Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Dahlinea]

Ignoring reality ;D

Nah bro, I'm fine... you're the one angry about people rightfully complaining about the sorry state of new SMN and uses "arguments" here and there about things not even pertaining to the matter at hand to try to "prove" that new SMN is good.
You can keep believing new SMN is fine, but at the end of the day a lot of people knows that it's lacking and need changes to be able to feel like a true job. Right now it's just an unbalanced joke that do way too much damage for what it requires from its players to perform and should rightfully be at bottom of the DPS scale in this state.
But we can keep going on with this pointless arguments of yours all you want. I know how people like you go on about them, we'll just run in circles forever.

I kind of agree with AST. But I've honestly never liked AST, so I don't know what people that DO like AST would want the changes to be in the first place (other than I suspect everyone would like Nocturnal back, even some of the other Healer mains).

They'll never return Noct Sect back the way it was (at least not in next expansion) now that they added a new shield Healer unless they repurpose it to something completely different.

for example, what's the point in having charges to Draw/Play if you can only use one at a time and it buffs the whole party (they probably wouldn't stack)?

That's what I was saying. If they decide to go this way (I hope not) they will need to start removing things here and there because of the card system simplification.

Even if they tried to make a SMN-like redesign, I'm not even sure what THAT would look like. Hard to say...

Hopefully not. I expect the devs have learned their lesson and never do something like what they did to SMN to any job ever again. No jobs deserve to be become like that.