Quote Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont View Post
Criticisms, in general are negative, even though they can be constructive. I wanted a condensed place for what people love about the job, so those things have a chance of not getting changed. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about AST at the moment, and that's due to misinformation, and running in to bad players. Can astrologians use a bit of love, probably, are they weak and in need of a complete redesign, no.

Prime example, I was in a Thok ast Thok (extreme) farm party the other day, our other healer a WHM, was flabbergasted after our first clear, he said he would have been doing that fight as an Astrologian, but the groups he encountered told him that AST was unable to do that fight and he should play as a different healer if he wanted to do that. I was glad that I was able to show him it is easily doable.
Your goal in setting up the thread was definitely a positive one, and it flabbergasts me as well that anyone would think that AST can't do something like Ravana EX. Seriously....

Anyway, where criticism was bound to enter this thread was in response to the people who started using it as a safe haven for making outrageous claims of AST's supposed hidden power and complexity. It's fine for people to laud aspects of the Job that they enjoy, but it's really hard for those of us concerned with seeing that AST be made truly competitive not to comment when others attempt to spread misinformation unchallenged (e.g. "AST is just as powerful as SCH/WHM, people just need to learn it play it better" etc.). No, the Job is not close to brokenly bad, but it's not really up there with its peers, either, which means it will consistently get the short stick as time goes on until this disparity is better addressed.