(Serious) White Mage and Scholar are equally balanced.

[Risvertasashi]

Yes, a Scholar could do that but like you said, it was for the sake of comparison. Scholars are amazing single target burst healers and White Mages are amazing AoE burst healers.

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It is fair in a way. There are situations that shift resource management into catching up in heals vs. time/damage output. If you need the strength of a Cure II, Lustrate is generally better unless you have the time to cast the Cure II, but I understand what you mean. :-) I do admit that I left my post way too open for interpretation. I should have been more specific.

Anyways, I think Vlad thinks Lustrate is "the greatest heal" in the game as its an off-GCD heal that sees frequent use.

In response to the bolded -- on a tank, my cure II (unbuffed) heals for more than lustrate (on DPS it's essentially useless except as a panic button). Cure I is slightly behind lustrate but divine seal makes it slightly ahead. Neither of these spells have a 3 times per minute limitation, and a good WHM really should be precasting so the cure lands just as the damage does.

Not that lustrate isn't amazing in its own way. Emergency 75% burst restore but a SCH really isn't playing at their best if they're healing reactively like that. One of my personal favorites is to precast adlo (or even just physick if conserving MP) to land just after a decent to big hit and then lustrate right after that. So it's a heal and shield followed by another instant heal -- gives them back a big chunk of health and, well, shield is a shield.

Of course it also has the utility of being useable in cleric stance.

Similarly, Cure III can make those giga/teraflares seem like nothing. However, how often do you need to get topped up that quickly? Sure, there's a couple times, but illumination + rouse + WD can really take a lot of load off the white mage and handle stuff entirely if you've got a little bit before the next big raid hit. The catch is uptime. Once it's on CD, it's on CD; can't use it no matter how badly it might be needed.

Bottom line? What the OP said. You don't even need to make it single target vs aoe.

The healers are equally balanced.