Returning healer wondering which class to play

Hi guys, I used to play an AST. Liked how it has a heal/shield for every situation at some point in the old expansions and the card system was cool. Didn't liked it much after the card system changes.

The scholar pet healing is not my type.

So I guess that I'm stuck with WM or Sage. I won't do progressions content so being in the meta or not isn't important to me as long as I'm not gimped.

Which one give more satisfaction to play ? One has more tools to get the job done ? What would be the selling point of both class ?

Thanks to those who will reply :-P

WHM doesn't really have a selling point anymore as its gameplay is essentially just "baby's first healer" and it offers nothing than all 3 of the other healers don't have a better version of. I know this sounds very melodramatic, but I'm really not kidding. Every tool they have, someone else has something similar and better except for Cure III, a high-potency AoE heal on the GCD. The radius of the heal is smaller than your typical AoE heals, so its harder to use and chews through your MP like it's no one's business. Their other main gameplay mechanic is that they grow lilies automatically while in combat--1 grows every 30 seconds to a maximum of 3. These can be used to cast Afflatus Solace or Afflatus Rapture, 2 GCD healing spells that are basically 0 MP cost Cure II and Medica (Basically Benefic II and Helios if you're not familiar with WHM's spell names). Casting these lily heals 3 times nourishes the blood lily which can be spent on a GCD spell called Afflatus Misery which partially refunds the damage you lost while you were forced to heal instead. WHM suffers from poor MP management right now and actually also has the lowest healing output because of their overall lack of OGCD healing abilities. Every other healer has twice as many OGCD heals if not more over WHM.

SGE on the other hand has the identity of a healer that heals through DPS. If you've ever tried Dancer, Sage has an ability callled "Kardia" that works like dance partner, only it heals your target any time you cast an offensive GCD spell. You can pass this around the party for optimal use, but your tank is obviously your prime target most of the time. The healing per cast is small, but adds up significantly over the course of the fight and takes care of boss autos for you, as well as topping off after tankbusters. They play similarly to SCH in some ways but without the faerie. Your main healing tools are your Addersgall heals: Druochole, Kerachole, Ixochole, and Taurochole. They consume 1 Addersgall of which you automatically generate every 20 seconds and can store up to 3 of. Using them also restores your MP. Unique to Sage is an ability called Eukrasia which is a 1 second GCD augmenting ability that changes your nuke into your DoT and changes your 2 GCD heals into barrier heals (similar to SCH's Adloquium and Succor), but you'll very rarely need the heals, if ever, as your OGCD healing library is very wide. SGE's biggest weakness is they can't burst heal that easily despite having the highest healing output overall, so it might seem a little scary when the party or tank drops low until you get more familiar with the job.

Sage if you want automatic healing as you DPS and a bunch of mitigation options. White mage if you want to cure bot. (I mean really you should be DPSing on WHM too, but, yeah, straight heals that aren't particularly strong are its thing).

Notably, Sage also has substantially better MP management.

personally: sage might work for you--it's got a proper "answer" heal/shield for basically everything, and a barebones damage priority flowchart going on for when you dont have healing to do (it's not much, but it's better than literally nothing)

As of patch 6.0:

All healers are equally gimped, tanks (other than DRK) can pretty much heal themselves and the party if they know what they're doing. You are 98% DPS and 2% healing now, but your healing kit is much larger than your DPS kit in case of any problems (that one DPS who doesn't know how to avoid mechanics). Still though, I hope you enjoy 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 as your gameplay because that's every healer now.

If you mean which of the 2 remaining healers are less gimped... it will probably be Sage?

WHM is pretty much weaker in all aspects, other than immediate GCD AoE Healing with Cure III. However, MP is still terrible. If you care about trying to support your allies as much as possible as a WHM (with healing or with DPS when required), I wouldn't recommend WHM. Your lily gauge as a WHM is a DPS loss to use (3 healing lilies + 1 Afflatus Misery is still less than 4 Glare IIIs, so you use it as sparingly as possible rather than use to build it up). WHM has the least free healing output available, but can have a very strong burst healing in a short window if they spend their entire MP bar for it. If you want to play an easy straightforward healer without requiring much brain power, I'd say to go with WHM.

