AST, and what we lost

[AnotherPerson]

AST is more of a time mage than anything now, it's just the time aspect works differently.
You have Earthly Star /Giant Dominance, Macrocosmos/Microcosmos, and Horoscope /Horoscope Helios for both a delayed heal and early detonation. Exaltation acts as a delayed heal. All these things work on predicting things in advance as a 'diviner of the stars' so lorewise, the time mage aspect is there. It's just not extending buff duration anymore. Lightspeed still shortens your cast times by 2.5 seconds so it's not as if the theme of time manipulation is gone entirely. It's just changed in its focus.

If you consider AST's Celestial Intersection + Neutral Sect + Exaltation + Collective Unconscious as shields/barriers, the hybrid aspect is still there, but not as big of a theme as the "Time Mage" part.

[Recon1o6]

I still miss my cards and noct sect. Pahaima would have worked wonders on noct ast in the sense of rewinding time to reapply shields.

though the time mage is currently making noises in its coffin, the rest of Ast's identity is still dead

[Haxaan]

I have been playing Ast since HW and have continued to play through it, for better or worse, ever since. Stormblood's iteration, to me, was by far the most fun I have ever had playing the job. It was engaging, dynamic and above all else you truly felt the job fantasy shine. In Shadowbringers it felt like they ripped out my heart and stomped on it in front of me. I finished the MSQ and took a hiatus because I felt like I had lost a core piece of what made that job, and so many others, what they were. It was the beginning of the "Great Homogenization". Even after the fixes throughout the expansion it still never quite felt like "home" anymore. In Endwalker it feels like the devs listened to at least some of the feedback from Shb and really leaned into the delayed healing aspect of the job, which I have to say I actually really like. The card system is still hot garbage, but the rest of the kit feels like a nod to time mage again which is good.

I know it will never happen, but if we could get the card system back from Stormblood, along with time spells and stun on gravity, and keep the delayed healing aspect of the current kit, I would honestly be pretty happy. Again, I know that will never happen. The Meta screams for "reliability" over "flavor" so no matter what happens the uniqueness of the card system before will never return as it was. If XIV was a single player game, this idea would probably work and play very well, however I have come to terms with the fact that endgame play "requires" high numbers for faster clear times, and for those players, if a job gives a buff it better be a dps buff or nothing at all, and it better be consistent, because god knows life is nothing but consistent lol.

[QooEr]

i still think time dilation could come back at the very least. even if it only worked on heals because extending dps buffs would be "OP" or whatever. extending regens on the tank was such a satisfying feeling and with the delayed heals, time dilation could have some very interesting interactions


please bring back time dilation...