Ast feels terribly gutted now. If not the cards being reduced down to a matching 3% to 6% game, but the stances.

Nocturnal sect is basically a no-go now since switching to it actually increases your mp consumption on some skills, and sch has a much better kit for shielding with and can crit. Noct doesn't seem to do that now at all. It's like they're forcing you to stick to diurnal because of reduced mp costs and regen that feels a little under par with whm until much later on when you can stack CU and CO for enhanced regen. And this doesn't help that not only Protect is gone, but it feels like tanks have been made squishier now with mass pulling in not only old areas, but the newer areas too (I have not gotten into ShB yet, but a tank friend has told me of his experiences in there: everything hits harder than a truck with quest gear on).

While I am glad that buttons got trimmed down due to the bloat, I'm not exactly happy about these changes to ast. Unless they actually buff the card buff timer to 30 seconds instead of 15 or reducing the recast on Draw from 30 to 15 seconds to match the buff duration, there really doesn't seem to be much point in using the class' novelty skill unless you're going to maximum dps in expert groups. 90% of the game is just leveling stuff and trash dies too fast for it to be of any actual use.