Do AST really need this Buff?

[Belhi]

I like how all these nerf beggars leave out the fact that Thin Air and Divine Benison exist.

Thin Air is great but doesn't really address the existing issues with WHM beyond helping somewhat with Mana which WHM was by far the poorest in managing. Divine Denison came at the cost of Stoneskin and honestly I am not entirely convinced that stoneskin wasn't more useful. 15% HP shield instant cast sounds nice but isn't especially strong and is on a 1 min cd. Seriously its not that great and honestly I don't know why some people point to it as being so.

WHM had its healing buffed but its healing was never an issue and frankly it didn't need more healing power. The problem is it lacks utility outside healing and its mechanic, the lillies, are counter intuitive. Either AST has to be able to heal in the Main healer slot or it will get sidelined, Balance or no, which isn't fair to AST. If it is able to heal as a Main healer though WHM's additional heals aren't much value and it offers nothing else but its heals and slightly higher dps if it is attacking which means AST is still going to be better than it.

Regardless, as the healers are designed now there is no way to effectively balance them. WHM is getting a lot stripped down and is getting rather poorly designed healing systems as its new tools. AST is keeping the edge it already has and getting some pretty useful new toys on top of it. Regardless, AST is pretty solidly designed. WHM isn't. Its mechanic is a mess and difficult to use and its new toys rely on procs that require rather inefficient healing to really get use out of.

I am not saying they should necessarily nerf AST, but as things are now the healing Jobs aren't going to be balanced and unless they screw over AST again, it's WHM which is going to be the inferior healing Job. No amount of mana management and short cd heals will fix that.