Question for those who didn't pick up AST til 5.0 or after.

[Seraphor]

Agreed.

I like the current AST, but honestly I'm a WhM main and the class shouldn't be designed for me. I've been rather against Enix's mentality this expansion of ripping classes, features and content away from players who really loved those things and trying to hand them over to people who didn't really have much interest in them. The whole point of multiple classes is to offer a variety of different playstyles so there's something for everyone. Watering them all down and trying to cater to the same vague majority doesn't actually please a wider target audience. It's flawed logic because you're only covering that one playstyle.

If there really were people who enjoyed the old AST, they should be working with them rather than tossing them aside. The vague casual majority doesn't need every class and feature in the game.

It wasn't really about catering to a certain playstyle though, it was about balance.
They realised that Bole and Ewer didn't belong in an RNG system, we all knew something needed to be done about Spire (and they ended up removing TP altogether so you cant blame that one on AST playstyle). In addition, they generally removed crit buffs anyway (MNK and BRD both had their crit procs removed) not just on AST, so there was clearly an overall balancing job being done. Most likely because of the way crit scales throughout an expansion, and how speed buffs are either loved or despised depending on the job.

Ultimately, changing the effects of cards isn't something that drastically affects the playstyle of the job. Cards still do the same thing, you draw a card at random, you have to make a conscious choice as to where that card goes, and then you put it there. The choices have changed to be much simpler, but the action has not.
AST is still the healer with the shortest cast times, the largest weaving windows, the most APM, it still does both shields and regens (better) so the playstyle is largely the same.
The complaint about the card effects falls more into the realm of job fantasy, flavour and lore.