Quote Originally Posted by Renault View Post
Snip
You're half right. Scholar is better than Noct AST in some ways especially if there's no Monk to shut them down. However, Scholars also suffer from not being able to handle spread damage as well as lacking the CC options AST has. (Heavy,AoE stun, bind vs just bind) Ast also brings cards to the table, Bole,Arrow, and Balance are all extremely great cards and Scholar has nothing similar to this utility. Scholar shields are not instant cast and they only get a maximum of 6 lustrates before the fairy has to do most of the work, If the fairy is CC'd or killed, Scholar will have a struggle keeping themselves and their parties alive if the damage is split or they need to lustrate themselves to stay alive.

Scholar isn't bad by any means, but they have limitations on what they can do because of aetherflow and the fairy. The fairy is killable/CCable and aetherflow is a finite resource. Neither ast or whm suffer from this issue as badly.

As for the other half, AST does have the option of forgoing the survivability of shielding for the capability to heal their team mates better using Diurnal, and Diurnal may have a place when countering SMNs damage spread by using regens not possible inside Nocturnal. Nocturnal is just more widely used in the current meta as it works and has worked in the past. Diurnal stance may not be as good as Nocturnal right now but Scholars have no such option to choose from.