The only thing I would change of AST

[lordparanoia]

Hi everyone. I know we have been talking a lot about it in the past and Yoshida mentioned that they were going to adjust some AST abilities. Anyway we still have Celestial Opposition that is beautiful, not very useful and I would love to see it reworked.
I mean, 5seconds on buffs are nice but I would love to see a special healing effect on it like Assize.
For example in Diurnal it could restore 20%hp of the party and in Nocturnal it could provide a shield like Celestial Protection, that could work like divine veil/Deployment.

What do you think about it? Are you ok with CO rght now?

[Lastelli]

I agree that CO in itself is a little underwhelming, but with the changes you're suggesting AST would probably become too powerful.
Also, if you can time it correctly to extend LA (and hopefully a nice expanded balance) it's actually quite useful.
The only small buff I could see working is the following: increase potency of already applied shields when using Noct by 20%.

[Ghishlain]

While I don't think CO is anything special, it's neither underwhelming nor overwhelming at this juncture. I feel what you're suggesting for Diurnal CO is too potent and unbalanced but the Nocturnal adjustment sounds nice.

I'd be more concerned of any more buffs AST gets will throw out any semblance of healer balance this game has to offer. AST has been getting mountains of love since its inception in 3.0 and right now I personally feel the toolkit is well beyond the point of being acceptable. If they continue to buff AST in the levels they have been, they'll definitely need to start nerfing other aspects to maintain balance.

I'm going with the assumption at this time that any adjustments they make to AST will be more about minor buffs and adjustments to the kit more than "Hey, let's slap this on this ability / spell and make it SUPER POWERFUL"

[mdha02]

Maybe make it so it has a 50% chance to reset your draw, Royal road, hold, and shuffle abilities. I mean they already have short CDs so it wouldn't make the super OP.

[technole]

I don't see anything really changing on CO for the foreseeable future, because that will definitely throw off healer balance. It seems every few months someone has to throw out a "WHM has assize why don't we have something similar yada yada". If you want an instant heal so bad just Swiftcast+Helios. White Mage only has Swiftcast and Assize for instant AoE. Yet, Astro has Lightspeed in-addition to Swift. Swiftcast is 60s cooldown, and it's amazing how many subpar healers don't take advantage of this cooldown to their advantage. It's always "we'll someone is going to die every 60s". So be it.

AST now has the most powerful MP refresh skill in the game. AST is clearing every content in the game without any more difficulty than a White Mage, has a World-3rd clear for Midas. There really is no ground to stand that the job is underwhelming anymore.

In the past I suggested buffing the CO buff up to 10 seconds, but with the 3.2 changes now even then that can be seen as powerful because it's such a good DPS buff for balance.

[Bonbalon_Burcaso]

Given the changes in 3.2, I personally can't see any major changes that either wouldn't overpower AST or ruin the flavor.

Some complain about how random the cards are, but personally I find myself very rarely in a position where the card I'm holding doesn't have a use. There are times when I wish I was holding a different card, but being able to outright choose your card would ruin the AST flavor as well as overpower it.

If I'm not mistaken (and I don't think I am) AST has the widest range of buffs that can be used on others in the game right now.

As far as Celestial Opposition goes, I use it just before using Collective Unconscious to give my tank a regen (or third one, depending) without having to worry too much about dodging an aoe before I even have a chance to cast it. Not likely the best use, but it works for me for now.

[Jukebox12]

The only thing i would do is increase thier dps by a small bit but just right below white mage and sch but to much close

[Shurrikhan]

I'd personally just like to see Draw and Spread work like any other cooldown, beginning their cool on activation, not on use of the triggered or held effect. Still can't be fickle about Spread use and trade it out asap, but at least it's potentially up for every other card, aligning better with Redraw, and you aren't hugely punished for waiting until a card is maximally potent to use it on a given player or the party. I'd rather see balances approach through QoL changes and/or a focus on AST's unique components. Maybe combine Ewer and Spire, so that their compositional value is automatically split, or else give each a situational buff, such as by being both a cost reduction and a flat regen (perhaps with a particular maximum TP/MP restoration), and give Spear both a reduction to CD times and a faster per-second cooling rate for all CDs already cooling so that it can still be useful after or during burst, not just before unloading everything.

[tjw]

I'd personally just like to see Draw and Spread work like any other cooldown, beginning their cool on activation, not on use of the triggered or held effect.

Speaking technically, that IS how other cooldowns work, applying the cooldown with the effect goes off. Similar in vein in how Ninjutsu also only starts the cooldown after triggering the current Ninjutsu, and less noticeably but still the same, Forbidden Chakra.

[technole]

The only thing i would do is increase thier dps by a small bit but just right below white mage and sch but to much close

Malefic II is about akin to Stone III, and it's 30 more potency than Broil. Astro DPS is just fine where it's at considering it's usually in the main healer seat.

Even for SSS trials, AST has a higher DPS completion threshold than SCH. It's WHM>AST>SCH.