My gut tells me the adjustments would be geared towards Nocturnal changes, but I'm personally hoping for a huge identity overhaul (still) for AST. This particular expansion cycle seems to just scream Nocturnal buffs to Scholar buffs and if we see more Nocturnal buffs, we'll probably see Scholar buffs again and the vicious cycle would continue.

At this point in time I feel like S-E's goal is try to make AST more progression viable but I'm hoping if they do that they'd consider making WHM more speed kill viable return. I imagine they've crunched the UCoB numbers and I feel like they've seen the dearth of ASTs participating, hence why the adjustments are coming in this particular patch.

I'm trying to be as objective as possible while thinking of what they could balance. I feel giving AST a bit more MP flexibility would help their positioning since they're so GCD constrained they eat MP like candy to get the job done but other then that, it's hard to come up with anything substantial in my mind. The healer balance is good right now and any adjustment to AST, no matter how minute, can have a resounding impact on the current healer dynamics.