The current kit WHM offers a high level of healing sustainability that gives groups more survival and "oops" correction. For pick up progression groups this will allow them to see mechanics further. For PuG clear / farm groups, this will allow them to have a safety factor to account for differing play styles and adapting to strategies they may not normally employ with statics or other PuG groups.

The flaw of AST (and I'm going to say specifically AST) was that is was so overbuffed that it overshadowed everything WHM could do. They could heal better - they had better MP management - they had better utility.

Now in 4.X WHM has better healing through oGCD and MP management through Assize / Thin Air / Lucid Dreaming where as AST has better raw output and Utility.

Not everyone on the planet is going to be able to play flawlessly. Player make mistakes. We're all not going to play at the same calibur that world first and speed run kill groups will be able to. Anyone trying to adhere to that meta without the ability to play at that skill level will eventually fall and then the AST/SCH will have a harder time to pick up the pieces than WHM/AST. Not to say its impossible but it's up to the individual groups to decide if they want to run that risk or not.

Again, there is enough differences between WHM and AST now that you can pick a playstyle that's suitable for you. You didn't have that option before in 3.4. Even if WHM isn't meta, their pick rate will certainly be higher than it was in the 3.4 raid tier. If a Meta Shepple decides to lock out certain jobs due to "Meta" they probably lack the common sense to understand why it's meta and you don't want to be part of those groups.

Has anyone actually run the potency calculations and determined the absolute strength and weaknesses of each kit from a healing perspective? What they have and don't have available? Has anyone actually seen the HoT/oGCD healing WHM provides through their kit right now? It's immense.