Should WHM get a personal damage buff?

[Miste]

Earthly Star, Lightspeed Noct Helix x2, and Collective Unconscious can likewise put just as much healing/shielding burst as a Cure III spam + Asylum + Assize over the same amount of time.

You can't compare jobs like this. You are looking at only small bits and pieces and not the whole picture of why each healer has these tools.

Even if we just look at AoE healing specifically you can see a pattern between DiAST and WHM and why they each have these spells and abilities and when one has an advantage usually the other has a different advantage somewhere else either with ease of use, frequency of availability, or something the other healer doesn't have in their kit at all. It is all a balance of upsides and downsides.


Earthly Star

Yes Earthly Star is good, but it needs proper timing which requires more skill and knowledge of the fight. If you don't get the buffed Giant Dominance then Earthly Star only heals for 540 potency which is actually less than Cure III and on a 60s cooldown so it isn't usable whenever you feel like it.

Cure III is usable whenever you want and can be used reactionary even and gives the full potency without having to time it up to 10s ahead of the mechanic.

AST has no GCD heal to compare with Cure III so Earthly Star is their powerful AoE equivalent. Take Earthly Star away and AST wouldn't be able to heal God Kefka either that or it would be on a much higher level of healing difficulty and/or the cohealer will be the one to suffer to make up for ASTs inability to assist with burst AoE heal.


Lightspeed

Yes Lightspeed is good, but it has a long cooldown and not usable all the time it also has a detriment to your DPS spells which makes it a pain in the butt to use since you can't weave DPS while it is active (you can but it ends up -25% potency). Lightspeed is ASTs movement needed assistant so that they can heal during periods of movement.

Cure III can be used whenever you want and while it isn't instant cast WHM has other tools to help with healing when movement is needed. AST doesn't have Assize or Plenary which can both be used during times of movement and have much shorter cooldowns.


Collective Unconscious

Yes Collective is good, but it has a cooldown and not usable all the time and also loses you GCDs due to server tick issues on proc'ing the regen. Proc'ing the 10% mitigation is a side bonus if the server tick god happens to smile on you, but ASTs who care about optimizing will not wait and waste GCDs on channeling longer than just proc'ing the regen.

Asylum is placeable and doesn't need to be channeled constantly to get the healing and the WHM is free to keep using other heals or spells all while getting Asylums full benefit. No AST will continuously channel Collective, it is a huge DPS loss and GCD loss to be locked like that. Collective does have the mitigation that Asylum doesn't, but the fact that Collective needs to be channeled by the AST to keep the mitigation on is the detriment and also DiAST doesn't have anything equivalent to Divine Benison.

I mean yeah AST can add 10% mitigation to an AoE every 90s with a regen too, but it loses us GCDs (up to 3 depending on the timing of the AoE and the server tick bs), but you know that Kefka savage Tank Buster almost one shotting your Tank? WHM is better for tank buster mitigation than DiAST since you'll have DB up for every one and it is oGCD so can be weaved while still healing or DPSing losing no GCDs.


Overall

Yes AST has a good healing kit, but so does WHM, and there is a reason why these spells and abilities exist. All healers seem to follow a trend where they have at least one method of Burst AoE healing, at least one method of burst single target healing, and at least one method to heal while moving either for quick healing or for mechanics that require movement.

The healer balance is very good right now.

Among optimization tasked to spend the fewest GCDs possible on heals, the sustained HPS of WHM means less and less. Much the same can be said of Thin Air (over)heal potential.

So...AST is the opposite....WHM seems to be often taken over AST for progression since it is safer.

Doesn't both AST and WHM need a buff by your logic then? AST needs a buff to be more viable for progression and WHM needs a buff to be more viable for end of tier parse and/or speedkills?

(I don't actually agree with any of this, simply pointing out the flaw in this idea that WHM is apparently getting somehow shafted in savage/ultimate because other healers can heal decently too and that WHM luster somehow fades just because progression is waning)

And this is why I don't agree with any of this WHM is being shafted from savage stuff:

Last 2 weeks the amount of parses for each healer job.
Scholar: 40,204
White Mage: 38,506
Astrologian: 21,362

Source: https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/21#class=Healers

WHM having trouble? The statistics just don't back that up.

And speaking of sustained, Noct Aspected Helix IS the exact same potency as Cure III, but has the added advantage of an eHP bonus and a whole lot more range...

Nope. Noct Asp. Helios is not the same potency as Cure III. How did you come to this conclusion? Mathematically it is wrong.

Noct Asp. Helios Potency: 150
Noct Sect bonus 15%
150% shield

150 + 150(0.15) = 172.5 potency
172.5 + 172.5(1.5) = 431.25 potency

Cure III = 550 potency

As a in-game test of AST and WHM both i360 (same item level weapon as well) here are my results:

Noct Asp. Helios heal including shield avg 10700 HP
Cure III avg 13700 HP.

It is pointless to compare WHM to Noct AST though. They are healing partners. They don't compete with each other so I don't understand why you would be using this as an argument.