Thanks for trying to get back on topic, I understand its easy to get carried away with a conversation. I intended this thread as a place to point out the positives of the class, so that people can voice the things they like, so mayhap they don't end up getting changed. Unfortunately, there a lot of people on the AST is bad bandwagon, who gave up leveling or haven't played it at all, who spread some pretty bad information. Do I think this job is gear dependent, yes. Are bad players more noticeable when healing as AST, yes. Is that necessarily a problem, no. Personally I don't feel a healer should be able to drag bad players through content, like it is really easy to do with a WHM. (but now I am getting off topic )