What are the AST changes that everyone wants, realistically speaking.

[HyoMinPark]

The middle ground is give the other healers special skills too that will make them equally desirable. I mean I know they don’t wanna go back to Astro having a guaranteed raid spot well this is the mess they made and they need to fix it. I’m glad they waiting until 7.0 to show us what they came up with. It will also give them time to give the other healers hopefully equally nice stuff too so we can have our pick in high end raids and not just Guaranteed Astro spot.

I’d like to see the healers get their diversity back instead of feeling like each is the same with different ability names. The only way they could make WHM competitive with AST is to give it a raid buff to compete. Unfortunately there is no competition against buffs that up the raid’s damage; WHM’s personal damage has never been enough. The devs need to break their design philosophy when it comes to buff healers and no-buff healers if the desire is to make all of them competitive at the top of the highest end.

That said, a guaranteed spot for AST is only “required” in speedkill meta and parse runs. If you just raid casually, it doesn’t matter nearly as much which healer combo you take. Even some of the high-end raid groups did SCH/SGE this tier. My static did that on occasion when our AST just didn’t feel like playing the job for the night (which was frequent because she’s just as frustrated with the job as other veteran ASTs), and we weren’t a casual group.

[Supersnow845]

I’d like to see the healers get their diversity back instead of feeling like each is the same with different ability names. The only way they could make WHM competitive with AST is to give it a raid buff to compete. Unfortunately there is no competition against buffs that up the raid’s damage; WHM’s personal damage has never been enough. The devs need to break their design philosophy when it comes to buff healers and no-buff healers if the desire is to make all of them competitive at the top of the highest end.

That said, a guaranteed spot for AST is only “required” in speedkill meta and parse runs. If you just raid casually, it doesn’t matter nearly as much which healer combo you take. Even some of the high-end raid groups did SCH/SGE this tier. My static did that on occasion when our AST just didn’t feel like playing the job for the night (which was frequent because she’s just as frustrated with the job as other veteran ASTs), and we weren’t a casual group.

SGE/SCH is stronger than any comp with a WHM in it and stronger than SGE/AST because of how disgustingly powerful mitigation is in high end content over excessive pure healing, AST only gets the regen healer spot because of like you said it’s massive raid buffs

This stupid shield regen healer is so annoying because all it really is is a mask for the fact the only truly bad combo is AST WHM

[Semirhage]

I’d like to see the healers get their diversity back instead of feeling like each is the same with different ability names. The only way they could make WHM competitive with AST is to give it a raid buff to compete. Unfortunately there is no competition against buffs that up the raid’s damage; WHM’s personal damage has never been enough. The devs need to break their design philosophy when it comes to buff healers and no-buff healers if the desire is to make all of them competitive at the top of the highest end.

If anything the corner they've painted themselves into is even smaller now. At least an expansion ago they could pretend that WHM was the "personal output" healer. That it never lived up to that title was a different story. Now that Sage has barged onto the scene and made off with the "personal damage" part of that identity, WHM can't even pretend to hold onto an identity with the atoms on the tips of its fingernails. Now it doesn't even theoretically bring anything to the table. It's just "worse (fill in the blank)" for every single category.

[Supersnow845]

If anything the corner they've painted themselves into is even smaller now. At least an expansion ago they could pretend that WHM was the "personal output" healer. That it never lived up to that title was a different story. Now that Sage has barged onto the scene and made off with the "personal damage" part of that identity, WHM can't even pretend to hold onto an identity with the atoms on the tips of its fingernails. Now it doesn't even theoretically bring anything to the table. It's just "worse (fill in the blank)" for every single category.

SGE and WHM do have essentially equal damage now so I could see them latching onto like a “buff vs selfish healer” kinda meta completely ignoring the fact that there is basically no situation where the buff healers don’t end up being stronger (especially SCH who’s buff is incredibly strong but also requires like no effort to press, at least you have to have skills to maximise AST’s buffs as clunky as they are)

[HyoMinPark]

SGE and WHM do have essentially equal damage now so I could see them latching onto like a “buff vs selfish healer” kinda meta completely ignoring the fact that there is basically no situation where the buff healers don’t end up being stronger (especially SCH who’s buff is incredibly strong but also requires like no effort to press, at least you have to have skills to maximise AST’s buffs as clunky as they are)

This is my concern: with the introduction of SGE also being a selfish healer, I feel like the devs will just double down on the buffs/no-buffs dichotomy the same way they doubled down on regen healers and barrier healers. Which means WHM simply doesn’t stand a chance.
Also the regen/barrier split will likely mean our chances of ever getting a new healer are slim, since it would be 3-2 either way and unbalanced. Not that I’m exactly eager to get a fifth healer that plays literally like the other four because we can’t have diversity in this game…

The only reasons WHM is played more than AST is 1. Final Fantasy staple, 2. Braindead simple, and 3. AST is a clunky nightmare that also just upsets a lot of the veteran AST players because of how gutted it is now. I personally play WHM more than AST because it doesn’t require use of my brain, and I don’t want to deal with AST’s clunkiness and horrible card/Seal system. Despite it being the first healer I played in this game and my favorite until ShB destroyed everything I loved about it.

