I think they have given up on healing parity and from their comments during the stream they want to give AST its own niche with Card buffs (which is good and should have been a day one priority!). But if they just improve the cards then they have to be very careful about AST vs WHM balance.

They designed themselves in a corner with their initial AST concept and subsequent 3.07 buffs but that's no secret. I don't think it's going to be well-balanced before 4.0 either.