How I wish AST was designed.

[Eudyptes]

I think the class has been fine and works well.

I made it clear I thought so to. It's just not what I expected we'd get when we got it since it's basically just whm/sch lite.

Speed bonuses for heals are virtually worthless outside of emergency cooldowns. Chain-casting heals is unnecessary under the majority of circumstances, so I wouldn't suggest that fast casting be a major selling point of any healer design (that design will lose hard to almost any other, especially mitigation).

It's not the speed that is appealing, it's being being a HoT healer + being mobile with your basic heals (ala WoW druid) in Diurnal that is supposed to be appealing. The speed is a nice bonus because you get in some healing faster allowing people to survive in situations where they would otherwise die mid cast. But the idea is that in the end 5 benefics would equal the same overall potency of two cure II's (maybe slightly less), and be cast within the same amount of time as two cure II's.

Beyond that, if you still need a spelling point for ast, it would be the same one it has now. The card system. Which actually is a big reason I'd was the HoT type healing. To allow for more fluid card play while you are healing with less cast times and more GCDs.

So from what I'm getting from your first post. You want astro to become a very inconsistent healer that may or may not be in the right stance at the right moment?

Read my second post. It wouldn't be inconsistent as you have a lot of freedom over stance control and you do not run through mana/refresh nearly as fast as blm does. It's just taking the general idea of blm's gameplay and redesigning it to fit a healer.

In order for speed bonuses to work, the class must be able to generate (almost) the same amount of potency in the same amount of time; however, it will take them two casts instead of one and cost similar amount of resources.

Yeah, that was literally the idea.