The concept of pure healers

[IttyBitty]

As far as healing is concerned, mitigation is king, and always will be king. You can play catch up on healing for as long as it takes; so long as you keep HP above the critical threshold, you're golden. You can't do anything to outheal an attack that does 25k damage while 6/8 party members have 21k HP.

Therein lies the problem. WHM could have infinite HPS - all it would take is one mechanic that requires mitigation to survive and you make its ability to "solo heal" unviable. This has always been the case, and will always be the case. It is so frustrating and unfair to be unable to save a run that's gone a bit wrong when you're placed into a WHM/WHM party when there's a mechanic like Seph EX's limit break or Rav EX's swords, when you know that a AST/AST or SCH/SCH party have the tools to survive. Yes, it's true that DPS classes could have mitigation skills baked into their kits, but that also means that SCH/AST now have even more mitigation to complement their own.

Encounter and kit design would have to change DRASTICALLY (not necessarily for the better) to accommodate a "pure healer" being able to solo heal while simultaneously restricting the other two healers from doing so in a full party. As soon as one of them is capable of it? You've once again pushed the "pure healer" out of its ever-narrowing niche in the party dynamic. That's not even considering the consequences in light party duties, where healing requirements are already so ridiculously low.

I am obviously reserving judgement until we have more info about what is happening, but things simply aren't looking good right now. We don't know if we're keeping Stoneskin (and if so, if HP% will go up or cast time will go down. It needs one or the other), we have no idea how potent the barrier from the lilies will be. Maybe it'll be just enough. But I sincerely doubt that healing potencies are going to change anywhere near enough (WHM up, AST/SCH down) to make WHM "shine" as a pure healer.