I don't want the devs to give up on Chemist

[RyuDragnier]

I don't want to see the sects removed. They are part of the astrologian's core identity.

No, CARDS are the core identity of AST. If they wanted the Sects to have been core of AST, they would have actually reworked them long ago into something viable. Like idk, making it so Neutral Sect is the default, with the Aspected heals giving both a shield and a regen, both weaker than WHM and SCH but having the benefit of both at the same time. With Diurnal and Nocturnal sharing the same cooldown and making your aspected heals focus into one or the other. That way the shields and regens can be OP, but there's a cooldown, and you can't have them both at the same time. Meaning AST would have been a proper "middle of the road" healer back before Sage was added.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I think the Sects were a fine idea as they used to be... But the main problem I had with them was that the regens from Diurnal Sect were just so much better than the shields from Nocturnal... You ended up using pretty much double the MP for a fraction of the effectiveness. And with the introduction of Celestial Intersection in ShB, it kind of rendered Nocturnal Sect pointless as you got an OGCD Noctural Benefic while in Diurnal that didn't cost 1K MP...