AST Levelling feels underwhelming

Hey guys, healer main here. I've been maining White Mage ever since ARR and I've seen a lot of changes, spell removal, and so on. Feeling utterly bored with the class at this point, I've decided to try out AST. No PotD this time, decided to level up the class through dungeons and roulettes. I'm currently level 57 and... I'll admit, I'm very conflicted with the class.

In one hand, I love the versatility and the card system, it's like you're playing a minigame inside the game. Feels good to give buffs efficiently, and be rewarded by a stronger team-wide buff.

In the other hand... Everything else feels... weak? I struggle to keep my tank alive if they pull a bit too much, forcing me to stressfuly spam heals and lose focus on my cards. My mana melts like snow under the sun, even tho I use Lucid Dreaming and Lightspeed on cooldown and it's not unusual to be at 30% mana by the time the tank moves on to the next pull. The only oGCD heal I have so far is dangerous as it requires the tank to be low HP to get the best out of it.

Am I doing something wrong here or is it just the class? Does it get better later on? Playing as a WHM, I've never had these issues before. Healings were sufficient enough to allow me to place in a couple damage spells and oGCD spells were plenty enough to rectify most slip ups from my team.

I've played AST for over just about 2 years. Your card buffs don't give squat till later in the higher levels, merely an illusion that you are. You should have Synastry which gives you 40% on top of the original healing spell you heal someone for. Best thing to use this is for Casting Benefic 2. Light speed also helps, recommended sect would be Duirnel for that regen you can apply on the tank.

I forgot about Synastry, but I use it as well, helps in a tight spot but I feel like it defeats the purpose of the skill? It's meant to still heal the tank when you're healing someone else, but in the end it's a disguised potency buff. As for sect, I use night against mobs and day against bosses. Seems to work quite well.

You might find it's actually easier on your MP to use Durinel sect for mobs. As long as your teammates aren't standing in aoe then by all means use Synastry it's free and extremely useful. Ultimately it's your preference of choice. We used to have a defense card in our deck that gave players 10% damage reduction. They took that away.

the Biggest difference between AST and WHM until 60 is that Holy stuns and Gravity doesn’t. Most of the potencies and mana costs are the same. Benediction is a full heal but ED has a much shorter cooldown. Lightspeed is available much earlier than Thin Air and both share similar effects.
There’s Freecure, but you shouldn’t be spamming cure1.

Unless you’re in Nocturnal (which you shouldn’t be, shields have basically no use in this game) it should be near enough the same.

AST Healing gets easier when you get Opposition and Unconcious, as those are both powerful Regen effects even on a single target. Synastry works as a single-target healing buff too, but only for direct single-target spells (Benefic1/2, and the initial hit of Aspected bene)

I'll take all of that into account, thanks for the tips.