Quote Originally Posted by Kerrigen View Post
I think they have given up on healing parity and from their comments during the stream they want to give AST its own niche with Card buffs (which is good and should have been a day one priority!). But if they just improve the cards then they have to be very careful about AST vs WHM balance.

They designed themselves in a corner with their initial AST concept and subsequent 3.07 buffs but that's no secret. I don't think it's going to be well-balanced before 4.0 either.
This is why I really like the idea of Noct Sect being more about buffs. If you just buff the cards, you'll damage the WHM vs. AST balance, but if you buff the cards while in Noct Sect ONLY you'll give ASTs the ability to be a viable SCH replacement (with less healing/mitigation throughput possibly but if tuned right, maybe a bigger increase to party DPS? More risk, more reward?), without hurting how the job functions in Diurnal.