Suggested changes to AST Design to bring it in line with WHM/SCH

[AzureFlare]

I'm sorry, but for someone that has so many world first/second under their belt, you're undermining the issue in favor of potency buffs. Sure, your suggestions improve AST but improving can also lead to it becoming blatantly overpowered.

Just going to nitpick a few things out of it:

Stella heavy to stun. Please, don't. As an avid PvP player I would absolutely skewer anyone who comes up with this, even if you give the Heavy to Malefic, it would just make it even more broken in PvP. Stella is fine where it stands, Malefic is the bloat spell.

Combust 3/Gravity 2: We don't need any other AoE beyond Gravity, at least not in this fashion. If you want to make it interesting, make it so that Stella on a target with both Combust and Combust 2 caused a Supernova or something for that AoE.

Time Dilation: Extending debuffs will not help your mana unless you're going to idle instead of tossing Malefic 2. Time Dilation is already a tool hard to use for average/new ASTs since they get tunnelvisioned on the cards, while it can extend 3 HoTs at best + Bole on a tank. Now that is mana saving.

Collective Unconsciousness: The regen has no penalty bar channeling a maximum of 3 seconds, and just getting the regen on everybody will make it beat Asylum. The mitigation does have a penalty since you need to channel for as long as it takes to land the hit(s), but you already have a regen and a mitigation component. Channeling it longer than required to get the HoT off is just icing on the cake and free potency you won't have to spend later. Like literally, it could be replaced with a same radius instant buff for everyone near you to give a 15s regen and a 3s mitigation and it would be the exact same bar channeling it further, except having the mitigation be extendable.

Card to get mana back: No. All the cards are fine, what isn't fine is drawing cards of the same category into one another (Spire/Ewer/Spire, 3x spire, 3x spear). Whoever thinks mana is a problem for an AST is missing the part where it isn't the mana, but the fight itself making you spend mana differently and arguably, less efficiently. I've already mathematically proven in another thread that two blank or an extended Ewer will put you ahead of WHM with both having 14k mana total, for any fight lasting shorter than 11 minutes. Unless your RNG is really bad, you will get to that point.

What is keeping AST back are unfavorable fights and people not accustomed to utilising the full kit it has. Fights favor a main healer + hybrid DPS/healer that can chip in more healing only during heavy burst, meaning AST would never have the second healer slot over SCH. On the main slot it is already getting close to WHM, only missing a few comfort things like a disjointed AoE heal (or one slightly more powerful than Helios) compared to Cure 3 and Medica 2's superior range. Surely if you are high level, you can ensure a tag on Aspected Helios when it comes out? CU already is stronger than Asylum. You also have the added benefit of it reducing damage which Asylum can't.

I mean, have you even done some of the math and possibilities AST has and compared it to practice, and what is keeping it from getting to those things? Increase the potencies to make it match fights favorable to WHM, and they will become the weakest link no matter what the fight asks of them. You even make questionable comments on your own stuff: first you state Aspected Benefic's mana cost isn't fine for what it provides and then go on to Benefic where you say the lower mana cost of Benefic is justified because Aspected Benefic's mana cost is high. So if we decrease the manacost or increase the potency of Aspected Benefic.. is it still fine? And then in the end you decide the cards should be nerfed to compensate for the increased potencies we get, because it makes sense to homogenise us even further when half the AST community has been screaming 'we want to be different from a WHM/SCH!'?

Want some real issues? Look at:
Shuffle giving you back the same card (you did mention this one). This is one of the main card-combo killers and most ASTs know it is an absolute mood-killer. Like "getting a call from your mom during sexy time" mood-killer.
Nocturnal having really, really lackluster synergies with CO and TD compared to Diurnal. Having lower potencies is one thing, having even lower potencies because all they do is extend your shield duration (with 30s already being stupidly lenient) compared to the Diurnal counterpart actually getting more potency out of this is.. no.
CU being tied to the server timer. Having to wait for the full 3 seconds sucks, but at least you can worst-case it.
Spire being a lackluster card.
Spear being an obnoxiously hard-to-use card.
Arrow being a card capable of backfiring due to it making people eat their resources faster.
AST being a very pug-unfriendly healer thanks to no disjointed AoE heal and Aspected Helios having lower range than Medica 2. In a serious environment, that range difference should be worked around just like how you tag a Succor.

But most of all: teaching fellow AST what kind of options there truly are. AST is weird because it has a very big combo-element to it thanks to the cards, CO and TD. We started off with a horrid reputation because our potencies were lower and our abilities lackluster, our cards harder to use and less beneficial than they are now, and the first impression is always the strongest. What we need are good ASTs that show the job has potential when given the chance to shine, just like there are good WHM that show WHM can shine, but WHM has had years to do so while we are still working on the first one and in general people are afraid of stepping out of their comfort zone when they don't have to.