When there is an expansion upgrade to buy and you gain more levels you are supposed to get more powerful. So buffs are in general necessary for all jobs to make people feel like they are getting more powerful since they spent money to purchase the expansion upgrades; just like how upgrading gear does that. An expansion is something you pay for for an upgrade.

So I don't think of it as AST was undeserving of buffs...more like they didn't buff (utility/mechanics) WHM/SCH enough and/or took away too much of their DPS capability(in SCH's case) since SE seems to prefer healers be healers and seem to be trying to remove DPS aspects somewhat by removing a lot of extra DPS spells healers had.

I personally as a main AST don't like the AST changes either. I don't consider the healing potency on Diurnal a "buff" I consider it a nerf since I liked Diurnal AST for it's extra speed.

But I personally want to try SB before I freak out too much over stuff....I almost kind of want to switch to WHM for savage due to ASTs very simplified/nerfed DPS rotation now. I understand since AST offers cards we can't DPS for a lot, but the unfortunate side effect of that is boring gameplay. We lost 2/3 of our DoTs so single target DPS is reduced to Combust II then spam Malefic III and that's it and lost a lot of weaving capability :/