Hard to answer. If you take a look at Yona87's post just above yours, you'll see someone who's still stuck in 2015, thinking that N.AST is crap and who was probably driven by what the community was saying rather than personal experience. So, AST being played or not will mostly depends on people's willingness to not follow this old trend.
The best thing would be for the World First clear on Alexander Savage: Creator to be done with a N.AST, so people will think that AST is playable, or even overpowered, and will start to play it.
People, and players in particular, are idiots. They'll play what they are told is good, even if they don't even play at a high enough level for it to make a difference. Since AST was labeled as complete trash, and that the lastest buffs weren't enough to make that image go away in people's mind (even if D.AST was actually quite capable in reality), I cannot say for certain that the buffs alone will be able to wash away that tarnished reputation of AST.
It's sad. To break that vicious circle ("I will not play AST because people say it's bad, because people don't play it enough to know it's good, because people say it's bad, because people don't play it enough to know it's good...") it'd only take people to actually play it in order to raise awareness and the general skill level of AST players. Because right now, one of the biggest issue is that since "nobody" plays AST, people didn't had the chance to get used to how it plays paired with a WHM (and SCH to some extand, but D.AST is already almost a thing), so I'm guessing that's part of why they are scared of that job to begin with.
