An AST Guide?

[Cynfael]

is there a WHM guide someone can direct me to so I can see why you'd PIE over MND? Last I was aware it was still MND and I've been building my AST similarly.

There's no such thing as PIE over MND. The gear all comes with MND; MND is a given.

Due to Draw running on RNG, it seems silly for anyone playing AST to try and make some sort of "god-tier combo" around a pair of cards that may never come up.

This is true, but it's also true that most of the cards provide negligible benefit in the majority of situations, so you'll still end up feeding most of them to RR or attempting to Shuffle them away.