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

[Vlady]

We can give our opinion on the matter but we will have to wait and see what they specifically state they are going to do with the job when the developer letter comes out on the 20th I think is the date. Card buffs itself is strong but the range could be worked on a bit. Bole though I do not think I have ever used it once over royal road fodder. I wish when you use royal road though the next draw would be reduced dramatically over having to wait another 30 seconds.

[AlphaSonic]

I have an idea that would make AST more desirable to take.

What about making Celestial Opposition stop the time. Instead of stunning the enemies it would froze them in time (including all bosses). It wouldn't interrupt casts, it would just froze them and after it finishes the freezing the cast would continue.
With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

[Rox_Unlimited]

I have an idea that would make AST more desirable to take.

What about making Celestial Opposition stop the time. Instead of stunning the enemies it would froze them in time (including all bosses). It wouldn't interrupt casts, it would just froze them and after it finishes the freezing the cast would continue.
With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

it would either be too OP or still underwhelming. Btw froze is past tense Freeze is what you would use in your post.

[Geardagas]

With this change the skill would become the ultimate ability for AST. You could froze a boss to set up a mitigation strategy and minimize damage. You could froze the boss to let your team dodge that AoE. You could froze that boss to help your party to recover after a big unavoidable damage. You could froze that boss that's about to enrage and give your party 4 more seconds to kill him.

So whats the difference between FROZEing and stunning? Seems like FROZEing the boss is literally the same exact thing as stunning the boss. Unless it isn't diminishing returns, which is op.

[AlphaSonic]

That if the boss is casting an ability it doesn't stop the cast. The cast would continue after the freezing.

[winsock]

Glad to see this. It doesn't seem like AST needs HUGE modifications to be on par:

Def agree that cards need to be addressed. If AST could get the cards they need, it could solve many healing issues.

On the healing end, nocturnal AB should be modified in some way IMO

[Lastelli]

Being able to freely pick your cards would make this job truly unique and much more interesting. Of course we'd need cards that actually help us healing, so when we need high healing throughput we can just buff ourselves or use damage mitigation buffs and in less healing intensive phases we can use cards to improve our comrades' dps instead of directly dpsing. This is more or less what SCHs do when switching fairy, but in our case it would be much more important to optimally use our unique feature because we can't "sic" cards. Unfortunately, the rng nature of cards makes 4 out of 6 cards useless. Need to mitigate that tank buster? Well too bad, here's a spear for you! Wanna help your just revived dps with tp? Take this bole.
I really hope they reconsider how cards work, but I'm not setting my expectations too high.

[LycorisSelunis]

Being able to freely pick your cards would make this job truly unique and much more interesting. Of course we'd need cards that actually help us healing,.

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

Never make healing any moe rng than just having crits. Ever. I know we have some wow players around....rng spreading renewing mist anyone? How did having uplift tied to an rng feel? Pretty crummy right?! Add in this game has next to no smart heals (correct me if wrong but fairy's embrace is it, yeah?) and rng healing is simply unacceptable. In wow you had a number of smartheals to pick up slack/catch someone missed in aoe (or make healing very very lazy).

[YuiSasaki]

Unless we can pick cards, healing should NEVER be tied to them. Having buffs on rng is one thing, having your ability to keep someone from dying is another.

Never make healing any moe rng than just having crits. Ever. I know we have some wow players around....rng spreading renewing mist anyone? How did having uplift tied to an rng feel? Pretty crummy right?! Add in this game has next to no smart heals (correct me if wrong but fairy's embrace is it, yeah?) and rng healing is simply unacceptable. In wow you had a number of smartheals to pick up slack/catch someone missed in aoe (or make healing very very lazy).

Tbh, I highly doubt that fairy heals via smart heals, it's rather a come first serve first mentality. Plus smart heals are by far the worst thing blizzard could implement... "ZOMFG HEALS NEEDING TOO MUCH TIME TO DECIDE ON WHICH TARGET TO THROW THEM HEALS" "i got it lets take this out and let the mechanic decide" "YEA EVERYONE GUNNA LIKE MUCH"..sure on some casts it is nice (like Well of Light)....but I'm getting way too off-topic..

To summarize, yes i know what you are talking about, but i wonder why one would need cards that help "us" healing? Cards were meant to be buffs, so the only thing I could think of would be a flat percentage to healing via a card buff (play balance on yourself get 5% benefic heal and see dem dds cry xD)

[LycorisSelunis]

To summarize, yes i know what you are talking about, but i wonder why one would need cards that help "us" healing? Cards were meant to be buffs, so the only thing I could think of would be a flat percentage to healing via a card buff (play balance on yourself get 5% benefic heal and see dem dds cry xD)

I had thought this at one point- make balance give healers more healing and make bole increase healing received, but I worry that would make those too desirable compared to other cards (balance more than it already was). Personally I was hoping they would tack an aoe heal on CO (our assize/indom) and have diurnal increase healing received and noct reduce damage taken, or something like that.

As for lightspring, that and totems were what made the most sense as a 'smartheal', a deployable that ticked away, or did nothing if no one was THAT badly hurt. One or two of those is great. All your aoe heals? Not as great, haha. Though now that I think of it, I wonder if aoe healing being 'raid' targeted and not 'party' targeted has anything to do with that. This game doesn't have a lot of 24m content though....