Honestly, for AST I would condense it by focusing on the card system itself and dropping a lot of the bloat. People say that the burst is too busy and high APM, but if you cut out everything that isn't cards, you can dump out a lot. If you tie lightspeed to divination, remove MA and dyne, you have just dropped 3-4 weaves in the window. Given that the absolute max amount of weaves regular cards will give you in the window are 7, that's a third of the weaves gone. 2xdraw, 3xplay, with 2~ishxredraws. (Assuming you draw at 60s and redraw during filler). I think I actually really like how AST cards are currently tied to buffs, but I would like to see it get spread out more. All the solutions I see to draw (make it a gcd, make cards not dps buffs, hell even removing draw and just having it auto pick you a new card) are really bad ideas. I think the best way to take care of the burst window being too much, while also keeping the reactive and busy gameplay of AST is to simply force you to be constantly using your cards, rather than stockpiling them. It turns 15s of extreme apm with 105s of low apm into 120s of somewhat high apm, with maybe a minor increase around 2mins bc why not? I always loved AST bc it felt like I was always doing something instead of just pressing my singular dps button in filler. Constantly having to think about and react to my cards is something that no other job provides.

I expect the job to be ruined in DT, but I can be hopeful that they at least somewhat understand what actual AST mains want, and don't bow down to the people who are scared to admit they'd probably just have more fun playing white mage. A return to ShB AST (the best iteration if you ask me, you cannot convince me stormblood cards are fun) would be a good start, but we'd need something more bc ShB AST just does not work well with the current design philosophy of Endwalker and presumably Dawntrail.

The problem btw with making cards unique and providing utility instead of damage is that it ends up where they're basically useless because you can't rely on them. And if you take the RNG out of it, then what's the point of having the cards? MA is already a 50/50 between a heal and dps, and that's bad enough for plans. How could you plan around 1/6? Would they just be bonuses on top of your current healplan? That's not useful. Heal and mit plans are always designed to function as if the worst case, minimum output scenario occurs. I design my AST plans as if I will draw lord of crowns 100% of the time, because in the case that I do, I do not want to wipe. So if you make cards RNG healing, mit, etc. then they're useless to me. I might as well not even draw, because I have to plan everything around the idea that I will never draw what I need. TThat's why I have an issue with utility cards. Damage, at least, is ALWAYS useful, and if it's always damage, you only need a small bit of reactivity to determine where it goes, and when. That's it!