i've healed right along side ASTs that can keep up with WHMs in ALL aspects. So...if you are saying AST is "WHM-" you need to rethink how you're playing it.