New patch made AST feels "dangerous": some of AST's skills now start to become more powerful than SCH/WHM in certain situations. Mana issue was a big reason AST were stopped from serious progression content. This patch didn't do anything related to AST's Mana management skills, but the problem was alleviated by giving several important healing skills potency boost, and bubble becoming useful. Regardless the quality of changes (lacks of originality ), I think AST is usable in serious raid contents now.

1. the AST's Adlo now shields for 130% of the healing amount, paired with being able to instant cast, this is even more powerful than a real SCH with 30% crit chance (AST: 130%, instant cast > SCH: 100%*70%+200%*30%=130%average, 2.5cast time)

2. AST literally has a Virus (Disable) now, and it has less cooldown (60sec vs. 90sec), and stackable with the real Virus. If you bring an AST to the party, you would be able to disable once every Cascade in A3S, and disable+virus once every 2 Cascades.. this just blows my mind lol

3. AST's regen got a huge potency boost, this is going to help with AST's tight mana management issue.

4. Synastry: I think this skill went from "best CD for AST" to "one of the best CDs among all 3 healers" if it wasn't already there b4 the patch. The meaning of these numbers (20% potency buff, 40% spread onto the synastry target) is you still heal the same amount on your synastry target (50% pre-patch / 120%*40% = 48% post-patch), but all your other heals including single target/aoe will be boosted by 20%. And if you Benefic the synastry target, it automatically turns into a Benefic II (400*120% * 140% = 672).

5. Bubble: Bubble used to be a joke, it now works like a Regen-type Cure III. (Bubble: 150*5ticks= 750potency,6y radius/ CureIII: 550potency, 6y radius)

6. Cards: Balance/Arrow duration extended. This is pretty straight forward, AST's cards used to boost raid DPS by 50ish in a 8-10mins fight,,, they can do 100ish now lol. Bole duration extended. Imo Bole and Ewer are the best 2 cards in AST's deck, so I love the buff to Bole, if you spread it instead of the fancy (not) Balances/Arrows, it could be very useful. (Bole: 10% mitigation, 30secs duration, 30sec CD/ Rampart: 20% mitigation, 20secs duration, 90sec CD)