Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
From as early as HW, a major complaint is that the sect system felt lazy and restrictive. Rather than allow AST to have its own unique approach to healing, it was decided that it should just either be a budget WHM or a budget SCH rather than just be its own thing. People wanted it to drop both sects and do something different, like be a delayed healing healer, or a healer that sets up detonates heals. Maybe that’s what inspired Earthly Star.

Additionally, Noct has always been the inferior form. Noct barriers don’t stack, but diurnal regents do. Extending the duration of regens was possible with time dilation/celestial opposition, but extending barriers is worthless. Even after the removal of buff extension, diurnal would just out perform nocturnal significantly side barriers were largely unnecessary in content. Why bother when you’ll get exponentially more value out of regens? The concept of removing nocturnal still remained, but under the implication that diurnal would also be removed and AST would do its own thing.

Fast forward to now and the pure/barrier binary has been enforced, though the actual lines between them are hazy at best. But if we’re going to flesh out this dynamic, then the removal of nocturnal ends up being silly. Why take away the jobs ability to flex between these spots just to have an even number of pure and barrier healers when we’re just going to cross that bridge anyway when a 5th healer is added?

Ultimately, while the pure/barrier system has left a lot to be desired, most people are willing to work with it if it can become something other than a joke.
I agree and respect your feedback but let me ask. One thing to note and it was not common in sbh to have 2 ast could in savage content but two ast can have a total of 7 regens and 4 barrier stack how? di ast would do = nuetral asp helios and di intersect which grant the shield then celestial to do regen. noct ast pretty much does the same step cause aspect noct did stack with celestial noct shield. di shields could stack though with noct one but say 2 ast use di inter it wouldnt stack like noct. Now your part of the barriers, now we agree in major content not even savage that barriers are not really a must since its agreed regens are supreme, so why again must people brag on how better sch sage shields are over sge? That then should be a good thing if sage barriers are weak since it would give a challenge of not feeling that op sch makes content not ultimate feels not challenging?