This is unexpected but still not entirely surprising. AST seems to had been created as an intermediary healer between WHM and SCH. Since you bring two healers to just about everything they didn't want to lopside a 2 HoTs to 1 barrier healer and vice-versa, so they let AST be either as needed.

This seems like probably the easiest answer to adding yet another healer and not having to go through the headache of creating a different-but-similar healing gimmick (I honestly wouldn't put any faith in their battle team to properly balance that anyway). If anything though, now I expect healer balance to be even more cutthroat/homogenized since they've delegated two healers to two separate "styles." And Twelve help the forums if WHMs once again consider themselves inferior to ASTs in any way.

On a side note, I'm not torn about losing Sects/Noct. Was never my favorite stance. The appeal has always been the cards for an extra layer of activity whilst healing. If that gets taken from AST- then that'd be something to complain about.