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

[Shurrikhan]

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".

No, no, that's a fair question. Admittedly, my rationale is a little idiosyncratic.

To be clear, I don't give a damn how AST's analogs compare to other healers. The fact that a direct comparison is even possible already sours any merit they'd have by having a more "interesting" version of copy-pasta. If that "interest" comes from simply being more "functional" (e.g., less integral, more straightforward, more foolproof) or "powerful", I'd probably give negative damns.

That said, I can be a bit harsh to abilities that take up a space that I think would otherwise be, or previously was, taken up by more interesting alternatives. Which can be a bit hard to follow, as I'm then not critiquing the skill itself so much as the use of design space. That's largely the case with Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, Neutral Sect, and Exaltation.

Add to that some space-leaving for returned functionality to currently gutted abilities, rather than just judging them per their current forms, and I could see why my answer would seem contradictory. Current Celestial Opposition, for instance, is as dull as can be. And, of course, there are duller abilities, like Essential Dignity, that I just don't judge as harshly because I simply consider them, in turn, in regard to their available design space and needs they'd have to fulfill. We do need simple slack via responsive abilities at least somewhere in the kit, after all.

In more detail, though:

Let's start with Neutral Sect. Yes, it allows you to barrier heal, but because the effect is purely additive, it in no way feels like you are temporarily "swapping" roles. It just feels like the devs gave up on trying to make Synastry useful or integral and were tired of hearing AST veterans complain about losing Nocturnal Sect, and this two-for-one crapshoot was the result. Now, admittedly, with Kardia having so much more room to be fleshed out on Sage, I'm not fixated on AST uniquely holding down a 2-target burst sustain niche, but I feel like Synastry at least has more of interest fundamentally going for it as an action than "Now have shields too!" Neutral Sect. I don't doubt Neutral Sect, too, could be more interesting, but its taking that space means, also, that there's then little room to do anything more integral (not CD limited) with the Sects themselves.

That complaint largely repeats for Celestial Intersection, though I'd probably be more fine with it if it just wasn't such a basic damned CD, if it had more of a shared opportunity cost, or at least interacted with something else.

Horoscope, meanwhile, actually seems less interesting to me for being able to plop down a buff in advance to be used later; while that does fit with the Time Mage theme to some tiny, tiny degree, it really just means that there's that much less need to think ahead since you can just hit it on CD and make use of it later. It's basically just "hit on CD so long as I may have a decent chance to use Aspected Helios sometime in the next 30 whole seconds." Since there's very little content that'd fall between 'don't need Horoscope at all' and 'yeah, you'll definitely have opportunity to throw out at AH once per minute', it just doesn't feel like it's doing much, tactically speaking, beyond adding 1 APM in what little content wouldn't thereby cause overhealing.

I have no idea why you say that Exaltation uniquely allows it to be used on non-tanks. The healing is done at the end of the duration, so it's not going to serve as an emergency heal. For the purpose you've stated, your conclusion is backward. Taurochole, not Exaltation, is the better heal to use on non-tanks. It's more potency, and it's immediate, meaning that it can actually make synergetic use of that added eHP... and it's a shorter CD. Exaltation's only decent use case is on the tank. At which point... Exaltation's just Aquaveil but with a 500p delayed heal in place of 5% mitigation. Aquaveil's larger %mit at least synergizes with pumped HPS --if we could finally actually get a use case for really pumping HPS!!-- but Exaltation just feels disconnected and fully meh. At best it can claim that delayed healing is an AST thing (despite also being on SCH and GNB)?? Idk. It just feels utterly unimaginative to me. I'd sooner have it than not have it, but I'd rather have, say, Spread and old Bole than Exaltation.

Shorter Version: I find them comparatively uninteresting because they replace, rather than synergize with, (A) Sect-switching and (B) deeper and more varied and integral use of Cards, each of which (and especially if together) I'd consider more interesting than these discrete skills that replaced them.