Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.