Quote Originally Posted by Daralii View Post
I remember how AST was released with worse healing and personal DPS than either of the other two healers because of their group utility. The result was that no one used them and they had to keep being buffed throughout the majority of Heavensward.
It's kinda like everyone forgets that Bałance wasn't as good as it is now, that Redraw could give you the same card and was on a two-minute cooldown, and that Spread was on like a three-minute cooldown too!

Can we maybe accept that if AST's AOE Balance had the same power and ease of aquisition that it does now that MAYBE groups would have magically learned to live with the lower healing? Don't get me wrong, Lightspeed and Disable were stupidly ineffectual and I'm glad they got changed. I'm glad Synastry became a throughput buff too. But did ASTs REALLY need the buffed Lumi Aether, the better Soil-Asylum hybrid AND the buffed potencies to their basic heals? Benefic was only 20 potency less than Cure, a 5% healing downgrade. FIVE PERCENT, in a game where healing requirements are already laughably lax. I guarantee that if those few targeted areas had been buffed (card QoL, adding throughput to Synastry, fixing Disable and Lightspeed) that no one would have given a crap about AST's "lower heals".

tl;dr AST's problem at launch wasn't just "weaker healing", it was stupidly punitive abilities like Lightspeed and Disable, and much lower odds of AOEing a Balance than we have now that made it undesirable at launch. Its healing could easily get the bat now and groups would still take it for Balance, even if they took WHM/SCH for initial clears/prog.