Quote Originally Posted by Ayer2015 View Post
We get to wait another 3 years for increased job identity...
Honestly, given the development thus far, I don't have high hopes. In the name of raid balance we get homogenized, less interesting jobs.
Turning AST into this and saying 'please look forwards to 8.0, where you might get a chance to enjoy the game' is just such a slap in the face to someone who has been playing this game for years. Like... What do they think is gonna happen in Dawntrail? They're already dealing with a healer shortage, do they think this will fix it? People will pick up AST, yes, and even enjoy it. But from where? From the DPS player pool? From the tank player pool? If making a job stupidly easy and completely homogenized worked for drawing people to the role, we'd have seen it with sage and white mage already. Anyone who liked EW/ShB AST for what it was aren't gonna play new AST. Anyone who preferred StB/HW AST aren't gonna come back to it bc the elements that made it unique back then aren't even represented in the new system beyond a superficial 'the generic 60s CD buttons that look like cards have different effects from the other buttons that look like cards'. So who is this for? People who wanted to play for the aesthetics but didn't like, y'know, everything else? Cool. Were they DPS players? Tank players? A handful, maybe. But most were other healers.

So less overall healers, more people playing other roles, and a dilution of the pool of healers even more. That sounds like a recipe for a massive healer drought that might not be immediately apparent on launch, but will certainly deteriorate faster and harder over the expansion's lifespan.