Few close friends quit FFXIV, one wants to explain why, hopes SE improves the game

[Penthea]

Please tell me what is WHMs identity? What differinates it from AST?

I mean I know his identity is "strong heals", but his heals aren't actually stronger than ASTs. AST is the WHM copy with additional utility, shorter cast times, better instant heal options and he has basically no drawback for this. In other words despite the fact that AST is a copy of WHM, WHM is only a budget AST, he has no niche of his own and nothing special - except Cure 3 lol.

Whm's mana efficiency far outpaces ast and sch. That's certainly a niche beyond having cure 3. Whms are frequently used for progress because of this. There is more room for error if a whm is in the group.

The reason why whm is treated like budget ast isn't because of the healing kit. It's because whm can do literally -nothing- to buff raid dps, whereas both ast and sch can. As soon as a group knows the fight and thus know how to take less damage then often this is when the whm will switch to ast because at this point whm's niche loses value.