Quote Originally Posted by Ariane View Post
Dirunal AST is probably actually the best healer right now. If you nerf SCH's fairy or you give the noct AST the answer to the fairy, you risk that AST/AST being the best thing. AST has the potential to replace both healers and they have insane card buffs. If AST heals are equal or even just "good enough", they will better than both the WHM and the SCH.
So much this.

Scholar was indeed the undisputed king of 8-man healing at the start of the expansion, but after the devs buffed and buffed and buffed AST, it's honestly hilarious how much better AST is than both SCH and WHM. Not only are AST's buffs much stronger (neither WHM nor SCH have an answer to Balance and Arrow, or any card for that matter. And no, Fey Wind is not even remotely comparable to Arrow), but AST has ridiculously good MP efficiency when healing, great DPS sustainability, and is also a powerhouse of single-target healing with Asp. Benefic, Benefic II and ED. AST's biggest "problem" is a lack of proper burst AoE healing, but Lightspeed and the mitigation tools they have kind of make up for this, not to mention Celestial Opposition gives them more AoE healing output for less MP as well if the regens from AspHelios and CU are extended. On top of this, they can play the bard role and give their co-healer or themselves more MP, or feed a TP starved PLD or physical DPS.

The thing with the AST+SCH comp being so much better is not because of SCH, it's because WHM is crap. You most definitely don't want to miss AST because of all the amazing things previously listed, and both SCH and WHM can effortlessly make up for AST's one weakness (burst AoE healing). So, when you have the option of SCH and WHM, which one do you pick? The answer is pretty obvious.

The other big problem is that NoctAST's lack of regens is very unfortunate. As someone else said, NoctAST is better suited to be the healer focused on the main tank, but when WHM can't even sustain being the support healer, then what do you do?