I am tired of being punished by CC's matchmaking (ranked)

[Valence]

AST is way deadlier on its own than what people think. It has similar heal throughput than WHM and fields a burst that is pretty nasty and doesnt require LB. The LB in itself is an insane game changer as well, and the more you climb the more it will be deadly for your teamates following through.

[Cidel]

AST is way deadlier on its own than what people think. It has similar heal throughput than WHM and fields a burst that is pretty nasty and doesnt require LB. The LB in itself is an insane game changer as well, and the more you climb the more it will be deadly for your teamates following through.

I mostly disagree. While AST's burst can hurt, it's really all they have going for them and they're prone to being left in situations where the Doublecast is unavailable due to needing to either use the 2nd Benefic or being wasted due to needing to pop an emergency Recuperate or Guard. You're often put in an either/or situation. The devs noted it themselves: they lack consistent damage. Benefic oftentimes doesn't provide more healing than a single GCD attack can cancel out. It can be clutch to save teammates (or yourself) if they/you needed just an extra second to retreat somewhere to Elixir. Most of WHM's healing is built-in to their offensive toolkit and don't have to sacrifice their burst to utilize it.

Celestial River takes what feels like an eternity to charge for what can amount to a waste if your team doesn't immediately capitalize on it (and you're screwed if they are scattered) and doesn't offer nearly the same amount of instant space control and kill potential as Purgation. Every LB can be a game changer under the right circumstances; unfortunately AST's requires your team to not be asleep at the wheel to get any mileage off of it. That's why I don't think SCH and AST are quite in the same league as WHM can be: they require your entire team to be on the same wavelength to do well while WHM can still shine just by being aggressive and actually set-up kills at regular intervals with even just a couple of focused teammates.

[Valence]

That's tradeoffs from being a jack of all trades and pretty good at everything as far as i'm concerned, and great AST players are invaluable in my experience, even more than WhM ones.

( but i agree on Miracle of Nature )

[Sinstrel]

Its okay, I finally had a winstreak after 2 weeks of trying, and made it to diamond 5 in a 4 hours

I am very happy for you, congratulations
Still happy to share what I have learned any time. Good luck in your future climbs!

[Kaliesto]

After awhile I found that CC is more like a Gambler's Roulette and less to do with player skill, some Jobs are just more favorable than others.

[DrWho2010]

also you're at the mercy of whoever is in the current pool of people queuing for ranked at any given time of day. If you're not having much luck at the time, stop and try again in an hour or so.

[Valence]

It can also depend a lot of your state of mind when you go for a session, and some days you'll play like absolute garbage (like yesterday how I griefed the party for multiple games because nothing clicked at all and it was an exercise in frustration), while some days everything rolls fine. The matchmaking can certainly make things infuriating at times depending who you get, but it's also way too easy to blame it for all your woes, because past a point, you're just coping.

Another point that is often completely missed is how some teams work well together on the get go, and some just don't. I don't know if it's that visible from other points of view at high level, but I main ranged, and especially on MCH (but BRD probably sees it a lot as well), if you don't have teams able to offer opportunities for kills, you'll feel it. Nobody in the opposing team dropping low enough to be punished/cced, targets constantly slipping away unscathed because the team is just unable to burst or apply damage consistently, and that's without talking about the hotshot melees that think it's better to leave the group entirely to chase people around and leave the squishies at the mercy of anything. I've been into games that were doomed from the start due to the matchmaking roster, and lost, and the next game I had some of the top rankers in the team that should have ensured a victory, yet we lost because there was literally no team synergy at all. It's a team game, and like all team games, teamplay makes or breaks games, and most people, even at crystal level, are completely oblivious to that because it's a solo queue.