White Mage - an analysis on the upcoming meta

[Sebazy]

Most word first progression also use white mages in heavensward. That didn't change that white mage wasn't part of the meta.

Not sure what you're getting at, things have changed as HW's raid tiers (and the associated class buffs each patch) have progressed. In case you didn't follow the raid scene throughout HW:

For 3.0 and Gordias, the Meta was firmly WHM/SCH due to AST being woefully undertuned for savage. The most notable server progression capable team I saw running AST/SCH hit a wall with A3S and sadly melted down before the leader was willing to accept defeat and switch to WHM to get the job done.

AST was fixed by 3.2 and you saw a reasonable spread of all 3 healers. AST still had a bit of a stigma at this point and the earliest kills were still typically WHM/SCH, but this steadily faded away as the months went by and average iLVLs went up. The rise of logs and rankings saw AST's popularity start rising with it. Many progression healers including myself played both AST and WHM on a turn by turn basis with SCH still remaining the constant here.

Finally, Creator gave us the meta we have now due to the combination of it being the easiest raid tier this game has had yet, coupled with AST getting some very potent buffs. Needless to say, this time round the majority of world first progression teams were running AST/SCH, Elysium were the main ones that bucked the trend but even they promptly switched to AST/SCH after the first kill.

Thus WHM fell out of the meta. Nothing in it's kit offered much value in Creator and frankly, the bulk of this tier really felt like it was tuned around an AST/SCH team's cooldowns.

This meta reminds me of a narrow minded sorority that only allows in certain people, and has a bunch of strict rules to stay in it. It's no wonder it doesn't interest me. And supposedly the community wishes more players would participate in endgame? All evidence to the contrary.

Ironically and perhaps fortunately, a rather large proportion of the people shouting these views have somewhere between very little and no savage/coil experience. As your quote demonstrates, it almost seems that the more extreme their views, the less raid capable or experienced they actually are. It's interesting to have a browse over some of these people's achievements, mounts and logs.

I can promise you first hand that the actual people preparing to chase progression rankings are much more open minded and flexible. Whilst these forums do a decent job of reflecting the general feeling amongst the community at large, views can get a little OTT and thus it's always worthwhile taking such comments with a pinch of salt.