Ok, so that's kind of whatever. I'll only use Noct Sect if I'm in 8 man and there's a WHM or another AST. Whatever. Well, ok the other 50 skill, Synastry. Read the tooltip, it sounds useful... sort of. Whoever you put the buff on gets 40% of the SINGLE TARGET heals you put onto someone else. So you put Synastry on a problem DPS I guess, or a DPS that you know will need heals, and then can heal the tank instead? Helps with crunches like that, I suppose. Nothing really groundbreaking though.
Actually it works when you heal the person with it as well... if I were to heal the tank for 6k with synasty on them it would become 9.6k. "Helps with crunches" is also an understatement, it straight up trivializes them.
Level 52 skill, Gravity. Think Null Element Flare. Gravity + Lightspeed = Love. Nothing to complain about, other than it requires a target, and is only as strong as WHM's Holy(doesn't require a target AND stuns for 4 seconds if it's the initial stun).
Shaving off the .5 second cast doesn't trump the -25% damage reduction when you use light speed. Swift cast Gravity > CE > moar gravity is the name of the game.
Thing that sucks about it is, people have to be inside of it to get the effect. You can't do any actions while you are using it. You can't set it down and move, so any mechanics that do a lot of damage, but require you to move, means using it in hairy situations will probably get you killed. It's nice, but I've got my gripes with it.
Even if you only run it one tic it will still do more healing than a whms Asylum total which is basically the roll it's supposed to fill. Holding it up is almost always a terrible idea, flash it till it tics and do better things. The damage reduction isn't often something you'd care about
AST's level 60 skill is called Celestial Opposition. What a bad *** name! What a bad *** looking icon! Can you guess what it does? Instant off global AOE stun, 4 second stun... whoopie... It doesn't do anything else. It doesn't give me MP, it doesn't bypass stun resistance, it doesn't do damage, it doesn't heal, and it only effects things within a 2 yalm radius of the caster.
Wut? it's 10 yalms (holy is 8 for a comparison), as above combine it with Gravity for similar results to holy. 5 seconds might sound trivial but for 8 people that's an extra 16-24 GCDs buffed, not irrelevant if you are tight on a dps check.
It doesn't even have normal Virus.
It has disable, which has a lower cooldown, can be stacked with everything, and while it might be 4 seconds less it works on things that virus does not to make up for it. Lack of eye for an eye doesn't really come into play either since 2 are generally enough to cover your needs. Unless you are running triple melee the other healer will have one and the caster will have the other. Even then there are some bosses where E4E can't be proced because they lack physical attacks.
The 2 AOE heals it does have, have a shorter radius than WHM and SCHs.
False. The only AoE heal that is more than 15 yalms is medica 2, every other AoE heal except for cure 3 is 15 yalms. While you are right that it lacks an instant AoE heal that is the void light speed is meant to fill, while not off GCD it allows you multiple instant cast of any of your cures. This means you can heal while maintaining full mobility for it's duration and makes many mechanics a joke to heal though.
Asts weak points
Shield stance: As you said it's ***, the only fight in the game I can think of where you would use the shield stance is A7S maybe if you did not have a monk or drk. Unless people are in danger of being 1 shotted regen stance will always trump it. Shield stance is basically my first sign to know an ast doesn't know what they are doing, followed by them playing an AoE spear.
Lack of burst AoE heal: This one is iffy as a weak point, it has the tools to handle the need for lots of AoE healing however it requires some creative use of Disable, the bubble and light speed. This can leave an inexperienced ast, or just a bad one, dead it the water and contributes to the reason why ast isn't well liked.
Lower personal dps potential: 2 100% acc 45 potency tic dots are pretty nice, especially if you don't have acc capped but it loses out by a decent margin as far as single target goes. AoE it depends on how long stuff lives for. In theory the cards are supposed to make up the difference but
Card RNG: All the Boles! On top of the rng since there is nothing in game to display individual player damage an ast wont know who will make the best use of their cards unless they are running ACT, Which is annoying. However RNG is RNG you could also pull nothing but balance so it evens out over 1000 fights.