What makes WHM special? Nothing anymore.

[mp-please]

I also disagree that WHM is not as a viable progression healer. WHM is the most reliable progression healer, as it always has been, and the changes to AST in no way diminish this.

I just said that. WHM and SCH were the preferred healers for every single raid group so far, AST buff only brought them to the table as well.

This is where I disagree. The granite skin and cleric stance accuracy are gimicky things. They don't really that much value, though I guess accuracy would make DPS less frustrating to do as WHM though there are other ways to achieve accuracy and will be addressed in the upcoming content patches according to Yoshi P .

While gimmicky, it was something yoshida had to remove from the game because it would be somewhat broken.
To be fair i actually ask myself why that change was made. Stoneskin is based on target hp, a tank with 20k hp would have a 3.6k shield, something that goes away relatively fast considering everything hits like a truck on heavensward.

About accuracy, back on 2.0 gear didn't had accuracy either, they later added it when scob was added and the accuracy cap raised. Healers have always been with a gap of 100 ish accuracy between the instance and the BiS gear so nothing changed there. Him saying that accuracy will be on gear later is no surprise to anyone lol..

As gear grows and healing diminishes (presumably you'll have things on farm) you could easily swap out your accessories to DPS accessories for accuracy and heal & DPS. If you don't have it farm obviously there are other issues healing or otherwise that need to be addressed and a WHM is always going to be a solid choice for solo healing so that a SCH could assist DPS.

That's the thing, like i said previously, solo heal is viable but not the best solution because when stuff gets outhealed by simple fairy power + aoe HoT + occasional aoe heal (medica I/indomitability/helios) people will start asking if its not better to take a astrologian that can do that instead of a whm because astrologian can increase people dps by using their cards.
On the same situation but when both healers can dps, whm odds increase but accuracy issues lead to dps losses and mp wasting.

Melding wise, maybe when overgear is a issue i200 crafting gear will be out because right now melds are a huge waste of stats as you'll lose 73 mind, 81 piety and some other less important stats (actually gain +1 det over BiS i210 yay) for a +120 accuracy that is still below alexander savage requirement. And then another issue comes by, at this huge loss of stats, is it really worth it to force WHMs to meld or make them change to astrologian since they have dots that don't require accuracy and make up most of their dps by buffing others.