Fun is always a subjective measure—so only you can really determine if a job is still fun for you or not.

But speaking personally, as someone who played AST since 3.1/3.2, the new AST is terrible. I don’t think it flows as well as it has in the past; its gameplay has a lot of cumbersome and clunky aspects to it. And it has to work twice as hard to achieve less results than a WHM. I think the changes they made to the card system took away the versatility and flavor from the class—and I really don’t like the removal of the Time Mage aspects from it either. I’ve tried repeatedly to enjoy the job in different types of content since ShB dropped, but I just can’t.

I do think AST is far less popular now: comparing Savage uploads of it to WHM and SCH, there is a noticeable gap. Last week, the E4S clears uploaded for WHM and SCH were over 12,000 while AST was only at 2,400. AST has lagged behind in Savage uploads since the tier dropped 10 weeks ago. And while some of this is because it’s not meta, meta and speedkills don’t make up the majority of uploads.