Thread: 5.0 AST is a failure

Agree. I had to switch to white mage. and white mage is more fun to play. white mage. you know healing is in a bad spot when you start to think that.

I won't argue that AST is a shell of what it was in SB. However, what it was in SB was OP in pretty much every category there is for healers. I still have to get it to max to see how the remainder of their toolkit plays out, but after two dungeons and a trial, I find myself not having all of the same issues that are commonly expressed about AST.

The issues I share are Celestial Opposition and Divination. My main issues with CO is the lore surrounding the ability has basically been written off (losing the stun), and it's lackluster heal power. I don't care about the loss of extending durations as that was one of the things about SB AST I felt was OP as durations were already modest. With buff durations being shorter in ShB, it would make more sense to have those extensions now. As an ogcd heal with a long CD, it should be far more powerful than it is now. It's an instant, but weaker Aspected Helios. They wanted to fill the gaps with healers, but only filled it half way for AST with a strong instant AoE heal. CO, Horoscope, and Earthly Star are not answers to AST need of a truly instant AoE heal that they have basically never had.

Divination is inefficient in its current state. Even with the use of Sleeve Draw, Divination sits off of CD for quite some time while the AST gathers the first set of seals to load it up. If it is going to be like this, then Divination's DPS increase should be much higher, but even if it was it would still be inefficient, but at least the payoff would be better. I don't do savage raids, so I am really concerned if AST mains are going to be able to line this up with burst windows so they are not sitting on Divination once it's ready. I would much rather AST not worry about this at all, and have Divination be an offensive ability.

The good thing is I am having fun playing the new AST. So much so, I even gave it new glamour. Most of what was taken away I don't miss in even the slightest. The play ability and having Gravity for when I am slapped in lv50 content are some serious QoL changes that helped me enjoy this job again. Just need to take care of those two issues I mentioned and I will be happy to bring this healer well into max level content.

Can't agree more. I just got WHM and SCH at 80, and AST 74 for now. I was kinda major in AST for previous expansions, but I would say this time, changes on AST really shows that the AST designer don't play their own game....

Regardless of significantly lower potency, AST is even the worst for MP management - WHM still has assize and SCH still have aether flow to restore some MP, AST lost everything to restore the MP except for the role-shared lucid dreaming.

The new card system is boring, and actually more difficult to manage if you want to a perfect start - as seals won't be obtained if you are not in-battle. Sleeve draw just make oGCD skills spammed. In 4.X, we just need a group balance card. Now AST have to use 14 skills within the first 10 seconds to achieve a perfect start. This is just annoying and impossible to achieve.

Nocturnal selection is just stupid for light party dungeons. The shield is very weak and MP cost is further increased.

Not to mention mathematically the group DPS have to be more than 114k to compensate the DPS loss of substituting an WHM with AST, but the group DPS is now typically 50k - 70k.

No longer elegant, no longer fun to play, and probably the weakest among all healers.

For a job I mained from 3.4 to the start of Shadowbringers all it took me was one run to figure out something was wrong. I healed very well in dungeons on AST but I did one Castrum Abania run and my performance was a shell of what it used to be. This was when Play had a queue problem but that wasn't the whole problem with this job.

SCH has a few problems of its own but I've taken up residence with the job until "this" gets fixed. Removal of the time skills and COpp stun didn't help matters for me. This job was not playtested.

Originally Posted by Mesarthim

For a job I mained from 3.4 to the start of Shadowbringers all it took me was one run to figure out something was wrong. I healed very well in dungeons on AST but I did one Castrum Abania run and my performance was a shell of what it used to be. This was when Play had a queue problem but that wasn't the whole problem with this job.

SCH has a few problems of its own but I've taken up residence with the job until "this" gets fixed. Removal of the time skills and COpp stun didn't help matters for me. This job was not playtested.

I feel that pain. At Stormblood launch, I was freaking out about the changes to Scholar before they reverted some of them... I wound up playing Noct AST for the first raid tier, partly because I'm not so much married to the idea of being a scholar main (despite the fact that you COULD say I've been a scholar main since 2.0) but rather I'd like to be the most effective shield healer I can be (accounting for personal biases, of course- I'm sure SB1 SCH would have gotten the job done, it just didn't mesh well with me.)


If only I knew where things would stand on the next expansion launch, I wouldn't have been so pessimistic. The way things are right now, I feel like I would just be contributing to my party's woes if I joined as AST (or SCH), instead of the only job that can't be a shield healer, and my sense of group-responsibility just doesn't like being so selfish as to play the sub-role that ~I~ want to play when it hinders progress.



It's also neat to see someone who had the opposite experience as me weigh in. I wanted to play AST because my SCH feels are too negative... But maybe I'm being too negative, maybe SCH is the lesser of two evils.

Just give us back the old system. You shouldn't drastically change a core system that lot of people liked, and nobody was complaining about. AST was not MCH. We were pretty happy with our job. The main complaints I saw were about Spire being useless, and about obligatory pre-pull Balance fishing in hardcore raiding groups.

So make Spire not useless, and give us a really long CD ability that stacks the deck with Balances and resets on raid wipes. As for job balance, take away expanded RR and I don't think you'll see many complaints; buffing everyone instead of picking a party member made the process less interesting anyway. You can even nerf the effects of our individual cards if we're still putting out too much rDPS.

