Quote Originally Posted by Zolvolt View Post
I would like to petition for shield-astro to return to the game. There are so many whitemage players in the game that it is difficult to get the opportunity to play my favorite job, astrologian. I often flex to shield healer to make healing comps with whm work since there are so many "one-trick" whitemages. I have no issue with people playing what they want to play but can we bring back the ability for astro and whm to play together please?

for data btw the most common played healer is whm and the least is astro. Which makes sense since you usually can't use both of them on difficult content.
FFlogs data has over 100k whm parses for savage this tier and astro is at 54k. both shield healers are are above 70k.
There are a lot of reasons as to why AST is less played over WHM than just that "WHM takes its spot".
  • People prefer WHM's aesthetic over AST's
  • Veterans of AST from HW-SB hate the card changes vs the seals system ShB-EW have insisted on and refuse to play it
  • AST is a busy healer and people prefer WHM over AST's business whether its because they don't like that its busy or because they find the business to be absurd for the reward you get (me)
  • AST is cumbersome for people to play be they keyboard or controller
  • People have stopped playing healer altogether and some of them were ASTs mains
  • People have switched to SCH or SGE because they miss Nocturnal Sect that was removed (and replaced with nothing) to make way for SGE
  • AST is debatably seen as a complex/hard healer and players are turned away from that

And yeah, some statics or PF want either WHM or AST and not both, but it isn't the only reason why AST is the least played healer. Just one reason.

As for Noct Sect coming back, I don't see it happening unless SE man's up and demolishes the Pure vs Shield healer mentality and breath new healing styles into the existing four healers to where AST can be a hybrid who regens and shields like it does in PvP.. sort of.

I'd like it to be a stance dancing healer where you toggle Noct vs Diurn in combat and your healing abilities (not just GCDs) change and Neutral Sect was removed in place of it, but I don't see it happening.