Quote Originally Posted by Nominous View Post
snip
That isn't the whole story, and I'm not letting SE off the hook here.
When AST came out, people said it wasn't strong enough and needed a lot of work in some areas (same for MCH, and there was the BRD thing with WM not being worth jack at first, though I don't remember this so well, so grain of salt with this one).
Instead, they pulled out the old "y'all don't know what you're doing, we tried it here and it's just right".
So they leave and underpowered class to rot for a patch and a half while ignoring criticisms of it- thus letting the public perception of "AST is garbage" set almost permanently.
Then, months later, they tune it better and scramble to repair the damage that's been done- but it's already in the collective memory that "AST is worthless". So the only way to show it otherwise is to overbuff it.
Even then, did anyone really think AST was weak in 3.4/3.5? Pretty sure the general perception became that it was getting centralizing (especially when you account for Balance rng).

If the balance team acted faster, many of these situations could be averted. Which would be nice, since they tend to have a lasting impact.