Healer Survey:

[Sebazy]

It's why I think Misshapen Chair hit the nail on the head in his video where he said people need to just accept that the reward for doing "more work" is you "have fun and aren't bored to tears", and to "stop crying about a whole 2% dps variance". And yet the players will do so, and SE knows they will do so. It's probably why AST is going to get semi-lobotomized because it's the least played.

Sorry to nitpick on a particular point, but I'm falling asleep :P

I could be out of touch here, but I don't really think that the 2% damage variance is the issue with AST, and it's certainly not it's healing kit as that's top tier.

The problem is the complexity and APM load it faces during it's 2 minute burst window coupled with how punishing it is not only for you, but for your entire group if/when you mess up as it cost you not one but two burst windows so you could get back in alignment with the group. I cannot stress enough, doing ASTs 2 minute burst sequence is somewhat demanding in casual content like 24 mans... However in Savage and upwards? It's a whole different level, mostly because you have to do said burst sequence whilst also watching mechanics and often running around and repositioning as well. P4S part 1 was the absolute poster child for this. Curtain Call forced you to run large distances whilst also having to watch both the arena and the rest of your group around you and yes, our 2 minute burst was slap bang right in the middle of both curtain calls.

I really don't think I can emphasise how unenjoyable a combination that burst window with that mechanic was for me. And that was 1 out of many examples.

I'd merrily play AST again if it wasn't dogpiling all of it's oGCDs and targeting stuff into such a tight little window every 2 minutes. But as is, my opinion and seemingly that of many others is that it's just miserable to play for hours at a time in high end content, hugely unrewarding in casual content if you haven't got people worth buffing and downright bad in solo content.