It has begun!

[BlastHardcheese]

Tbf, double AST is a terrible combination due to the lack of passive healing from NoctAST, and only ends up making matters worse for both healers.

Yes, AST is ridiculously powerful, we all know that, but NoctAST continues and will continue to be crap.

Wut.

Noct AST is good, like, really good. Most people tend to prefer Diurnal because something about regen just feels comforting but Noct really is great, probably better than it's counterpart imo.

[Aetherstar]

SE's & SE's White Knights response:
"All healers can clear the content, therefore all healers are viable. It's fine, you need to calm down!"

Fixed it for you.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

SE probably looks at this and goes "eh, they can clear all content, good enough!" And moves on to buff AST more.

Honestly I hope it gets worse. I want the power gap between AST and WHM/SCH to be apparent, and that starts with locking them out of PF.

[MsTanya]

I had a similar issue where many of the party finder groups had healer slots with only whm/ast available, sch wasn't even an option. So disheartening.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Or, you know, picking classes which bring the most to a raid for faster clears and thus better productivity?

Seriously, people act like choosing the obvious best jobs is being a tool or something.
These are not small differences. 20% balance and chain is the difference between wiping from low DPS/multiple deaths and clearing.
Why wouldn't you want that over fucking Plenary Indulgence?

[deos]

Why wouldn't you want that over fucking Plenary Indulgence?

or why would anyone want Plenary Indulgence in the first place... thats skill is just Dissipation level of useless due to its crazy rng

SE has a lot of balancing issues to solve for both WHM and SCH

[EaMett]

I agree I've seen plenty of AST-AST and AST-WHM PFs. As a WHM I've been locked out of quite a few PFs in favor of AST so I can't even begin imagining what it's like as SCH.

Given how often groups (even farm PFs) hit enrage when they aren't actually dying to mechanics due to some stupid error, Balance is a huge asset and those party requirements make perfect sense.

I would expect things to be different for statics.

As gear gets better I expect farm parties for older primals to lean towards double AST more, possibly single WHM/AST. We'll see.

[Risvertasashi]

I honestly do have to wonder how exactly the healer balance conversations went. Like... how did they get to "Even though AST is meta... We'll jump up AST's potencies some more, improve Balance uptime, and add in some more oGCD healing" and go "Yeah this is OK, won't cause problems at all".

I really does mystify me... what they were thinking. Do the people making those decisions even play healers?

[Rubiss]

I honestly do have to wonder how exactly the healer balance conversations went. Like... how did they get to "Even though AST is meta... We'll jump up AST's potencies some more, improve Balance uptime, and add in some more oGCD healing" and go "Yeah this is OK, won't cause problems at all".

I really does mystify me... what they were thinking. Do the people making those decisions even play healers?

The entire dev team has never ran a healer through a dungeon. I am surprised they haven't been let go. If I was the Director and this was the result of my team's balancing? I'd look for some new people, ideally people with an inkling of common sense and a shred of experience in the classes they are "trying" to balance.

[Supersun]

The entire dev team has never ran a healer through a dungeon. I am surprised they haven't been let go. If I was the Director and this was the result of my team's balancing? I'd look for some new people, ideally people with an inkling of common sense and a shred of experience in the classes they are "trying" to balance.

(My theory is this is actually intentional. My guess is that they knew the real changes they have planned to certain classes were going to upset some people so they intentionally overnerfed stuff so that people would panic and complain and then when the raid drops and they release the real changes all of the people thank the devs for the buffs that saved them from uselessness even though those were the changes they intended all along)