For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Shurrikhan]

<Time Mage>

So, first off, all this sounds pretty great. Even the fact that every Tim will be confused with a master of time and space.

I almost envision it as being like old HW Enochian, as that, you could 'reset' every 30s. Unlike that, however, if you goof the Singularity, you can fire it off early and reset with a new one at any time. This also means that, say you start up a Singularity 40s before raidbuffs (downtime forced you to or something), you could fire off a smaller one earlier on purpose, such that you get a fully charged up one into the raidbuffs.

Love it.

Matter is the side which has a DOT, and Antimatter is built exclusively via standard 'do damage' GCDs

I guess my main/one complaint here is that it feels kinda arbitrary, rather than having much of anything inherently to do with their categories?

Both from what I can imagine from this description and that of the Quicken and Slow/Stop implications, the only thing that's feeling especially Time Mage-y are the ability to pause buff durations and to affect the time that "detonate X seconds later" effects detonate.

Which is still leagues better than most existing XIV jobs, but it just feels like there's still more you can grab here? Still, looks appetizing; would play.

People always said of Time Mage stuff 'you can't balance Haste/Slow in an MMO setting' but that was because AST had those effects, and could give them to allies.

Which... to be fair... makes no more sense than saying "You can't balance Damage buffs in an MMO setting."

They're just two sides of the same coin. Damage disproportionately rewards jobs with high potency-per-X-seconds' damage density; Haste disproportionately rewards jobs with high potency-per-X-seconds-uniquely-achievable-through-GCD-reduction (such as being able to use an extra Bootshine per Demolish back before it was fettered to Dragon Kick, or just barely able to use an extra Full Thrust per Chaos Thrust back in ARR/HW). The higher one's % of damage comes from oGCDs, usually the more Damage is favorable to them over Haste, and vice versa.

On which note, I don't think one needs to leave them self-contained to the Time Mage, though if it's to be primarily a DPS, it would make sense to have typically have greater haste synergy (inherently or by some passive advantaging it on self) than most jobs, with it only being used on others if you're Weakened or for emergencies (Haste the WHM whose GCDs are finally actually advantaged over other healers').

TLDR, I don't think we'd ever see AST as a Time/Space AND Cards/buffing class, without one or both of those aspects being horrendously simplified to the point of 'why even have this'. Thus, rather than risk SE being SE and making a half-ass job of both aspects of the identity, I'd rather they split them and have one or the other, and give the unused identity to something else. Since Cards were the primary focus of AST (it's in the weapon/job splashart), I'd rather that be the focus of the class, make that system more interesting/complex, and then give Time stuff to a Time Mage.

While I think we'd be fine with an AST that has the full slew of Time Mage components atop a full slew of Card components if this game just allowed for greater kit breadth in general (which would be preferable to me), I can definitely see where you're coming from here.