Thread: AST Wishlist for 5.0

Originally Posted by AvenoMatt

And honestly I doubt AST having weaker shields or regens would make it less desirable since it still can heal and provide it's rdps.

Well thing is it actually did all the way back during the 3.x. The cards weren't strong enough to offset the healing disparity that AST had back then. In fact it took patches of buffs to make people even consider WHM/AST (3.3 and the infamous 3.4) cause SCH just did everything better than a noct astro before 3.4. For comparison sake back then
before 3.4 noct astro aspected benefic total potency 603.75 (262.5 heal/341.25) compared to adlo 600. The only advantages were it was instant and cheaper. Come 3.4, Noct sect got buffed from 5 percent healing to 10 percent healing and the shield percentage got buffed from 130 to 170 percent. Only then, did I see an increase in astros (of course there was also that stupid buff to balance which was the main reason).

Edit: FFlogs isn't really a good metric but I still remember back then checking the stuff on A8s during the midas tier. Of the hundreds of groups that cleared before 3.3, you had only 2 that were logged as a ast/whm group. SOme may not logged their clear but it gives a good idea back when there were hundreds of clears with whm/sch or sch/ast but few whm/ast clears. There was a reason they buffed the shields in 3.3 with aspected helios being increased to 120 percent of the heal and then the huge full buff to noct in 3.4.

Edit: Not defending it either, I do wish the explore with the cards a bit more and tried to differentiate with the sects themselves. However, having been through hw and the tumultuous cycle back then with whm vs ast since SCH was king back then and knowing what SE has done, it just wouldn't be very likely sadly.