How could you do this to AST?

[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.