Quote Originally Posted by Faxmonkey View Post
Having 7 abilities for an effect that other classes have with 1 ability is crap, especially if you pay for it with less healing options than the other two classes. Explain to me how that design will hold up in the future, if they we take their stated goal of "healers healing & every healer combo should be able to do the content" seriously. Either SCH & WHM excess abilities will turn out to be superflous and groups will want the % scaling Divination buff maybe even 2x, or AST will be gimped in the healing department and be dropped.
It is not gimped at all and you do not pay for it in healing options. AST's healing is very strong following the changes in patch 5.05. As I've said before, the healers are pretty well balanced right now and AST is just as strong as SCH/WHM. It will take a while for people to realize this, but it will happen.

We're overflowing with threads saying "Goodbye Astro", "AST is dead", etc... that discourage people for playing it. But soon enough some encouraging posts will surface. Such as the E4S noct AST solo heal.

As for doing more for the same effect ... Well ... Haven't people been complaining incessantly that there's nothing to do? You'd expect AST to be the darling of the community right now.