SGE is a healer that's more technical than WHM. It doesn't have as much immediate upfront healing skills and relies more on mitigation and smaller amounts of healing to balance out the damage. Simply put, you have more micro control over your healing. It's a healer that has barriers using Eukrasia (GCD) to change your GCD actions, but relies on healing abilities to mitigate damage instead (oGCD). Your main healing gauge is addersgall - think SCH equivalent of aetherflow, except instead of charging 3 aetherflow per 60 seconds, you recharge 1 addersgall per 20 seconds, directly changing how often you should use addersgall in your healing playstyle. All healers should be DPSing, but SGE also takes this to another level with Kardia - as Kardia can heal one ally you designate every time you attack. The healing may seem weak, but combined with SGE's mitigative gameplay (Kerachole, Taurochole, Holos, Haima, Panhaima), A good sage can make Kardia slow down or reduce the amount of incoming damage overtime (Using Physis II, Soteria, Druochole, and Ixochole will enable you to fill the gaps). The main thing to note is that SGE is more or less an all-round healer with minimal downsides as long as you aren't the type to panic and heal every small damage that comes in your way. Of course, this wouldn't matter if your party knows how to dodge mechanics because you'll still be gimped DPS.

And speaking of the gimped part... SGE has a secondary resource - addersting. You can use addersting to use Toxikon I / Toxikon II (based on level). To use Toxikon, you have to let your Eukrasian shields break. Here's more cons to addersting:
- You take a DPS loss when using this during combat because you have to apply a GCD Eukrasian shield and the addersting skill Toxikon II is only equal to the equivalent of a Dosis III / slightly higher DPS in AoE compared to Dykrasia II. So you basically trade off 2 GCDs for 1 GCD worth of damage. The only time it isn't a DPS loss is during a transition or pre-pull basically.
- Toxikon I is a complete DPS loss unless you're fighting specifically 2 targets, and only 2 targets. Only then is this resource used. A.k.a. you're rarely using this from lv 81 and under.

As for the less gimped part... you have Pneuma at lv 90 (120 second GCD AoE attack + heal) and Phlegma at lv 26 (2 charge AoE attack) to use to feel slightly less like a gimped DPS. You have a decent AoE DPS rotation in dungeons by applying your shields ahead of time so they break during combat in dungeons to gain Toxicon stacks. Your single target rotation is still 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 though.

Simply put, the addersting gauge is used very sparingly in a fight. It's certainly better than nothing since you have ways to play better with it, but you're comparing to having [limited usefulness] to [nothing] as your gauge so... eh. It's not very fun to build an entire job gauge on a very small niche and expect people to have fun with it without giving more to do, but that's my opinion.

6.1 will have MP adjustments and "potential job adjustments" but we don't know the full extent of it. Just don't expect too much, if previous liveletters were any indication to how much the developers ignore the healing role's problems.

If you don't care about raid then play Sage. It's auto-clear wall-wall healer with minimal thinking and the bare minimum optimization that any healer could have. You can use random cds and be okay in normal content. WHM is bad at just about everything in every context (currently), that's my simplest explanation.

my advice is dont play healer

each one spends almost all its gcds om glare/malefic/broil/dosis and yoshida actively hates healers at this point

SGE is fun, I like it! Has a lot of ogcd to cover healing. WHM is mmm quite clunky tbh... It has mana issues on top of having almost no ogcd heals in a system that doesn't incentivize gcs healing ;;

WHM is largely still the same after ShB changes. It's certainly boring to play and frustrating to raid on.

It's a job stuck in a very antiquated design that has yet to evolve. Play it if you really don't feel like trying tbh. It's point and click glare mostly.

SGE also still suffers from the filler spam but at the very least, it's a fresh take on a healer that's focused around doing damage while healing. It could evolve as time goes on but for now, it's a good pick.

AST's card system is a trainwreck as usual. But it's healing is rewarding and pretty. SCH is in the same boat as WHM with an old design working against itself. But at least it's not as weak as WHM.

If it's between WHM or SGE, go Sage.

It's simply a better WHM overall. Adders is miles better than Lilies. You have better MP. You have more oGCD heals. You have a big burst heal for free. You have shields. You passively heal your tank.

Just be aware that there are a gazillion sages out there right now. If you want to slot into a static later on; you may want to consider SCH or AST.