Why are Solace and Rapture even buttons? (WHM)

With the way lilies are set to work, as they passively generate every 30s, then it would functionally change nearly nothing if the way they worked was just that:
Once you have a lily, your next Medica or Cure II cast cost zero mp and was instant, and consuming the black lily still nourishes the blood lily.

Why even bother making Solace and Rapture buttons? It adds unnecessary button bloat, adds literally nothing to the class except unneeded complexity.
And I'm not against WHM complexity, it's just this is, well, half-assed. It's skills we already have - duplicated. Why not give us something new? Like some much needed raid utility...

The ONLY thing having the extra buttons do is for some reason allow players to sit on a lily while casting a standard cure II or medica. To what end? You already so seldom cast both of these skills, instead relying on regen/cure3/oGCDs for better play, so it's not like you had to worry about which of your 30 cure2 casts you'd replace when you can probably count the number of cure2 casts on one hand in an 8 minute fight. And if you think this should accommodate for players who do cast cure2 that often, then both you and the mechanic design are encouraging awful play. Why not design something that more intuitively encourages proper play without adding complexity? AST's malefic cast time was a good example of that, you can now weave after every malefic cast, and even players who have zero idea what weaving is are still functionally playing better without even realizing it.

The game's pacing is so slow you don't ever need "instant emergency buttons" either -- if you do, you're just not paying attention to your screen.

You've not been doing very much Duty Finder lately, have you?

lol.

I'll take all of the instant emergency heal buttons they wanna give me. Gladly.

I can't count the number of times I've had to keep Tetra and Benediction on cooldown because of stupid people doing stupid junk, and rather than let the group wipe, I'd rather we just finish the dungeon so I can get out of that mess.

Potencies can and likely will be adjusted for both Solace and Rapture. Whether it happens now or sometime in the future, what matters is it gives the devs the flexibility to do so while leaving Cure 2 and Medica alone. The two abilities also have an additional effect of nourishing the blood lily. You could argue that these additional effects could also be baked into Cure 2 and Medica, but they're acquired at different levels and tooltips are pretty much written in stone in the sense that they don't change as you level up. I'd also have to point back at the potential potency adjustments. They also have their own animations, which might not be your thing, but others enjoy it.

I do see what you're saying though. The afore mentioned aren't really constrictors the devs couldn't work around, but also valid reasons to have these abilities be separate. if button bloat is your concern, there are bigger fish to fry. I would look more at abilities like Fluid Aura and Repose. When it comes to raid utility, WHM is never going to get rDPS. Not in 5.0 anyway. If they ever do, it will likely come in the form of an AoE and weaker version of PoM.

Well having them as buttons theoretically gives you a choice.

Do you want to burn your instant now, or use cure 2/medica and wait for the movement phase + raid hit in 10 seconds to use the instant?

Of course it's less valuable than oGCD instants, but in savage/ultimates the above will likely be a serious consideration.