Why so much complain on AST?

[lucioe]

I returned after a year, and from scholar, switched to AST.

I read the forum just to get a feeling on what is going on on healers role (always been a healer, scholar, and decided to switch to AST to have a new experience)

I tried both (still have the SCH at 62), and while I was surprised now fairy are the same (it took me a while to notice that), I was also surprised on how AST has changed. Now is more "easier" and just give a dps buff, but all in all, you have always something to do with this class, and is versatile (diurnal / nocturnal )

Healing is not that bad, I could say is even better then my scholar, the only "lack" is the fast lustrate (3 charges) that AST doesn't have.

Can't compare to WHM, never played one, but If I have to choose between AST and SCH, AST win.

So why lot of ppl are complaining? (still need to ding 80, so I have no clue on late game)

For a endgame play, should I prefer AST or scholar?

[YusiKha]

People aren't complaining about any of the healers' healing output, but moreso how boring all of the changes in Shadowbringers have been.

Every skill added outside of Afflatus Misery has only made healing easier and downtime longer, the only healing skills in the game that require any forethought (Afflatus Solace/Rapture and Earthly Star) are a drop in the bucket of the +???HP tedium, and is way too little too late.
All this while our damaging kits have been reduced and dumbed down to the benefit of absolutely nobody (optimisers are more bored, anti-dps ignore as before, newbies aren't taught that they're supposed to dps).

The only healer which needs to think about their damage contribution is AST, but that requires learning every other classes' burst phases and being able to identify them at a glance, as well as getting the melee/ranged card on them. You'd better not be using 3rd party tools to track their cooldowns as that's breaking the game's ToS.

The healer specific stat is basically Accuracy, in that you require a specific amount for each fight (depending on the amount of healing GCDs required - always lower than you think) and it rewards nothing on top of that, compared to DHit and TEN which contribute damage.
Tank Stances being 'reworked' has removed the punishment for overhealing, further promoting bad practices in newbies.

I may have gotten off track a little bit...
People are complaining because we're bored. We want our class fantasy back (The Strong, The Strategic, and The Stargazer), and we want to contribute more than just 'spam nuke lmao'.
I'd recommend AST, personally, as it has more things to master than SCH.

[Rilifane]

All healers are a bit too fine when it comes to healing because they're even more overpowered compared to incoming damage than ever but at the same they have also less to do during downtime than before.
People aren't complaining about the lack of healing but about the lack of things to do during downtime. You have one 30sec dot and one nuke. That's it. You have your dps kit at level 4. Knowing that from level 4 onward your gameplay will not change one bit during downtime is pretty sobering.
It was likely done to achieve better balance and get more people to play healer but in the end it had the opposite effect for the latter: many veterans quit healing and only very few new players joined the ranks.

Compared to before, when you had to watch aggro, watch and carefully manage your mp, fight harder for your downtime and had more things to do during downtime it feels unrewarding to improve your gameplay. Overhealing was punished (double because of aggro and MP), chosing the wrong time to dps was punished (cleric stance lock anyone?) and you had multiple dots with shorter and different durations to manage.
But now you are basically fighting to push the same button even more. This is escpecially demotivating in endgame where you map out a whole fight as best as you can with your co healer only to get a couple more Glare/ Broil/ Malefic casts out. Improving your gameplay just leads to less engagement and more boredom when it should be the opposite.

[lucioe]

I just read in the forum AST is not good as scholar or WHM, is this true (I care only about healing output in general, not dps)

[Elladie]

I believe the people who are complaining are healers in the top tier of gameplay. For the rest of us - by which I mean healers who play to have fun, enjoy the game, run dungeons with friends (I am not suggesting that top tier healers don't do those things as well btw) but are on a lower rung skillwise - healing is still engaging. I ran Gubal Library on my lvl 79 AST last night, it was a struggle to keep the tank up through the big pulls (she died twice) and even more of a struggle to get cards on people. Also ran a Ravana trial, my co-healer fell off half way through, solo healed the rest. Weeping City raid, alliance almost wiped on Forgal. This was all the the space of a couple of hours last night. So the concept of downtime for your average healer is not the same as it is for the bunch of top tier healers who complain on the forums. Which is pretty much why SE made the changes they did, I guess.
I hated AST pre ShB, now I quite enjoy it. Should have all three healers at 80 by tonight. I don't do any content that would be considered 'demanding' (I play to relax and have fun, not be stressed by some random who thinks I suck because I don't have any FFlogs or I don't immediately know fight mechanics off by heart on the day it gets released) and I quite often only run dungeons with Trusts these days unless friends are online. But I'm very happy with the state of healers currently

