Pray

[Ahrana]

Then you should probably learn how to play whm better, because not everything will do "huge spike damage" and more often then not somone is shadow tanking or nin is main tanking, if they take aoe damage sometimes, regen will give them the hp back without you over curing.

There are probably people out there that can teach me how to play white mage, but by reading your argument I know that you're not one of them. Even if something doesn't do "huge spike damage," you simply don't gain much by casting regen and waiting the 75 seconds it takes to have full effect. A much better option, at least in my opinion, is curing the damage directly with a cure spell. Even if they are nin or /nin, as you suggest most people are now adays, then this is generally preferable because the stoneskin effect can help them get shadows back up, as opposed to just hoping that they don't get hit again. And if something is wiping shadows once, chances are they're going to wipe them again before regen runs its course.

barspells are indeed useful, but like most things in this game they are also situational, not everything attacks you with elemental attacks, nothing wrong with regen merits if someone chooses to do them. Not a very valid point.

They are situational, just like regen. The difference is that barspells tend to be a useful in fights where incoming damage is considerable, and regen is useful in fights that are trivial. I won't naysay someone that gets regen merits because a lot of people enjoy playing content where they are useful, but the regen spell just isn't useful for end game content. Blah blah maybe salvage, or you could use phallanx instead and take no damage.

yes, because the obvious awnser is to over cure at all times, instead of being intellegent. clear reason why so many whms suck at the job.

If you're over curing with cure then you're over curing with regen. "Being intelligent" in this case is using a inferior tool in situations where you could use a superior tool, just because you're trying to make the inferior tool useful.

The real use of the regen spells way back when was so you could get an extra tick or two of mp when healing. You cure a tank back up to full, throw your highest tier regen spell on them, and you were hoping that bought you enough time so that you could kneel down for 10 or 20 extra seconds. People tended to fight monsters that didn't require a lot of status cures, or else you had a backup healer to cover them while the whm was healing.

Regen was never a tool that replaced curing when fighting non-trivial content.