The idea that we need to DPS must go.

[TankHunter678]

Dev thought seems to be stubbornly stuck at: "AST is the least popular = needs more incentive" ....and so they continue to add incentive in the form of buffs and more and more ridiculously good heal toolkit, while scratching their heads as to why it isn't working. Meanwhile since AST, despite being turned into the literal god of healing, is still tedious to play and bloated with buttons that are just there for the sake of things to press, players stick to their comfy WHM instead. Not because it's good or strong, but because AST isn't fun for them and at least WHM is straightforward. The devs don't get that.

It's frustrating because they will continue to ignore and neglect WHM and pump buffs into AST, because WHM is more popular, without realizing that this popularity is down to gameplay, not strengths and is an issue they created due to lack of experience with the role.

It's been years and they still haven't once stopped and thought "Hey, maybe the reason a million buffs isn't working is because our design for this class isn't fun? If we focused on making all healers fun then all of them would be popular. Let's get someone in who knows the role well and have them design some fun classes!".

Nope. Instead we got. "AST not popular? We make Star big! Give Excog on stick! WHM get overheal plant, lots of potency, WHM gud! Better nerf Cure III combo. SCH ideas so gud we turn into new class! Healers will be happy now!". I don't mean to be offensive to the developers, but it's frustrating waiting through 2 years of ShB ...for this.

Well all they did was rip the heart and soul out of AST by reducing the card effects to just one, thereby eliminating what made the job interesting to play and stand out from other healers. Also basically nuked the job from orbit lore wise. Not a coincidence that when they did that AST basically died in playerbase and the obvious thing happened: the only way to bring that desiccated corpse back was to make it mathematically superior to all other options.

Oh well, Sage is fun so I am playing sage instead of the job that got me into healing because I found WHM boring and I did not mesh well with SCH.

[ForteNightshade]

Well all they did was rip the heart and soul out of AST by reducing the card effects to just one, thereby eliminating what made the job interesting to play and stand out from other healers. Also basically nuked the job from orbit lore wise. Not a coincidence that when they did that AST basically died in playerbase and the obvious thing happened: the only way to bring that desiccated corpse back was to make it mathematically superior to all other options.

Oh well, Sage is fun so I am playing sage instead of the job that got me into healing because I found WHM boring and I did not mesh well with SCH.

Meanwhile, when Xeno asked about Living Dead way back at the Fanfest leading up to Shadowbringers, Yoshida specifically said they don't want to change it because Living Dead is apart of Dark Knight's identity. Funny how that same logic didn't seem to apply with Astro's cards. Hell, the job quest still even mentions an ability they've since deleted (I believe Time Dilation).

It's downright laughable nowadays when they try using the lore excuse after butchering Astro's.