How could you do this to AST?

[Zolvolt]

I am deeply disappointed by the decision to make AST a pure healer as a player who always play noct ast in savage content along side my whm friend. I know this may be a selfish personal reason but in order for the two of us to continue playing savage content together one of us must now change jobs and as the shield healer it is going to fall to me. In order to play high level content with my friend, I will have to give up my favorite job. Never has this decision been forced on a player before now. You can play any job combination in any party as long as everyone is a different job and this has been the case since ARR. Now we are making it an actively bad choice for Whm and AST to play together and actively bad choice for SCH and SAGE to play together. While its discouraged to have 2 phys R and 2 casters its not an actively bad choice. This hurts.

I think this is such a bad decision for so many reasons. Currently on live any healer combination can play together optimally and effectively. Going forward there are 2 healer combinations that will be lacking due to a loss of shields or actively hindering each other by having non-overlapping shields. We already all hate groups that lock out 1phys r and 1 caster and wait in PF for decades. I fear this will be the new case with healers. Additionally the party match making are going to treat shield healers and pure healers separately as well in order to fill a party. I am worried about this as well since currently on live most of the content you queue for can be done with any healer combination even doubles, so why are we making changes to increased the wait time for these duties?

I just have these concerns and am also upset about the AST change.

[popotaro]

I am deeply disappointed by the decision to make AST a pure healer as a player who always play noct ast in savage content along side my whm friend. I know this may be a selfish personal reason but in order for the two of us to continue playing savage content together one of us must now change jobs and as the shield healer it is going to fall to me. In order to play high level content with my friend, I will have to give up my favorite job. Never has this decision been forced on a player before now. You can play any job combination in any party as long as everyone is a different job and this has been the case since ARR. Now we are making it an actively bad choice for Whm and AST to play together and actively bad choice for SCH and SAGE to play together. While its discouraged to have 2 phys R and 2 casters its not an actively bad choice. This hurts.

I think this is such a bad decision for so many reasons. Currently on live any healer combination can play together optimally and effectively. Going forward there are 2 healer combinations that will be lacking due to a loss of shields or actively hindering each other by having non-overlapping shields. We already all hate groups that lock out 1phys r and 1 caster and wait in PF for decades. I fear this will be the new case with healers. Additionally the party match making are going to treat shield healers and pure healers separately as well in order to fill a party. I am worried about this as well since currently on live most of the content you queue for can be done with any healer combination even doubles, so why are we making changes to increased the wait time for these duties?

I just have these concerns and am also upset about the AST change.

LMAO

The new expansion isn't even out yet and you're already complaining? Please stop. Just stop.
You don't even know what they are going to do with AST beside making the job a pure healer, yet here you are spouting nonsense

[MintnHoney]

ishkabibble

I dunno, I think we have enough experience and info, at this point, to see that their design philosophy isn't changing, so the decision to make another "pure healer" is extremely worrisome.
I was also more of a Noct AST fan, myself, so I'm also a bit upset by that bit of news.

[ASkellington]

I dunno, I think we have enough experience and info, at this point, to see that their design philosophy isn't changing, so the decision to make another "pure healer" is extremely worrisome.
I was also more of a Noct AST fan, myself, so I'm also a bit upset by that bit of news.

Pretty much this. Unless we get more abilities like Synastry, Horoscope, and ES for AST I'm extremely wary for what they're gonna do to it. We'll see how things work out, but yeah, I have no hope.

[Ceasaria]

I dunno, I think we have enough experience and info, at this point, to see that their design philosophy isn't changing, so the decision to make another "pure healer" is extremely worrisome.

Hmm, for Shadowbringers all healers followed the principle of Pure Healer.
Now they want to come back to two groups of healers as it was in ARR which is really good .
And like Hyomin Park says, Pure is for Regen (and/or strong raw healing maybe).

This. Since it's inception, AST has been a nightmare to balance because of it's dual nature.

Yeah and it's what we already asked end of Stormblood, delete that Noct Ast and make two groups of healers.
Glad, they have adopted that choice.

[MintnHoney]

Hmm, for Shadowbringers all healers followed the principle of Pure Healer.

I don't believe that's the case, actually, even if you can certainly play all of the healers that way.

