@Mutemutt what I meant is that an AST can cast Benefic II after a chain of Benefics and still use the same or even less MP than a WHM doing the same thing while using the proc. The WHM procs only allow the job to match something that an AST can do naturally.
About Assize, you don't need Ewers to match the 10% MP refresh at the moment because lining up your buffs extends LA by 5s. Ewersare only a bonus. If an AST is running low on MP, using an Ewer helps to take some of the refresh burden away from the BRD/MCH; that increases overall DPS, since they don't have to sacrifice DPS to refresh MP.