Healers, then and now:

[ASkellington]

…………….man. I wonder all the complaints the community has made, the devs changed it, the community complained, the devs changed it, the community complains, the devs………..screw it. We’re doing it this way. Either you like it or you don’t.

This argument holds 0 water when they changed the cards once. Got feed back before 5.0 went live. Told the AST community to try it and still haven't done a single thing to improve it. They COULD have made the Seals system a proper buffing system like was asked in Shb and which I used as an example in my post. They didn't for w/e reason.

They already tried the "either you like it or don't" approach. Guess which is one of the least played healers in the game... and is also getting a Card rework after 2 expansions of the dev's failure to hammer it in... hmm.

[ForsakenRoe]

You know, I didn't realize it till now, but Old Spear (the 'use stuff under the effect of Spear, get shorter CDs) would be REAL NICE now. If everything auto-aligns for 2min windows, having a card that reduces the CD on those raidbuffs (though it'd have to be tweaked to a flat value rather than a %) would be real interesting. 'Oh if we get one AOE Spear instead of a Balance, we actually gain a raidbuff window, which is more damage increase than the Balance would give us', stuff like that

They were somewhat unbalanced to be fair. Celestial Opposition didn't just extend normal damage buffs by 10 seconds, it extended Lucid Dreaming, your potion, Lightspeed, HoTs, Shields, your Earthly Star and probably something else that I forgot about. It didn't just make Ast an rDPS powerhouse but allowed it to run almost no piety and pump out healing so powerful it made Whitemages cry in a corner.

Some things to note from my memory, AST's MP economy was not great at the start (HW). It wasn't a case of 'you can extend Luminiferous Aether', it was more 'you HAVE to extend Luminiferous, or you're running out of MP'. Skills didn't work the same back then either, CO wasn't a regen (it extended), CU wasn't 'sticky', it only applied it's effect while you channeled it, Star didn't exist in HW, so most of the healing was still being done by GCDs, which meant MP costs. I assume the devs were expecting the AST player would use Ewer on themselves to maintain their MP pool, too. As such, the HPS of the AST seemed (at least to me) more tuned around the idea that you'd put up the HOTs, and extend them to make up for the fact you had less HPS than the WHM by default. Extending shields doesn't increase their strength, only how long they last, so that's not much use. Extending Star just means it either takes 10s more to auto-detonate (who cares), or take 10s more to grow to full size (actually a detriment). Potion extension was the weird one, that could have been fixed if SE had used one braincell to change it from 'extend AST buffs' to 'extend AST buffs applied by abilities and spells'. Extending Sprint was funny but also a meme (where were you going to need a 30s sprint in a raid, that a 20s sprint wasn't going to be enough for?)

It was the additions in SB that turned AST into the 'imbalanced god' it became, which would be fine IF WHM wasn't a dumpsterfire with it's new lily system (the bad one). Don't blame the powerful class, blame the devs for making the trash one, trash. They reworked WAR in 4.2, they did a sweeping changelist to DRK in 4.3, there is NO REASON they could not have done SOMEthing to WHM throughout the patches, beyond 'oh yeh we changed PI so you get the stacks from AOE skills now instead of single target skills', great, you wanna address the fact that by the time you have enough stacks built for PI to do anything worth a damn, you've already fully healed the team? 'No, see you in 5.0, also don't forget to buy the new mogstation item'

This argument holds 0 water when they changed the cards once. Got feed back before 5.0 went live. Told the AST community to try it and still haven't done a single thing to improve it. They COULD have made the Seals system a proper buffing system like was asked in Shb and which I used as an example in my post. They didn't for w/e reason.

They already tried the "either you like it or don't" approach. Guess which is one of the least played healers in the game... and is also getting a Card rework after 2 expansions of the dev's failure to hammer it in... hmm.

