Picking a healer

[Rennies]

If you want just raw healing power, go for the WHM. If you want to nullify damage, go SCH. If you want a little bit of both with a little rng, go AST. Personally my favorite is AST. Mainly due to the cards and well..I like anything related to the stars and planets. Also a little note..be cautious of some people while being a healer. As apparently people will crucify you if you don't dps as one.

As with every class, you'll be crucified if you choose to spend long periods of time afking while the 3 other players in your team are actually doing stuff.

[LDR]

Asking for complexity, want fun, AND your asking for actual opinions?!
I like you already.

SO, in my opinion the answer to that one is AST.

I used to be a SCH main throughout most of 2.x and up until somewhere in 3.1-3.2 because for me it was the most fun whilst being more engaging and complex [to me] than WHM.
WHM is still a fun class to play from time to time, but i personally find its toolkit is so straight forward theres not enough variables in what you can do for me.
Being able to manipulate the fairy and co-ordinate heals either chaining back to back on a single target or healing multiple people at once in different areas of the arena/map was engaging, as was juggling cleric stance and knowing how far i can push it along. I personally also found good fun in learning optimal places to position the fairy and ways to bounce skills about [placing fairy in the middle of a group away from me and launching a deployed adlo off her is always nice etc.]

That said i always liked the core toolkit feel of WHM more, and AST generally emulates that core kit layout, plus has skills that can be deployed skillfully in interesting ways like SCH; and so in the end i was always doing "more" each time i played an instance as AST than any of the others. I personally feel theres more of a juggling act going on as AST and you can use the tools in a few various ways which make tactical choices and the complexity of the class all the more entertaining than the other 2.
Sure, a noticable part of your kit is RNG, but using what you can to manipulate it to your best and then deploying things correctly is just as good to me as placing the fairy and knowing when to use her skills. You can still set up nicely to give yourself time to dps if you wish and have the means to turn things around and recover from spikes if needs be.

In all my opinion is that AST is the more fun and complex choice of the 3 simple because of how active you can be in comparison and the variables of your choices.
But you should most definately play all 3 to get a feel for the styles they bring and work it out from there; i whole heartedly believe you will be a better healer if you know how to play all 3 and use them effectively.

[Seoulstar]

As with every class, you'll be crucified if you choose to spend long periods of time afking while the 3 other players in your team are actually doing stuff.

Not getting into another debate on this topic again. I'm just stating the pointless complaining over something that truly isn't much of a big deal.