But why the hell would you replace the entire card system? Even if the new system was something that people like... make a new ****ing healer job with that system. Don't take something that people enjoyed and get rid of it. AST was the only healer job in an MMO that I truly enjoyed, and now as far as I'm concerned, it's dead. Even if I could end up enjoying the new system, I still wouldn't play it, because I can't pull out my star globe without thinking about the great job that we lost.

I don't really post on the forums at all, but I felt that since AST is objectively bad for me to play, I wanted to give a little feedback. I mained an AST healer in Deltascape for a static and I had a lot of fun with it, it honestly was my favorite class to play. I felt pessimistic going into Shadowbringers. However, I really wanted to give the class a fair shot, so I got AST to 80 and cleared Titania EX a few times.

Unfortunately, the class is just extremely clunky to play. For example, as many have pointed out, sleeve draw just feels bad to use. It's difficult to optimize playing every card, and it draws a lot of attention away from other things you should be doing. Ideally, you're fishing for the correct seal, and then playing a card every time it comes off GCD. The problem in this lies in the fact that you are drawing single-use cards and manually clicking on each party member every 5ish seconds (during sleeve draw) while fishing for seal, or while converting to minor arcana.

Next, fishing for celestial seals feels really bad, even with the 3 redraws. There are several instances where you will draw nothing but a single type of seal, particularly when you are fishing for the last seal you need for divination. Which brings up the next point, divination is just too long with little to no impact, 3 minutes for a 6% AoE buff with an incredibly short range is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's move on to Horoscope. Currently, it's is just clunky to use, the closest thing to Horoscope is Plenary Indulgence, and that triggers on the character being hit by the appropriate healing spell. Horoscope requires you to use it, then use it again after the appropriate spell. Horoscope might have some clever use in later raids, but it's really easy to forget about on top of all the tedium of keeping cards going. I don't understand why the effect doesn't just proc after the duration ends, it seems like that should be how it works.

Finally, I don't really see any reason you'd ever want to play AST over WHM atm. AST doesn't offer anything over WHM, since WHM can make up the difference in card contributions through pDPS. However, WHM has better unique healing spells than AST, both in GCDs and oGCDs and more of them. It offers better bang for your buck while being easier to play. AST in its current state reminds me of the difference between BRD and MCH in the prior expansion. You could do well on MCH during raids, but it had so many issues with the way the class was constructed, so most people favored playing BRD over MCH.

The biggest drawback to AST right now is simply the card system, it requires so much micromanagement that it makes it extremely difficult to play well. It's like they made the system more complex but in an extremely bad way. The card system needs a revision away from the current system. I don't really care if they move back to the old system, or restructure the new system. Either way, something needs to be done.

Originally Posted by Nimloth

I don't really post on the forums at all, but I felt that since AST is objectively bad for me to play, I wanted to give a little feedback. I mained an AST healer in Deltascape for a static and I had a lot of fun with it, it honestly was my favorite class to play. I felt pessimistic going into Shadowbringers. However, I really wanted to give the class a fair shot, so I got AST to 80 and cleared Titania EX a few times.

Unfortunately, the class is just extremely clunky to play. For example, as many have pointed out, sleeve draw just feels bad to use. It's difficult to optimize playing every card, and it draws a lot of attention away from other things you should be doing. Ideally, you're fishing for the correct seal, and then playing a card every time it comes off GCD. The problem in this lies in the fact that you are drawing single-use cards and manually clicking on each party member every 5ish seconds (during sleeve draw) while fishing for seal, or while converting to minor arcana.

Next, fishing for celestial seals feels really bad, even with the 3 redraws. There are several instances where you will draw nothing but a single type of seal, particularly when you are fishing for the last seal you need for divination. Which brings up the next point, divination is just too long with little to no impact, 3 minutes for a 6% AoE buff with an incredibly short range is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's move on to Horoscope. Currently, it's is just clunky to use, the closest thing to Horoscope is Plenary Indulgence, and that triggers on the character being hit by the appropriate healing spell. Horoscope requires you to use it, then use it again after the appropriate spell. Horoscope might have some clever use in later raids, but it's really easy to forget about on top of all the tedium of keeping cards going. I don't understand why the effect doesn't just proc after the duration ends, it seems like that should be how it works.

Finally, I don't really see any reason you'd ever want to play AST over WHM atm. AST doesn't offer anything over WHM, since WHM can make up the difference in card contributions through pDPS. However, WHM has better unique healing spells than AST, both in GCDs and oGCDs and more of them. It offers better bang for your buck while being easier to play. AST in its current state reminds me of the difference between BRD and MCH in the prior expansion. You could do well on MCH during raids, but it had so many issues with the way the class was constructed, so most people favored playing BRD over MCH.

The biggest drawback to AST right now is simply the card system, it requires so much micromanagement that it makes it extremely difficult to play well. It's like they made the system more complex but in an extremely bad way. The card system needs a revision away from the current system. I don't really care if they move back to the old system, or restructure the new system. Either way, something needs to be done.

I play AST cause I can switch back and forth between regen and shields. I personally dont care about dps as my dps is secondary priority and only done when no healing is needed. Whm for me is the snooze fest healer right now brain dead easy to play..