4 Paired Threads: AST - How do you feel about it?

[Renathras]

[*]Some actions (e.g., Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, Exaltation) feel pretty uninteresting or just barely too redundant. I wouldn't want to outright trim any of them, but I'd gladly replace for something better.

I've refrained from commenting in these threads, because I really just want them to be collections of what people think, but I really want to ask about this one.

How do you find those abilities uninteresting?

Neutral Sect is, to me, one of the most powerful and most interesting abilities in the game because of how it works by altering some of your GCDs and giving you distinct functionality. It would be akin to if a DPS like MNK or DRG had an ability that let them be an off-tank or off-caster for 20 seconds or so. It basically lets AST be an "off-barrier healer", and it's one of AST's coolest abilities to me.

Exaltation is a better Taurochole, and I like how it works and what it does a lot, especially when considering it doesn't require being used on a tank but can be used on anyone you need to survive a hit. It also doesn't work like any other ability in the kit.

Intersection I'm a bit more mixed on - the barrier is smaller than Benison and the heal much smaller than Dignity - but I feel like being a hybrid barrier/heal makes it interesting. Much more interesting than stuff like Celestial Opposition or Essential Dignity itself.

And Horoscope feels interesting to me as a party heal that can be stocked for use at the most opportune time. It's a far more interesting variation on Plenary (though perhaps that's not saying much...), and it can be used to first heal (with one of the Helioses) then stock the second heal for after a following attack with a 30 second window to do so. It's like Earthly Star but with more direct involvement and even more control. And like Neutral Sect, it effectively modifies GCD heals.

In general, I like stuff like that (I like things like Emergency Tactics because they give you different ways to use various tools), and so Neutral and Horoscope I find very interesting.

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So I'm not being antagonistic or saying you're wrong, I'm just curious why you find what I feel are some of the most interesting buttons AST has to be "uninteresting". Or, rather, trying to understand what you find uninteresting about them. Especially when AST has abilities like Celestial Opposition and Essential Dignity which are much less interesting to me (not uninteresting - I find them to be interesting, too - just LESS so.)