Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Saraide]

It's rather tricky saying "there are natural design paths" for each healer given , for example AST- I don't look at AST and say "there was a clear, well-thought out roadmap". It's a history of patches, emergency changes, rollbacks, reversals, large population, and now it's the least popular healer with yet another major design change.

Hah un-answering? this made me laugh. Good one (and quite diplomatic)

From what I gathered the exploding star is a well liked ability on ast. I think you could structure ast's damage output around putting up delayed attacks which would also tie into job lore about predicting stuff.

[IDontPetLalas]

From what I gathered the exploding star is a well liked ability on ast. I think you could structure ast's damage output around putting up delayed attacks which would also tie into job lore about predicting stuff.

You mean earthly star? Sure, and there have been some ideas that other people have thrown out. That's the general idea, personally I'm not so much of a purist when it comes to lore however I do respect that it's very important to some people, and to SE's credit, the animations on some skills , such as SE, really have been well done and are consistent with astrology and its theme.

[Aravell]

It's rather tricky saying "there are natural design paths" for each healer given , for example AST- I don't look at AST and say "there was a clear, well-thought out roadmap". It's a history of patches, emergency changes, rollbacks, reversals, large population, and now it's the least popular healer with yet another major design change.

I would honestly say that AST is a job that never had an identity, even at release. They tried too hard to cram it into the role of WHM-lite or SCH-lite that AST never got to have their own identity.

[Mecia]

Sects were part of AST identity, they shouldve allowed mid fight changing instead of the usual overcorrecting. There was potential for a 'complex' healing kit.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Being a ShB baby, when I first read the ability name "Celestial Opposition", I immediately thought it's some sort of mechanism to allow them to swap sects in mid-combat. But lmao turns out just another Medica II.

[AmpelioB]

I would rather both have middle ground kits

[AmpelioB]

Being a ShB baby, when I first read the ability name "Celestial Opposition", I immediately thought it's some sort of mechanism to allow them to swap sects in mid-combat. But lmao turns out just another Medica II.

have you ever heard of cleric stance

[Renathras]

have you ever heard of cleric stance

While I always thought AST stance dancing was bad (it would PROBABLY make AST/AST either meta or near meta all the time), it's not really comparable to Cleric. AST stances didn't nerf their healing to buff their damage. Both were healing stances, just one was more throughput and the other barriers. Adding in the buffs, it would be like if SCHs could push a button and be WHMs. Overpowered as all hells.

Neutral Sect was an attempt to give ASTs s bit of that flavor while constraining its power to a CD button, and largely succeeded in doing so, even if a lot of people didn't see it that way. Outright allowing ASTs to stance shift in combat would defeat most of the point of stances at best, and at worst, would have risked making AST not only the go-to healer, but AST/AST consistently meta, something even SCH has never done.

As a hypothetical, there's no way to know either way. I personally think AST should have its stances back, but not be able to hot-swap in combat. Fair enough, AST fans?

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Personally, I think AST's identity has always been based in the heart of the cards. From the start, it was their unique gameplay mechanic, and their party buffing is something no other healer has. The ONLY other one that has something even VAGUELY near that is SCH with Chain Strategem, which is a 2 min party burst CD more comparable to Divination. While AST's cards have been gutted a hundred ways to Sunday to the point even SCH DPS spells, SMN DoTs, and MCH's Quick Reload button are looking on in pity, it's still what AST brings unique to the table that no other healer has a comparable ability to.

The other portions of AST's identity seem to be delayed action spells - and I don't mean heal over time or damage over time here (though it has those, too). Things that you set and then they have a later effect based on things you do (or don't do). While some other healers have gotten stuff like that over time (Lilybell and Panhaima, for example), AST did it first. And, though mostly subdued at this point, is AST's mix of mitigation and barrier magic, alongside good throughput and party buffs, for rounding out a robust healing and support kit. Even somewhat dampened now, AST still has Collective every minute and Neutral allowing 30 seconds of Succor and Adlo (effectively) shielding of party members. And the last piece of its identity puzzle is a relatively high APM and mobility - even back in the day, it has long had Lightspeed and the short 1.5 sec cast on Malific even when WHM and SCH were dealing with 2.5 sec casts of their base nukes, and the more complex card mechanics meant AST still had a decently high APM, even if it used to be more spaced out over the whole Minute (the M in APM) as opposed to being heavily loaded into the burst now like DRK and NIN.

So that would be my list of its identity traits:

-Arcanum/support buffs and related gameplay (no more River, but still has Redraw).
-Delayed effect actions (including but not limited to HoTs and DoTs; Earthly Star, Horoscope, etc).
-A mix of throughput healing and barrier/mitigation healing.
-A higher than average APM and mobility.

IF this was pre-6.0, I'd add "having two stances so it can swap, between combat, to fill any healer need in the party", though post 6.0, it lost the stances but has Neutral Sect allowing it to temporarily become a Barrier healer, so WHM/AST comps are still viable, and AST slots in easily into an AST/SCH or AST/SGE comp as well. AST is probably also the only one capable of pulling off the double AST/AST (the other doubles aren't as good, I don't think?) due to it still retaining this flexibility. Even in a reduced form, AST/AST would have 4 Colectives per minute and up to 1 solid minute of Neutral Sect party barriers. Not meta, of course (due to LB generation and some other things; but PART of the meta of AST/SCH), but more functional than...probably any of the other dual sets. So I'm not even sure that one has been "lost" so much as "changed".

[LynxDubh]

Being a ShB baby, when I first read the ability name "Celestial Opposition", I immediately thought it's some sort of mechanism to allow them to swap sects in mid-combat. But lmao turns out just another Medica II.

And its original effect was to stun enemies for 4s and to extend the AST buffs on allies for 5s (later changed to 10s). So it did have a bit of an opposing effect based on enemy or ally one could say. It became the regen/shield in ShB.

[Chasingstars]

For white mage, swap Glare with Holy.