Is sage just scholar with a different skin?

[RinaShinomiya]

*snip*

I think the crux of the issue is that the jobs don't give us a reason to really care about GCD healing once we leave the ARR level range. Esp. people who wanna perform the best they can will solely rely on OGCD heals and GCD heals are seen as a last resort. It doesn't help that MP is supposed to balance GCD heals but since so little are used it becomes not only a DPS loss but also a Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis fuel loss to GCD heal.
I wish we had mechanics that gave us reason to care about GCD healing again. I really like the lily system for that but it needs improvements, AST is supposed to be GCD healing orientated, after all Synastry and Helios exist, but for some reason they keep giving it the most powerful OGCD's and that class really doesn't need more OGCD's to weave, cards already make AST busy enough. Sage's Pneuma & AST Macrocosmos might be the best GCD heals we have right now, ironically because both of them are also DPS neutral attacks.

[IDontPetLalas]

I think the crux of the issue is that the jobs don't give us a reason to really care about GCD healing once we leave the ARR level range. Esp. people who wanna perform the best they can will solely rely on OGCD heals and GCD heals are seen as a last resort. It doesn't help that MP is supposed to balance GCD heals but since so little are used it becomes not only a DPS loss but also a Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis fuel loss to GCD heal.
I wish we had mechanics that gave us reason to care about GCD healing again. I really like the lily system for that but it needs improvements, AST is supposed to be GCD healing orientated, after all Synastry and Helios exist, but for some reason they keep giving it the most powerful OGCD's and that class really doesn't need more OGCD's to weave, cards already make AST busy enough. Sage's Pneuma & AST Macrocosmos might be the best GCD heals we have right now, ironically because both of them are also DPS neutral attacks.

I would agree with a lot of what you're saying however i don't see that AST is 'supposed' to be GCD oriented, I could point out that SGE has its equivalents. I do agree that AST has plenty of OGCDs and doesn't need any more thrown at it. If anything the fact that ASt has cards to deal with historically argued for it having the 1.5 sec cast time and its wealth of OGCD heals, as opposed to a job like WHM which really need to be able to slidecast in order to deal with its relative lack of mobility.

[RinaShinomiya]

I would agree with a lot of what you're saying however i don't see that AST is 'supposed' to be GCD oriented, I could point out that SGE has its equivalents. I do agree that AST has plenty of OGCDs and doesn't need any more thrown at it. If anything the fact that ASt has cards to deal with historically argued for it having the 1.5 sec cast time and its wealth of OGCD heals, as opposed to a job like WHM which really need to be able to slidecast in order to deal with its relative lack of mobility.

I know this is a hot take that AST is supposed to be a GCD healer but honestly skills like Synastry feel pointless on AST because they're restricted to GCD heals, Horoscope (i meant to say Horoscope not helios in my previous post) is a weak 200 potency OGCD heal unless you use a Helios or Aspected Helios at which point it becomes 400 + whatever Helios is restoring, both of which require GCD heals. Then the GCD kit of AST is a carbon copy of WHM, minus Cure III which is... I mean it's Cure III and a equally useless trait trying to justify using Benefic for an enhanced Benefic II as well as Astrodyne buffing Spell cast time, which granted mainly affects DPS but it also affects GCD heals & HoT effects. Lastly Neutral sect which applies shields to your aspected GCD heals while also buffing them by 20%. And then you play AST in PvP and realize they gave it a Dualcast trait which would be extremely interesting trait to see a GCD healer be built around in PvE. So clearly the devs seem to have at least an idea of a GCD healer here but for some reason they overpower the OGCD abilities so much to the point where AST's stronger GCD kit (compared to WHM) still can't keep up with the power of its OGCD abilities nor do they bother to make GCD healing be a return on investment to DPS like Lilies are on WHM. It feels like the devs don't have the confidence to double down on a GCD healer design because the meta pretty much demands good OGCD to not disrupt our Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis factory. Out of all GCD healing interactions i mentioned in this post Macrocosmos is the only DPS neutral one, it just really feels like a missed opportunity to me that they'd give all those GCD enhancing tools and do nothing with them because Celestial Opposition, Earthly Star, Exaltation, Celestial Intersection & essential Dignity are just so strong that you forget the GCD healing buttons even exist.