I have to rant about AST cards

[Supersnow845]

Someone around here once said that WHM's biggest problem was that its design is an expansion behind. I'd say by this point it's almost two. If WHM were at this point in Stormblood (plus Aero 3), it'd be...ehhh, alright. I still hate how backasswards lilies are designed, but alright. We've had two expansions worth of tools added to healers since then, catch up.

That’s a very fair point; WHM with its current toolkit would have actually been good in SB, but in SB it was bad and EW WHM in EW is also bad

[ForsakenRoe]

That’s a very fair point; WHM with its current toolkit would have actually been good in SB, but in SB it was bad and EW WHM in EW is also bad

How I feel with current SMN, I had the idea of something similar to what we have now as early as 'late HW' but using the systems at the time (summon an egi, it lasts for X seconds, use it's enkindle to get Aethertrail, get 3 Aethertrails to Dreadwyrm). But the difference is, that was THEN. EW SMN would have fit super cleanly with the rest of SB's designs, like look at how 'basic' RDM was in SB. Balance two gauges, do 3 hits of a melee combo, use the big finisher. Effective, flashy final hit, simple to get into for casual players (and starts at 50 even better). As it stands though, EW SMN does feel like it's missing 4 years of additions

[ty_taurus]

Then we hit 4.0 and for some reason square enix decided to introduce the lily system, I’m not going to go into detail again about the lily system in stormblood other than to say I legit have no idea who the hell ever signed off on that trash fire but otherwise the other main skill WHM got was the incredibly unwieldy old plenary indulgence which used to be a nightmare to use

Benison was also added during SB, which wasn't bad inherently, but was confusing why they gave White Mage a barrier.

[elioaiko]

What AST has become is nothing short of depressing.

The devs can tell to dress up AST with all the sfx all they want but AST is so void of thematic connection.

I remember when AST felt like it had cool ideas put into it but now it's just a Frankenstein of every healer combined.