Learning how to properly play AST

[FoxyAreku]

snip

Half of their abilities are related to card buffs, which hurts their ability to keep up in throughput.
Again...worst is not the same as bad. Astro is worse than both scholar and white mage in both healing throughput and damage done. This doesn't mean that they aren't fine for all the content currently in the game, at all. I'm not sure what we're even debating anymore, nor how I can spell this out for you any further. Compare an AST healing numbers to the numbers capable by the other two jobs and AST will always come out last, I'll number crunch for you if that's what you're wanting.
Also for scholar-you forgot succor, emergency tactics, lustrate, indom, Embrace, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, and dissipation. Cooldowns and oGCDs count, since AST has a ridiculous low amount of them related to healing (Essential Dignity and Synastry are about it, you can maybe count lightspeed too if you're feeling lenient).

Aetherflow and Energy Drain also makes a scholar's mana management a lot easier and more reliable than an astrologian.

snip

I guess what I asked of you was too hard. ;P Oh well.

[AzureFlare]

Stuff

Don't. Really, go ahead and number crunch, but you'll never get a spreadsheet consistent with a fight unless it is like.. Faust 2.0 or something. And AST ogcd/cooldown isn't 'ridiculously low', they are on par with WHM. What is low is the amount of healing AST can do directly through OGCD/ability (WHM Assize/Tetra/Bene vs AST Essential Dignity vs SCH Lustrate).
Most people forget Celestial Opposition becomes powerful the moment you get to combo it into your other abilities, but this has the innate weakness of blowing all your abilities just for potency, the same way you'll almost never see a situation where you need to stack PoM and DS as a WHM. CO 'can' be a 300 potency heal if you combo it in CU (80 per target for A.Helios), almost rivaling Assize. It 'can' be giving you extra Benefic 2s worth of mana (Lightspeed combo), it 'can' give you more single target potency (Synastry/Aspected Benefic). The same way Time Dilation 'can' give you 5 Aspected Benefic, 5 Aspected Helios and 5 CU ticks, which is a total of 1650 potency (rivaling Lustrate potency-wise when all 3 Aetherflow are spent on it).

But that requires the Astrologian to have both a need for those combos and be in Diurnal, on top of coordinating to pull them off. If all those 'can's don't show the exact reason people tend to prefer WHM over AST still, I don't know what else.
AST vs SCH is a non-debate because SCH is the best pseudo-DPS/Healer hybrid of the three. You only need them for burst/mitigation checks and otherwise a SCH is just a DPS with an easier rotation and lower output.

[FoxyAreku]

Don't. Really, go ahead and number crunch, but you'll never get a spreadsheet consistent with a fight unless it is like.. Faust 2.0 or something. And AST ogcd/cooldown isn't 'ridiculously low', they are on par with WHM. What is low is the amount of healing AST can do directly through OGCD/ability (WHM Assize/Tetra/Bene vs AST Essential Dignity vs SCH Lustrate).
Most people forget Celestial Opposition becomes powerful the moment you get to combo it into your other abilities, but this has the innate weakness of blowing all your abilities just for potency, the same way you'll almost never see a situation where you need to stack PoM and DS as a WHM. CO 'can' be a 300 potency heal if you combo it in CU (80 per target for A.Helios), almost rivaling Assize. It 'can' be giving you extra Benefic 2s worth of mana (Lightspeed combo), it 'can' give you more single target potency (Synastry/Aspected Benefic). The same way Time Dilation 'can' give you 5 Aspected Benefic, 5 Aspected Helios and 5 CU ticks, which is a total of 1650 potency (rivaling Lustrate potency-wise).

But that requires the Astrologian to have both a need for those combos and be in Diurnal, on top of coordinating to pull them off. If all those 'can's don't show the exact reason people tend to prefer WHM over AST still, I don't know what else.
AST vs SCH is a non-debate because SCH is the best pseudo-DPS/Healer hybrid of the three. You only need them for burst/mitigation checks and otherwise a SCH is just a DPS with an easier rotation and lower output.

Yeah, you pinned the nail on the head really.
Honestly this whole conversation has just gotten kinda silly, I don't understand all the needless white knighting people do for astrologian on this forum. Really, it'll probably always be the worst. But that doesn't mean it can't be good, and it is. I just think it wouldn't hurt for it to be put on par.