Things I'm starting to hate on AST

[Luvbunny]

Yes Ast DOES have a niche, just not a PvE niche lol. SOooooo yes the AST does have a niche just not as a bleeding edge endgame raid healer.

LOL, why the job is even here then? I mean if it is positioned as a healer who can BUFFs, then those buffs need to be controllable and very good (look at Corsair and Geomancer in FFXI, if this team for FF14 has no inspiration, steal the idea from their other game, who does better at creating jobs who can buff the party but still do what their other role suppose to be, aka Geo + Corsair do DPS, good number. These two jobs DPS capabilities are not LOLd due to their buffing ability).

If they want to sell it as versatile healer (with some added bonus of buffing the party in meaningless way, icing on the cake, nice to have, but won't break the game), then make those two stances comparable to the WHM or SCH roles. Right now, either stance is WORSE than the other two healer jobs. And the buffs are just that, random, not great, all over the place, way too complicated. We don't need 6 buffs, 4 that we can control is more than plenty.

Honestly, if they make it so that the buffs are comparable and more in our control, then the less healing factor would not be so bad (for balance reasons). You can argue they may not be as good healer as the other two, but their buffs is way better than any of what WHM and SCH can bring to make up for the less healing potency.