Another WHM chicken little sees the sky falling. The sky is an AST.

[Sylvain]

I disagree here. I like the way healing works in this game due in part to it's uniqueness. Of course if healers had to spend more time healing the healer best at making hp go up wins but that isn't what I want and it isn't the direction I anticipate SE going. Plus it doesn't fix the problem - in a world of dps optimization giving healers less time to dps just means their rDPS (yet another category that goes SCH>AST>WHM) matters that much more.

Well on this one I suppose it's more a matter of personal opinion.
What I find confusing though, is that Y.P had to remind players, more than once, that healer were only there to heal and raid weren't designed with any healer dps contribution in mind. (I doubt this is true for the last 2 tier of savage and Ultimate but that's not the point) and yet every raid seems to promote this healing dps design. I mean, when you look on forum you see 10 post about how to optimise your dps for 1 post of how to handle some healing situation.

I personally would like more healing time. I rolled a healer to heal. Not to spend 90% of my time spamming MaleficIII or StoneIV

Well that's the thing isn't it - first kills. People don't often bring AST to prog because they're going for survival rather than optimization. At the end of Stormblood tough when we're all in PF parse running Savage and farming totems for mounts and weapons you can bet unless something changes WHM will be left in the dust again.

I'd like to correct your assessment, "A fraction of the fraction able to clear Savage on PF" doing parse run will care

I'm sorry but let's be real there, balancing a whole job so that not even 1% can have more e-peen online doesn't sound right.

I don't think having all job perfectly balanced for parse run is among SE top priority. (nor should it be)

It's like you summerized my whole post right there xD Thank you!
..

This is actually something I find utterly disapointing about AST and WHM
Healing wise, they're very similar. Like when a WHM friend told me "I don't know how to heal as an AST" I was just like "...... I mean, spare a few spells you're missing and grounded star, they pretty much heal the same exact way."

I really hope we'll get more unique spells like Grounded Star next xpac, because WHM and AST are definitely too similar when it comes to healing.