Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

[GideonHighmourn]

I wouldn't say it's stupid, necessarily, just incredibly lazy. Nothing about AST is unique in terms of their healing toolkit, outside of Synastry. At any given time, it's a sub par WHM or a sub par SCH when it comes to actual healing; it makes balancing it a nightmare, as Yoshi indicated in the first section of the article. AST is easily the least creative way to make a new class I've seen in a game; taking two sets of class skills, giving it to a single class (with less potency or more potency, still results in issues), and then tacking on an RNG system is a recipe for utter disaster. Surely, they must have seen how this would be a problem, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to acknowledge this would create problems with balancing.

There are tons of healing mechanics out there, but instead of creating something new or unique to FFXIV, they just copied what they already had. So yes, it's baffling.

[Lastelli]

As I thought, they were afraid that a buffer could make things too easy and ended up releasing an underpowered job. Let's just hope for the best.

I'm baffled that you find it baffling. Honestly. It seems pretty obvious to me. In creating a healer that can swap between regen and shields, they created a unique healer. Plenty of people love ast, it's just a matter of balancing and ironing out the rough edges.

They weren't stupid, they just approached a new healer differently than you would have. Doesn't make them stupid.

As of now, there's nothing unique about AST except for their (useless) cards.

[Seryl199]

As I thought, they were afraid that a buffer could make things too easy and ended up releasing an underpowered job. Let's just hope for the best.



As of now, there's nothing unique about AST except for their (useless) cards.

AST has Synastry, a heal that scales with the target's HP, a channeled AoE regen, an instant, oGCD AoE stun, high mobility low cost heals with Lightspeed, and their card kit. AST doesn't shatter any barriers, sure, but it has enough going for it to differentiate it from other healers. Also, consider that WHM and SCH abilities were somewhat homogenized for Heavensward as well. All the healers share similar abilities in their toolkit, AST just needs a little loving so that it can use it's basic toolkit with similar efficiency to other healers, while capitalizing on abilities that are unique to it.

[Lastelli]

AST has Synastry, a heal that scales with the target's HP, a channeled AoE regen, an instant, oGCD AoE stun...

Synastry is the only thing that feels new and I really like it, however everything else is just imitations...in some cases very poor imitations. dignity ~ tetragrammaton (yes, it scales with the target's HP, but in practice it usually has a lower potency than tetra), channeled skills ~ asylum/sacred soil (poor imitations since they pose a restriction other healers don't have to use equivalent abilities, same goes for disable), AoE stun is useless so I can't even consider it, Lighspeed effectiveness is very limited (actually it's useless, no mechanics force you to heal for 10 seconds while moving) and it doesn't increase healing throughput anyway unless you use Aspected Helios (once). Now, this is disputable so I can understand what you mean when you say it is enough to "differentiate" it...but to me it's not enough. At all. But this is not the matter here, the real issue is that not only AST plays a LOT like a WHM that exchanges HoTs for shields when in Noct...it's instead that its healing toolkit is lacking and the cards' weakness doesn't justify the rng part of this gimmick so that in practical application the contribution of your cards is negligible. I'm sorry, but this job is a complete failure as it is (imho). What you call "a little loving" is actually a total rework on some abilities, especially CU, CO and the whole cards system. Also, SCH and WHM become really OP with post 50 skills, so I recommend you finish leveling your WHM to see why I'm so dissatisfied with AST.

[Seryl199]

Synastry is the only thing that feels new and I really like it, however everything else is just imitations...in some cases very poor imitations. dignity ~ tetragrammaton (yes, it scales with the target's HP, but in practice it usually has a lower potency than tetra), channeled skills ~ asylum/sacred soil (poor imitations since they pose a restriction other healers don't have to use equivalent abilities, same goes for disable), AoE stun is useless so I can't even consider it, Lighspeed effectiveness is very limited (actually it's useless, no mechanics force you to heal for 10 seconds while moving) and it doesn't increase healing throughput anyway unless you use Aspected Helios (once). Now, this is disputable so I can understand what you mean when you say it is enough to "differentiate" it...but to me it's not enough. At all. But this is not the matter here, the real issue is that not only AST plays a LOT like a WHM that exchanges HoTs for shields when in Noct...it's instead that its healing toolkit is lacking and the cards' weakness doesn't justify the rng part of this gimmick so that in practical application the contribution of your cards is negligible. I'm sorry, but this job is a complete failure as it is (imho). What you call "a little loving" is actually a total rework on some abilities, especially CU, CO and the whole cards system. Also, SCH and WHM become really OP with post 50 skills, so I recommend you finish leveling your WHM to see why I'm so dissatisfied with AST.

I hate arguing about AST, I plan on leveling WHM anyways but I'm not about to argue for or against obliterating AST. I like how the job feels, sorry we feel differently. Good day

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

As of now, there's nothing unique about AST except for their (useless) cards.

If you think the AST cards are useless, you're really not playing the job properly.

[Xalvador]

If you think the AST cards are useless, you're really not playing the job properly.

The cards are weak enough at this point to be considered mostly useless. Some may have small uses, but overall throughout an entire raid encounter, the cards really won't be doing as much as the other healer's can in terms of utility.

[RichardButte]

As I thought, they were afraid that a buffer could make things too easy and ended up releasing an underpowered job. Let's just hope for the best.

Yeah, I was saying this about all three new jobs since the expansion launched.

Better to release nerfed classes and slowly buff them later so people don't over-roll them and use exploits to wreck new content.

[Assirra]

Yeah, I was saying this about all three new jobs since the expansion launched.

Better to release nerfed classes and slowly buff them later so people don't over-roll them and use exploits to wreck new content.

While i agree the ast aint bad because it gives bad numbers.
Design wise it is honestly just a mash of ideas that don't work together.
Let's hope that they make the healing and cards actually work together instead of being an half support class in a game that doesn't allow it.