Is AST bad?

[MitsukiKimura]

This is my opinion so take it as you will. Started out as a black mage main into a AST main. The Class has the most challenging gameplay of the three healers. If you play on Console, the Card system is going to be your worst enemy. I wouldn't say the class is "Bad" I will say it does need a lot of improvement and adjustments to it, especially with Divination and the cards feeling unique again. AST has some powerful tools in its kit, but there are some skills that are just lackluster or not even used at all Cough "Undraw". The main reason why I love and play AST is for the challenge and improvement in my play style with it, not to mention it is a really beautiful class that just feels underwhelming for all the hard work you have to do to just compete with the other healers. Pretty much how I feel it's like pre patch Ninja of healers, it needs a lot of Love and I hope Yoshi P takes our feedback into consideration about it. Hope this helps you understand a bit more about AST.

[Crushnight]

AST can heal perfectly fine in everything just gotta use cds effectively in big pulls.
AST pDPS is lower than the other two healers so things will take a little longer solo but it is still manageable.
Diurnal AST is stronger than Nocturnal AST especially at lv 80 (this could change in 5.1 who knows).
2 seal Divination is very marginal loss (only 1% difference) so if have to use that if unlucky (24% chance to get 3 seal divination without redraw goes up to 32% chance if use redraw for 2nd and 3rd seal).

The only thing i can say is bad about AST is its card system design from a controller user standpoint especially going for optimal setup, there are other issues but nothing else i would consider as abysmal as that.

Ultimately it is down to you if you find AST enjoyable or not, I'm fine with AST in dungeons/normal raids but i won't step foot in savage with it not because it can't do it but because of the horrendous time every opener and 6 mins into a fight i have to deal with that makes me want to throw my controller across my room for less gain than glare, glare, glare, glare, i may have projected there a little