[Jirah]

The game has been suspiciously getting easier to the point of giving Gamefreak’s Pokemon a run for its money. Easy difficulty is conveniently easier to devolve for. Tanks no longer worry about Aggro, DPS/Healer no longer need To worry about stealing eminity under regular circumstances. I’m getting way off topic AST main draw were cards but turning every card into balance undermines the lore and the jobs main appeal, though I still enjoy AST I still miss the era of Royal Road and Cards being unique

[YusiKha]

I just read in the forum AST is not good as scholar or WHM, is this true (I care only about healing output in general, not dps)

For healing output:
Diurnal AST > WHM = SCH > Nocturnal AST

WHM has better emergency tools (Cure 3, nigh-infinite MP), but AST's healing skills are stronger.

[Mhaeric]

AST-specific complaints that I've seen are almost all about the cards being simplified from before. I.e. most people who complain about it either don't like that they are all the same effect now and/or lost the royal road mechanic.

The only other complaints I really see are how AST isn't as good at healing as the other two, but those have mostly gone away as people figured out that AST is effectively guaranteed a spot in the meta with SCH and WHM splitting the other spot.

[EaMett]

They simplified everything. Made healing skills much stronger across the board. All healers are overpowered when it comes to the healing aspect, it's irrelevant to really look into who heals better unless you're really struggling with healing in general. They made the dps skills two button wonders. Dot then nuke. It used to be that WHM was your beginner go to and once you got a little better you had other options. Right now AST is essentially the only healer that requires half a brain, all the while SCH got huge dps gameplay nerfs (half the amount of timers to keep track of, no more melee gameplay, only one fairy, etc.. list goes on).
So all healers currently heal better, and DPS super easy. These changes will affect different players in two ways:

- You're either a good healer (in terms of tiers of skill, so career healers and/or raiders) and this made healing so effin easy that once you've dabbled a tad in content you're bored out of your mind playing healer right now. Some may push for parsing but 90% of the time a bad parse run is the fault of other people so that can sap the fun out of you real fast.
- You're a beginner to casual healer and these changes made your life easier (keeping tanks/party alive is much easier), less anxiety, meeting dps requirements isn't as tedious as it was etc. etc.

Part of the issue people have with the AST's current state has to do with cards and the card mechanics (sleeve draw for example) + the loss of the lore. Having every card be a balance basically removes a lot of options ASTs had before. It's psychological but options = fun and that one run you used ewer properly during prog on someone who died, or that bole that pulled you through some mechanic (or dungeons) 100% made up for the balance fetching. Honestly, they could have kept the old system and rebalanced spear/arrow+ made spire Direct hit and everyone would've been satisfied.

All in all it boils down to something called cognitive flow in game design. Which is a fancy way of saying that gameplay has to offer both an accessible skill floor and a high skill ceiling to make sure players getting better at their class have a challenge as they go but are never overrun with anxiety from it being too hard. Right now it's really, really, easy to cap out the skill ceiling for the healers. Which is a travesty considering this is a game with high player retention so most of your base is going to get pretty damn good at it given enough time.

[Risvertasashi]

For a endgame play, should I prefer AST or scholar?

AST is the basically guaranteed spot at the moment. Really you can play any healer and easily get a group, but if you like AST anyways, that doesn't hurt - AST is strong enough even to solo heal ultimates (the only healer that can do so).

AST also has the highest APM of any healer, if you like to be kept busy. But for some this is not a positive, especially given card targeting.

The downsides mostly come down to people not liking the card system, and that you might have to meld piety.