I think it's telling that, since it's release, AST has had:

3.0: release
4.0: received additions that built upon 3.0's baseline
5.0: cards reworked, divination, seals
6.0: divination reworked, seals reworked, astrodyne
7.0: hell knows, but we know something is changing

So, ever since the 5.0 bludgeoning the class got, they've had a 'rework' of sorts to the cards, the 'aoe damage buff' method, the extraneous system that enforces the player to actually play other cards than just 'whatever you get lmao', and we're in for another come 7.0. How can anyone look at this history, and say 'yeh the old cards were the biggest issue'? Anyone with any common sense should look at this litany of failures, and see the painfully obvious truth: The issues with AST gameplay started when they kneecapped the card system in 5.0. Ever since, they've been unable to find a 'satisfying' way to make the cards and buffing work, without it feeling hamfisted. Astrodyne has got to be the absolute worst example of this, it's laughably weak, to the point where you can almost ignore it entirely and still get a higher parse than someone else who's playing into it (cos crit variance), it applies three buffs with one effect each, instead of one buff that has several effects based on seal count (so you hit the buffcap), it doesn't fit the aesthetic and feels more like something that was originally designed for WHM (but they couldn't figure out where to tie it into the WHM kit)

[Osmond]

……….had a long time thinking about it. Why AST the least played. Can only look at fflogs for evidence. It’s not the rework cards that the problem. Looked at between SCH and AST at the time AST was a shield healer to compete with and was mostly neck-to-neck. Now it’s competing with WHM. The only problem I see is too much button usage despite their healing tools are strong. Astrodyne is their pseudo presence of mind with mp recovery. Don’t really need the 3rd seal, just 2 seals is all you need. ……………the only thing I can see the issue is…..make the card effect AoE and buff malefic’s potency close to WHM’s Glare 3. Everything else with AST is fine, except synastry.

[Aravell]

I'm gonna stop you right there. The community came up with the burst windows, the devs came up with the idea to cater to that.

No AST asked for all the cards to be Balance. You can stop blaming the community there.

This is the truth of the matter. I've played AST since HW and I've never heard a single AST main cry for all cards to become a damage up card. Any half-decent AST player can deal with whatever hand they're dealt. If anything, it's probably the DPS players who cried about Balance, because if they didn't get it, they don't get the funny coloured numbers that they want.

[Rilifane]

I'm gonna stop you right there. The community came up with the burst windows, the devs came up with the idea to cater to that.

Shout it from the rooftops.
A part of the community will always be envious and resentful over what another class has what they don't. Always.
It doesn't matter which game, this is just human nature and some are better at reasoning themselves out of demanding it than others. And some will yell and screech for the devs "why does THIS class gets to do it and I don't???" like a child being petulant and pouty, crossing its arms and stomping its foot, over having a different toy than that other kid. They don't want to have the same toy and give up theirs. They want to have BOTH.
And the only way to give everyone everything is... well, look at the healer role.

It is entirely within the devs capabilities and their responsibility to ignore it. Because if a class gets excluded from content, the solution shouldn't be "just give them what everyone else has", the solution should first and foremost be to look at why they get excluded exactly and how to solve this without just copypasting toolkits.
If the devs decide to make every bit of unbalance into a "class not homogenized enough" problem, that is on them.

Case in point, in Rift, SW:TOR and WoW balance was (and is) often all over the place and it's fine.
Why?
Because the content isn't designed around ONE solution and to be a strict, binary pass/ fail check.
Massive above max HP hits can only be countered by mitigation, end of story. There is no universe where increasing eHP isn't the solution and if the follow up hits are hard hits as well, healing HAS to be burst healing. Consistent damage can be countered by increasing eHP OR healing and the healing itself can both be consistent OR burst-y.
Hard enrages can only be countered by sufficient dps. Never will you be able to mitigate or heal your way through it. Soft enrages can be countered with more dps OR healing OR mitigation/ increasing eHP to a degree.
Uptime loss from one-shot mechanics can only be countered by getting the fuck out of that orange. Uptime loss from non-lethal (and similarly punishing results) can be countered by moving your butt OR healing/ shielding/ mitigation.