Yeah and it's what we already asked end of Stormblood, delete that Noct Ast and make two groups of healers.
Glad, they have adopted that choice.

I don't remember anyone specifically asking for that, actually. In fact, it's that they want to force the two types of healers that makes me believe that they didn't learn their lesson thus far.
Every job needs to be fun, and then dynamic enough to provide their own (hopefully unique) solutions to problems that come up in gameplay. Pigeonholing doesn't usually provide any room for that.

[RyuDragnier]

This. Since it's inception, AST has been a nightmare to balance because of it's dual nature.

Agreed. It has been the main cause of the healer imbalances, and I'm glad they're finally addressing the fact that the Sects have been a failed idea (they did try, I will always respect them for that).

Every job needs to be fun, and then dynamic enough to provide their own (hopefully unique) solutions to problems that come up in gameplay. Pigeonholing doesn't usually provide any room for that.

You mean the Pigeonholing that has been there since AST's release? Nocturnal Sect has always been a trap due to being fundamentally weaker than SCH, and AST's abilities since Stormblood have been pushing it into a pure healer role. The devs are unable to effectively balance AST without causing major issues in the healer balance. Make Nocturnal too strong, you throw SCH out of the meta. Make Diurnal too strong, and WHM is forced out. Make either too weak, and AST can be tossed out.

That has been the flaw since release, and anybody who has been here since HW can recall those days where they were basically "rebalanced" almost every patch. It caused massive chaos. Even in SB you saw AST's balancing caused chaos. Here in ShB it too caused chaos. Let's just be honest with ourselves here, AST has been in a dire need for a rework since release, simply because the Sects made it impossible for any semblance of healer balance to exist. AST needs to be its own healer, not a carbon copy of another, not a hybrid.

[currentlemon]

snip

He has a point. I agree we still don't have enough information to know more about this pure healer direction for AST, but forcing the job into playing a role similar to WHM doesn't seem like a good idea on paper. And now with this notion that, for 8 man content, you have a separate queue for the two types of healers? That's concerning, and again, it sounds bad on paper. I don't play AST, but since its introduction in 3.x, it's supposed to be a hybrid job. This just makes healer mains even more concerned, especially what happen to the role in 5.x. Based on what we have, one could assume SE is forcing healer mains to play 2 healers instead of their preferred job.

[tikiwiki]

He has a point. I agree we still don't have enough information to know more about this pure healer direction for AST, but forcing the job into playing a role similar to WHM doesn't seem like a good idea on paper. And now with this notion that, for 8 man content, you have a separate queue for the two types of healers? That's concerning, and again, it sounds bad on paper. I don't play AST, but since its introduction in 3.x, it's supposed to be a hybrid job. This just makes healer mains even more concerned, especially what happen to the role in 5.x. Based on what we have, one could assume SE is forcing healer mains to play 2 healers instead of their preferred job.

since release ast has been a pure healer with shields tacked on because of the shield regen dichotamy and noct has been incredibly weak and flawed for most of its existance until sch got destroyed this expac

[IceBlueNinja]

since release ast has been a pure healer with shields tacked on because of the shield regen dichotamy and noct has been incredibly weak and flawed for most of its existance until sch got destroyed this expac

I still do not see no details exactly how is noct weak when I have put some where in like page 3/4 of prime examples how it is not and it even actually migitates better than sch shields. If so then both noct sect and sch shields are inferior to regens atm. Also while people love dirunal sect like* 70% I guess of players, you still some what hear people complain and say how it such a copy white mage its like overall nothing about ast seem to please people. Either its too much copy of a whm or a weaker sch which ofc this part I will always disagree on the migi thing all the time. ast as is the hybrid healer like how a rdm will be a mix of a white mage/blm their heals are decent but not that strong to a standard whm and their dps too is decent but not too powerful than the standard blm. Hybrid jobs always function like this and I will say both dirunal and noct is balanced I do not see the so claim dirunal stronger than noct thing. Noct can do something dirunal cant do, if something takes 0 damage that would otherwise apply some debuff effect after hit from main attack. For example those sprites who tetter healers in amarout, taking 0 damage will block that healing down ability, while ofc in dirunal you take damage get that debuff and now your in stress healing with the healing down debuff. same for many other things that adds debuff but taking 0 damage may block them from certain bosses.