Is AST bad?

[Palibun]

Hi o/ , first time posting (hoping im posting to the right place!); i wanted to ask the healer community a question since I couldn't find any straight answers online-
It's my goal to be able to play every role fluently and decently well. I've already gotten tank and dps down and high leveled, so I decided it was about time to give healing a go. I picked AST as my healer of choice and have been enjoying it so far. I always knew AST got kinda nerfed for ShB, but according to most everything I've read AST is terrible now, with some people saying they don't even like it anymore. Most of these posts were made at the start of the ShB launch though.
So can any AST mains or healers in general tell me, is AST really that bad? I'm not one of the people who only cares to play the best classes of every role, but if AST isn't even fun anymore then i rather not invest time into it.

Thanks for any feedback!

[LariaKirin]

No. (10 characters)

[HyoMinPark]

Fun is always a subjective measure—so only you can really determine if a job is still fun for you or not.

But speaking personally, as someone who played AST since 3.1/3.2, the new AST is terrible. I don’t think it flows as well as it has in the past; its gameplay has a lot of cumbersome and clunky aspects to it. And it has to work twice as hard to achieve less results than a WHM. I think the changes they made to the card system took away the versatility and flavor from the class—and I really don’t like the removal of the Time Mage aspects from it either. I’ve tried repeatedly to enjoy the job in different types of content since ShB dropped, but I just can’t.

I do think AST is far less popular now: comparing Savage uploads of it to WHM and SCH, there is a noticeable gap. Last week, the E4S clears uploaded for WHM and SCH were over 12,000 while AST was only at 2,400. AST has lagged behind in Savage uploads since the tier dropped 10 weeks ago. And while some of this is because it’s not meta, meta and speedkills don’t make up the majority of uploads.

[Wawachume]

I'm not a particularly good healer, but I found AST to be barely more difficult than the other healers in 5.0, and not at all in 5.1. The class can do everything it needs to do.

I personally can't stand it. But if you like it, there's no reason not to play it.

And as a bonus, you get to be the rare special unicorn of healing jobs. It's always fun to like something other people don't.

[Saefinn]

I think healers in general is going to be an odd one for getting opinions, because you're definitely going to get mixed opinions and some divide. My general advice with anything is to try it and see if you like it. A hundred of us could post in here saying how terrible it is and the moment you pick it up you might go "hey, this is fun, I like this" and our points would be moot. Many of us have fallen in love with our healers at different points in their life cycle and thus have gotten different things out of it. As an example for me, a lot of the SMN community doesn't like 5.0 SMN for how it feels to play. Me? I mostly like it, so in a way I found myself going against popular opinion. Whereas with SCH I hate it now.

New AST? I didn't play much of old AST to be connected to how it used to play. Though I am fully aware of why not everybody likes it and why it's less popular right now and would not want to downplay that.

But out of the 3 healers at the moment, despite it being the least popular, I've been enjoying AST the most, though not without its problems. But there's more to do and less downtime versus the other healers (at least in Noct Sect, which I mostly play in, simply because it is the weaker of the two). As odd as it sounds, I feel at times either healers heal too well or the content is not challenging in the right way for us to fully use our toolkit (and I think they all have a good toolkit), so with Noct being weaker, it feels like I get to use more of it.

The good news for somebody newer to healing in this game is that you will likely feel there to be less of an issue with downtime (unless you're a natural at it, I guess), though there may become a point where it does. Because as with anything there's a learning curve. Those of us who have healed in this game's content the longest are probably going to be the most disatisfied.

However, when it does come to downtime, out of the 3 AST actually has the most to do, AST cards make up for a part of your activities between DPSing and healing, which the other 2 healers don't have. But in terms of balance, it is behind WHM and SCH on every front. In terms of fun, entirely subjective of course. It depends on what you're looking to get out of your experience.

[Osmond]

No, it's not bad, it just felt underwhelming atm. The card system is much better to deal with for me. Although they need to nerf divination's CD to 90secs at least. You build up 3 seals pretty fast.....but I guess it's there cause you do proc more "lord" type cards which is a 8% dmg buff if they want the CD to 2mins...idk. The healing tools is pretty good, somewhat better than SCH..SOMEWHAT..although collective unconc. is garbage right now, was thinking that it needs a regen buff, but you'll end up having 2 strong party regens for the job. Malefic and combust is really underwhelming. Those needs a buff because I do want to contribute to the group in terms in beating raids or trials while giving member buffs, party buffs to the group.

As a learning curve, it's much fun to play because you have to think beforehand on what you have to do. SCH is 2nd in the learning curve with your aether stacks and fairies and WHM is brain dead last cause you have tools that you don't have to work hard in mastering.

[Gemina]

If you haven't really played AST, then you're not going to feel the ShB changes to the job. That basically means you can play it and determine if its current iteration is enjoyable to you without any bias. Give it a go and see if you like it. Simple as that. I honestly would turn a deaf ear to everything everyone is saying about it and just determine for yourself if it is a job you enjoy playing.

[Evanoel]

It is if you don't know how to play it well.

[Mesarthim]

No AST isn't bad, but I hate the new AST with a passion. To avoid getting grilled by the New-Ast-Defender-Squad I'll just echo a previous post and say the only way you'll know you will like it is to play it.

It's not as bad as it was on 5.0 launch after their screen-long list of buffs when Savage dropped.

But also a few tidbits:

AST has no secondary source of MP regen, like aetherflow or assize, etc
New card system is controller unfriendly. If you use a keyboard and mouse it'll be less cumbersome
Collective Unconscious was badly nerfed with a potency drop. Skill is not worth channeling fully, cannot move while in use unlike SCH and has a longer cooldown than sacred soil.
Celestial Opposition lost its stun effect with the new expansion so you lost a crowd control option that synergized with your kit

But strictly speaking I feel the job is inferior to SCH and WHM, but can heal content fine.

[Mhaeric]

It's not bad, it just needs tweaks here and there mostly to cards and mp management. Cards are a lot busier now than they were before for no additional gain.