What makes WHM special? Nothing anymore.

[RichardButte]

The point being made is not that experience doesn't count, the point is being made that most people are using that as their sole proof that what they're saying is true. People often have to resort to that when they can't defend what they're saying with something objective. Taking something slightly ridiculous to make the point, if a person with whm only leveled said "scholar shields don't block damage they just have weaker heals," I wouldn't have to respond saying "you don't have scholar leveled what would you know." Instead I could point to combat logs and tests showing that what they're saying in false and would never have to touch the issue of what jobs they have leveled.

People could point to reasons why you can't just look at potencies and nothing else, or other more objective information and never once care what jobs a person has leveled. Instead they're spending page after page attacking the person not the argument.

No, because people like this aren't going to bother listening anyway. I know THAT because I listed everything WHM has over AST on page 4 of this goddamn thread and no one noticed:

-an AoE that heals everyone for 300, damages all enemies for 300 AND restores 10% of mana
-a 30% boost to healing power for 15 sec on a minute CD (which boosts HoTs, unlike AST's Synastry)
-a bubble that doesn't require channeling
-E4E
-Virus
-a mana restoring ability that reduces aggro immediately instead of just reducing aggro generated while it's active
-not one but TWO instant-cast heals that restore a crapton of HP (one restores ALL HP, while the other is 700 potency)
-an instant HoT with 150 potency (as opposed to AST's 140) which lasts for 21 seconds as opposed to 18 seconds and costs less mana (618 vs. AST's 707)
-the far more important MND party buff instead of PIE

If someone dropped a big pile of math in this thread, explaining exactly why WHM is still head and shoulders above AST in healing potency, would the Whine Mages actually change their mind?

Would they say, "Oh, seeing that math proves that I'm mistaken. I guess everything is fine after all and I'm complaining for nothing.", or would they just go, "DURRRRR, THAT DOSENT PROOVE NE THING!!11!1111!!!" (even though it completely smashes their argument into tiny, itty bitty pieces)?

My bet is on the latter.

I've played AST and SCH side by side for months. I KNOW what each class can handle and what their differences are. I KNOW that AST still isn't as potent at healing as a SCH, and if they're not as potent as a SCH, how the HELL are they as potent as a WHM?!

SE has the numbers on this. They're NOT making uninformed decisions. They know where they need to put AST so it's both viable and balanced, and WHM has not been stripped of the "best healer in the game" title, not by a long shot...

Let me put it this way: if a WHM loses their raid spot to an AST, it's not because AST is OP, it's because they were a TERRIBLE WHM and the raid leader was looking for a way to replace that scrub and is using the AST buffs as an excuse...

Did you ever play WoW , its very similar to WoW imho, now look at holy priest, quite close to WHM , now compare it to Disc priest Holy pally resto druid , shammies , and hw monks. They are on the bottom end of the viability list, because unlike the others they offer close to no utility, BUT even so people will still take a skilled holy priest over any unskilled disc preist or holy pally.

As a matter of fact, I played Disc priest through Cata and MoP, and the reason why Disc was valued over Holy was because a properly specced Disc priest could do the most healing in the group WHILE still doing 50-75% of the DPS of an actual DPS (and a decent one at that).

Also, Blizzard could never make up its damn mind on whether or not they liked fights that forced players to spread out or fights where they wanted players to cluster together, so they just kind of jumped all over the place in boss design. The healers with smaller but more potent AoE heals did great when they could cluster, but Disc priest was AMAZING any other time because it excelled at healing players who were spread out all over the damn place.