Hi. I've only recently been levelling AST and like it - the mobility, support, lore etc.

However, I can sympathise with the jarring nature of how it plays and the "missing skills".

Whilst I'm new to AST (and as such will not pretend to know the ins and outs of endgame play), I have played with many ASTs through different types of content (been playing since ARR). I've also been reading a few threads to better understand the class, and it seems the main concerns are: loss of identity, nocturnal stance; the cards and the loss of time mage-type skills. I thought I'd share some of my ideas on these issues (I like thinking about these things).

1) Make diurnal sect the default state of AST. Then make nocturnal sect an early version of neutral sect i.e. it starts as a cooldown that changes the diurnal effects to nocturnal effects for a period of time and then later grants both when upgraded to neutral sect.

2) Cards
- keep the draw and play distinction
- draw starts off a 60 sec cooldown with access to all 6 cards. After a certain point - maybe 60 you learn how to read the arcana more effectively creating 2 different cooldowns with access to 3 cards each - offensive draw and defensive draw. These would share a recast timer.
- offensive card effects change - balance is a dhit and crit up, spear is just crit up, arrow is just dhit up - could be balanced to grant same rdps in ideal situations.
- defensive cards - bole is increase in heal potency for abilities and spells, ewer is a heal potency on just spells and spire is a heal potency on just abilities
- redraw could be stripped of charges and just redraw from current "play" pool - combined with the smaller pools the need for "balance" fishing would be negated
- minor arcana - a third kind of draw - on the same 60 sec draw CD - but a 50% chance of returning lady or lord. lord is DMG ogcd ability, lady is an ogcd single target heal
- add back spread - has the effect of spreading a card and resetting the CD on draw. However, to avoid doubling up if offensive card in spread already can't use offensive draw. if defensive in spread then can't use defensive draw. if minor arcana in spread can't use minor arcana
- divination - possibly could be gotten rid of but if kept then it could require 3 seals and increases the potency of the next play. 3 different seals being slightly more potent than 2 types vs 1 type of seal.
- using defensive, offensive and minor arcana each grants a separate seal i.e defensive always gives a lunar seal, offensive always a solar etc. - avoids rng
- sleeve draw could be a skill that just grants one of each seal. Only use in combat. overrides current seals

3) Time mage type spells
- add slow effect to gravity
- add back time dilation as an aoe effect that resets timer of any diurnal or nocturnal field effects granted by the astro to those in range