What if WHM could...

DAST vs WHM. The playstyle is extremely similar and most skills DAST has are just slightly modified versions of WHM skills. The biggest difference between them is healing power and AST has been power creeping...

It's time to define a unique end-game role for WHM.

I think 1 skill modification could do this (athough I'd like to see changes to other skills as well but back to the point):
What if WHM could remove weakness via Esuna?

AST has a chance of offsetting weakness already, or just boosting party DPS is weakness isn't present; whereas, WHM would have no impact if weakness wasn't present, but could guarantee weakness had a minimal impact if present.

Thoughts?

That would nullify the entire penalty aspect of Weakness.

With AST, any buff gained from the cards would be mitigated, though not completely erased. Giving Esuna that trait would completely erase the penalty for screwing up and dying.

It would also be completely pointless for any WHM who is competent enough to have anyone not die (paired with a tank who can't die), thus still letting AST have those leads.

Whm had something like this in 1.0--anyone they raised did not suffer from weakness. Raise was on a very long timer though, so if more than three people died over a course of a few minutes (healer raise + Bard, who subbed whm in 1.0) chances were you would wipe.

WHM is fine but needs to get rid of a lot of restraints.

1st is overheal. We heal way too much on non and crit heal.
We could solve this by ripping off scholar, getting rid of stoneskin as a skill and turning it into a trait and making any heal received at <100% hp into a soft stoneskin that caps at 18% of target hp making stoneskin useful again as it doesn't require a extra cast and keeping the balance between all healers as 100% heals will not generate shields and somewhat solving the overheal problem. Either that or triggering a mp regen buff everytime we overheal based on the amount overhealed.

2nd is MP management. WHM has the strongest burst heal, burst single target dps and aoe dps. However we also have the highest mp cost per skills, balanced? Yes and no if we look at the other healers. Our mp management only lets us dps non stop for 6 mins non stop before going absolute oom, that time is shortened everytime we heal as whm heals consume a ridiculous amount of mp and with most fights lasting 10 mins WHM falls short on what it should do best, stance dancing.
The overall concept of WHM makes us stay on cleric while our hots deal with some of the damage being thrown out then once our allies are low enough we throw them our massive heals and rinse and repeat till fight ends. This is all fine and dandy on paper but it's impossible on reality in anything that lasts more than 5 mins that has no jumps inbetween (where the bard/mch can safely use ballad without harming his dps).

3rd is accuracy, though this is already somewhat solved with melds. Hopefully 4.0 has a breather on melding compared to 3.2 specially.

More than this is only QoL stuff such as aoe esuna, cure III sized would be enough. Cleaning up everyone on a 8 man party not only takes forever but burns lots of mp even though esuna has the chance of not consuming mp.
Medica I proc actually having a icon so we can plan it over just like we plan cure II/III procs.

WHM is still better for brute healing, though AST isn't very far behind. WHM's Divine Seal upkeep and Cure 3 for high AoE when the party is stacked it what really pushes WHM above AST. Of course, AST can still AoE very well, there are just times when Cure 3 has made it easier to deal with certain mechanics.

If this happened, encounters would need to be designed around the inevitable Sac Strats.