Astrologian "BUFFS"

[Crater]

They're definitely nice buffs, IMO.

Lightspeed went from pretty much useless (except for quick raises or Stoneskin) to a 25% reduction in mana and no gimping of the healing spells.
Spread being available outside of combat is awesome as you can saved the card you want for a future battle, before you even enter the fight
Shuffle cool down reduced by 33%.
Best of all - TP and MP refresh cards that can be used on anyone - beats bards having to sing for a DPS reduction or NIN being unable to Goad themselves

The card changes are nice, but I wouldn't call them "huge".
Like, as many, many people have already pointed out, the Haste buff that people get from a Scholar's fairy is a larger overall increase to party DPS than an AST who draws perfect cards, every time, for maximum card-based DPS boosts. What the changes to Spire and Ewer do is basically to make card-based utility effects as powerful for utility as card-based DPS effects are for DPS - ie: Useful, measurable, definitely-not-nothing, but also not powerful enough that they define an Astrologian's role in the party.

And it's fine that they're not that powerful - if AST can keep up with the other healers when it comes to actually healing. And that was always the true problem with AST. It wasn't that their cards were mediocre or RNG-dependent, and it wasn't their MP management.
It's that when a WHM needs to ramp up their healing output, they have Divine Seal, they have Presence of Mind, they have Benediction, and Tetragrammaton, they have Assize, and they can lay down an Asylum and keep casting. And when a SCH needs to ramp up their healing output, they can Rouse their fairy, or even switch to Eos for Whispering Dawn and Fey Covenant, and they can blow through Aetherflow stacks on Lustrate and Indomitability to dump out thousands of potency worth of healing in just a few seconds.

When an AST needs to pump out more healing than their GCD heals will allow, they have Essential Dignity. That's it. In very, very, very specific scenarios, they can get some mileage out of Synastry, but it's not a general-purpose healing boost: It doesn't boost their AoE healing, and it doesn't boost their single-target healing.

That was the fundamental problem with the class, and they got absolutely nothing to address that problem.