I don’t think AST could ever surpass WHM even if it played as smooth as butter due to WHM’s popularity—but the popularity of the job just assures the developers that nothing will be done. Dev logic would be “Well look, though: it’s the most popular healer so it’s obviously fine like it is!”

[Supersnow845]

This is my concern: with the introduction of SGE also being a selfish healer, I feel like the devs will just double down on the buffs/no-buffs dichotomy the same way they doubled down on regen healers and barrier healers. Which means WHM simply doesn’t stand a chance.
Also the regen/barrier split will likely mean our chances of ever getting a new healer are slim, since it would be 3-2 either way and unbalanced. Not that I’m exactly eager to get a fifth healer that plays literally like the other four because we can’t have diversity in this game…

The only reasons WHM is played more than AST is 1. Final Fantasy staple, 2. Braindead simple, and 3. AST is a clunky nightmare that also just upsets a lot of the veteran AST players because of how gutted it is now. I personally play WHM more than AST because it doesn’t require use of my brain, and I don’t want to deal with AST’s clunkiness and horrible card/Seal system. Despite it being the first healer I played in this game and my favorite until ShB destroyed everything I loved about it.

I don’t think AST could ever surpass WHM even if it played as smooth as butter due to WHM’s popularity—but the popularity of the job just assures the developers that nothing will be done. Dev logic would be “Well look, though: it’s the most popular healer so it’s obviously fine like it is!”

The balance of the regen healers is just so bad at the moment because of the corner they have backed themselves into with how they have designed healers, AST is always playing second fiddle to WHM because of WHM’s undying popularity no matter how bad it is (remember when it was still the most popular healer even during the toilet paper lily phase) and AST certainly isn’t giving people many reasons to actually like it, then you just have the simple fact that from a utility and ease of run perspective the shield healers are just so much stronger in 99% of content (like what does the regen healer even do in DSR until like phase 6). Both these add up to WHM always being left behind but since everything is designed around WHM because of its undying popularity WHM continues to be a chain around the ankle of collective healer design

[Semirhage]

because of its undying popularity WHM continues to be a chain around the ankle of collective healer design

Pretty much this. This is why I keep saying fix WHM and the rest falls into place from there. Not because WHM necessarily deserves to be first in line or anything like that, but because the role will keep getting dragged back down into the mud so long as one of the healers "must" remain boring and uninspired, with zero utility or stand-out strengths. How do you balance healers against that garbage? You make them all equally boring and uninspired. This will be the cycle until they free their whipping job from its cage.

[Supersnow845]

Pretty much this. This is why I keep saying fix WHM and the rest falls into place from there. Not because WHM necessarily deserves to be first in line or anything like that, but because the role will keep getting dragged back down into the mud so long as one of the healers "must" remain boring and uninspired, with zero utility or stand-out strengths. How do you balance healers against that garbage? You make them all equally boring and uninspired. This will be the cycle until they free their whipping job from its cage.

I still believe the healer rework of 5.0 was in response to the toilet paper lily fiasco, since it’s impossible that WHM can be seen as bad by the community they had to bring every other healer down to WHM’s level so that wouldn’t be a problem again

All because they designed a mechanic involving RNG single target GCD heal fishing for a worthless perk

[Katoar]

If anything the corner they've painted themselves into is even smaller now. At least an expansion ago they could pretend that WHM was the "personal output" healer. That it never lived up to that title was a different story. Now that Sage has barged onto the scene and made off with the "personal damage" part of that identity, WHM can't even pretend to hold onto an identity with the atoms on the tips of its fingernails. Now it doesn't even theoretically bring anything to the table. It's just "worse (fill in the blank)" for every single category.

WHM is the strongest healer DPS-wise for DRU because of downtime. Sage is currently the weakest. The only reason Sage and Scholar get picked is because of mitigation and shields.

[HyoMinPark]

WHM is the strongest healer DPS-wise for DRU because of downtime. Sage is currently the weakest. The only reason Sage and Scholar get picked is because of mitigation and shields.

Considering DRU is a mitigation check over a raw heal check, it’s not surprising that the double barrier comp works. Especially when the downtime also works in their favor in that GCD shields can be cast without losing a damage GCD. WHM has always had the strongest pDPS of the healers. It’s never been enough to offset what the others bring.