For AST changes, just potency buff malefic and combust...

[DaFood]

At the highest levels, AST is relatively competitive in terms of rDPS with the other two healers—and rDPS is the only metric that matters. Sure, it lags behind by ~500 at 95th percentile (~800 at Max), but I don’t think that’s what’s holding it back. I’d wager that what’s holding AST back is the gameplay: the new card system is heavily divisive between the players that love it and ones that hate it. AST has to do twice the work in their openers and general rotations to achieve the same results as a WHM—WHM has its issues, but it feels far more fluid than AST does. Honestly, the current design of AST is why I’m no longer playing it.

I don’t think potency buffs alone would cause us to see this sudden influx of AST players and make it directly competitive in numbers with WHM and SCH. NIN got potency buffs, but it’s still one of the more underrepresented DPS jobs despite doing comparable damage to the other melee DPS now (this is from it being one of the Top 3 most popular jobs—and one of the staple meta jobs—since its inception). Why? Because people don’t like the gameplay—and its gameplay is actually getting addressed in Patch 5.1.

I know simple potency buff won't be enough for current situation because it will at least serve as a band-aid.
I will be amused if you think that 500~800 difference is small enough to ignore it.

If AST get potency buffed, WHM's population will slightly shift to AST. But there will still be decent amount of population playing whm because that class is easy to play and that's what WHM is design for right from the beginning.

[HyoMinPark]

I know simple potency buff won't be enough for current situation because it will at least serve as a band-aid.
I will be amused if you think that 500~800 difference is small enough to ignore it.

If AST get potency buffed, WHM's population will slightly shift to AST. But there will still be decent amount of population playing whm because that class is easy to play and that's what WHM is design for right from the beginning.

The difference between the healers is better than the difference between the DPS—DPS experience gaps starting at 1,000 rDPS between some jobs/roles. 500~800 rDPS difference within an entire role is much better than 1,000~2,000. Sure, a slight potency to Malefic (or Combust) would lessen this gap, but I don’t think it would save AST.

I also don’t think ASTs should settle for band-aid potency fixes, and should instead advocate for gameplay changes as a whole. They have already proven to not be enough to save NIN.

I don’t think that there would be a huge influx should Malefic see a potency increase. Maybe a small shift. Maybe you’d see more of them in speedkills. But WHM still achieves the same results for much less effort, and doesn’t have the clunky gameplay (aside from being unable to adequately weave oGCDs) or MP nightmares that AST does. AST simply doesn’t feel worth it to play—and that has little to do with potencies, in my opinion. I’ll take low potency for engaging gameplay and comparable rDPS gains. It has rDPS gains in the forms of an uninnovative and repetitively boring card system; but its gameplay makes me want to chuck my globe across the arena.

Talking about Pure Healer right before expansion, and look at how minimum WHM is healing now with high % of over-heal. People are even talking about how PLD should heal so WHM can continue dps.

Talking about Pure Healer by increasing the potential of SCH/AST heal more than WHM while successfully murder AST population.

Well Done SE.

Also, the “pure healer” has been repeatedly misrepresented—it was intended to mean “regen healing” as opposed to “shield healing”. Not “just healing and no DPS”.

[Osmond]

I know simple potency buff won't be enough for current situation because it will at least serve as a band-aid.
I will be amused if you think that 500~800 difference is small enough to ignore it.

If AST get potency buffed, WHM's population will slightly shift to AST. But there will still be decent amount of population playing whm because that class is easy to play and that's what WHM is design for right from the beginning.

Yes, I agree WHM is stupid easy to play..pretty much for no reason to the point for me it's gotten boring. You have strong healing capabilities, but your DPS makes it really obvious that there have to be a potency buff for the other 2. If not, cause I have this thought in mind a few weeks back, that they should just buff mitigation potencies and regens if SE have no intention to address their DPS issue. Made SCH or AST weak in DPS, but buff their shields, regens, and/or cards whether it's CD reduction or a slight % increase.