Quote Originally Posted by Deceptus View Post
"Some things you don't need to worry about. The new AST AoE heal Earthly Star is a neat move, and it plays well off people who know a fight. " That absolutely plays into the SCH toolkit.

It seems to me the reason for the ShadowFlare change is to get people to actually use Sacred Soil. Because due to the damage and the slow, it's superior in dungeons to SS in almost every way.
Sacred Soil uses an aetherize stack, and now more than ever that won't happen since we can lustrate and excogitation with those stacks while DPSing without needing to stance dance.

Like Bane, the change to shadowflare is largely a nerf to SMN AoE with their myriad bahamut+painflare options, but since we share the toolkit we get to deal with it, too. For our loss.

Earthly Star is a solid AST design choice since it involves a time delay mechanic. It would certainly work in the SCH's toolkit, but thematically we wouldn't want something that gradually builds like Earthly Star, but rather something that can instantly trigger like our tactics, indomitability, or excogitation. Planned reaction rather than playing a trap card face down and then flipping it in a later round.