The more the devs cater to it, the more it fosters the entitlement of this subset of players and makes them screech and yell even louder. Knowing when to ignore a subset of players is just as important as knowing when to listen.
In case of healer role design, incoming damage patterns, 2min bursts and uptime-friendly mechanics etc the devs just botched it.

[MintnHoney]

……….had a long time thinking about it. Why AST the least played. Can only look at fflogs for evidence. It’s not the rework cards that the problem. Looked at between SCH and AST at the time AST was a shield healer to compete with and was mostly neck-to-neck. Now it’s competing with WHM. The only problem I see is too much button usage despite their healing tools are strong. Astrodyne is their pseudo presence of mind with mp recovery. Don’t really need the 3rd seal, just 2 seals is all you need. ……………the only thing I can see the issue is…..make the card effect AoE and buff malefic’s potency close to WHM’s Glare 3. Everything else with AST is fine, except synastry.

How long, would you say, that you thought about this? Just curious.

[Absurdity]

Some things to note from my memory, AST's MP economy was not great at the start (HW). It wasn't a case of 'you can extend Luminiferous Aether', it was more 'you HAVE to extend Luminiferous, or you're running out of MP'. Skills didn't work the same back then either, CO wasn't a regen (it extended), CU wasn't 'sticky', it only applied it's effect while you channeled it, Star didn't exist in HW, so most of the healing was still being done by GCDs, which meant MP costs. I assume the devs were expecting the AST player would use Ewer on themselves to maintain their MP pool, too. As such, the HPS of the AST seemed (at least to me) more tuned around the idea that you'd put up the HOTs, and extend them to make up for the fact you had less HPS than the WHM by default. Extending shields doesn't increase their strength, only how long they last, so that's not much use. Extending Star just means it either takes 10s more to auto-detonate (who cares), or take 10s more to grow to full size (actually a detriment). Potion extension was the weird one, that could have been fixed if SE had used one braincell to change it from 'extend AST buffs' to 'extend AST buffs applied by abilities and spells'. Extending Sprint was funny but also a meme (where were you going to need a 30s sprint in a raid, that a 20s sprint wasn't going to be enough for?)

It was the additions in SB that turned AST into the 'imbalanced god' it became, which would be fine IF WHM wasn't a dumpsterfire with it's new lily system (the bad one). Don't blame the powerful class, blame the devs for making the trash one, trash. They reworked WAR in 4.2, they did a sweeping changelist to DRK in 4.3, there is NO REASON they could not have done SOMEthing to WHM throughout the patches, beyond 'oh yeh we changed PI so you get the stacks from AOE skills now instead of single target skills', great, you wanna address the fact that by the time you have enough stacks built for PI to do anything worth a damn, you've already fully healed the team? 'No, see you in 5.0, also don't forget to buy the new mogstation item'

I guess I should've mentioned that I was talking about the final state of Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation before they removed their effects completely, which would've been at the end of Stormblood.
Extending Star may seem useless at first glance but allowing you to extend the explosion timer by 10 seconds meant you could place it earlier than usual and shave an extra 10 seconds off of the cooldown for your next use.

[Osmond]

How long, would you say, that you thought about this? Just curious.

Well, since you asked, 5 secs before typing that down.

[ASkellington]

Well, since you asked, 5 secs before typing that down.

It shows. You clearly don't know what AST's problems are.

[Sebazy]

I guess I should've mentioned that I was talking about the final state of Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation before they removed their effects completely, which would've been at the end of Stormblood.
Extending Star may seem useless at first glance but allowing you to extend the explosion timer by 10 seconds meant you could place it earlier than usual and shave an extra 10 seconds off of the cooldown for your next use.

Also useful to potentially gain an extra star by placing one sooner during downtime++

CO/Dilation were incredible abilities, but also pretty hard work for SE to balance. I've said for years that SE's job design team is woefully understaffed and it still shows to this day in the choices they make.