AST QoL Changes

[Cleftobismal]

Snip

Wonderful commitment.


But in the end this is no different than a AST purely healing with a piety build. If I had the time to do the math I would. But right now I'll simplify it for lazy sakes.


Ast has:

The Ewer


WHM has:

Shroud of saints



AST is on a RNG.


WHM is on a CD.


AST DPS skills are inefficiently high on potency.

WHM blasts out numbers and useful utility for high mana cost.


A.k.A for a AST to do anything as meaningful of a WHM. They will need to put in more MP because that's how WHM is more efficient.

[Velox]

Ast has:

The Ewer

You forgot this: Luminiferous Aether, which is not RNG-based. It has the same MP refresh as Shroud of Saints, and has the same cooldown timer.

AST DPS skills are inefficiently high on potency.

WHM blasts out numbers and useful utility for high mana cost.

AST DPS skills are also independent of Accuracy checks. This means in high-end content, WHM's end up wasting more MP on "missed" attacks than AST does.
AST also has the ability to boost the raid DPS via cards like The Balance and The Arrow. It would be broken if AST could pump out as much theoretical DPS as a WHM while still retaining the capacity of buffing the party, something that WHM can't do. Even RNG-based support is support. No ifs, ands, or buts.

I don't mean to nitpick here, but don't formulate an argument unless you're dealing with all the facts.
Healer balancing is done assuming 3 different aspects of the jobs. The ability to heal, the ability to damage, and the ability to support. The more points you put into one, the less you can spend for the others. For instance, let's say each healer uses a 10 point system of balance. That means each healer gets 10 points to spend in the three aspects I listed above. A current snapshot of the healers might be something like this...

WHM                           AST                      SCH
healing: 7pts                 healing: 6pts            healing: 5pts
damage: 3pts                  damage: 1pts             damage: 4pts
support: 0pts                 support: 3pts            support: 3pts

Things are not that bad, nor that complicated when balancing. The more you gain in one area, the more you have to give up other areas. You can't have your cake and eat it too in MMORPGs. It's a game of tradeoffs.