What exactly IS a White Mage?

[Ghishlain]

I'm going to disagree with this on a rather simple basis.

As we're seeing from FFLogs, AST is seeing quite a bit of use even at the earliest points of this raid tier, ie, the prog phase - and maintaining exceptionally high performance. It is not the "farm/optimized party only" healer it was closer to being at the beginning of stormblood.

(Really if a group's having a lot of trouble, having a BRD+RDM makes a bigger difference than healer choice)

I'm not even talking about that level of content - I'm talking about content like Alphascape (normal) and Lighthouse. Savage PuGing deaths lead to irreversible snowballs or just outright wipes death - that's it intent and it's designed to kick your ass, though WHM does have the ability to stymie the bleeding better than the other healers.

So, yes, I know this is content that many people deem irrelevant but it's still something the developers have to consider and thus the players have to consider regarding the state and identity of WHM.

It's funny because using the same numbers on FFLogs but looking at every job in the game as a whole, you can see which jobs are really suffering in the non-meta standing and WHM, despite being non-meta, is definitely not suffering in terms of participation. Which just means that's a nail in the coffin with regards seeing any sensible changes to WHM prior to expansion, sadly.

Another thing to consider is completely breaking WHM to the point where it sticks out like a sore thumb. Remember how AST was completely broken in 3.4 in Heavensward because they were trying to find the right tuning for its buffs? They need to do the same thing to figure out how to fix WHM from the inside out considering we already have two unique powerhouses(one that simply sits on top of its Lalafellian throne, and another which has been buffed to the stars). Why not make a third and actually work it all out from there to find where the powercreep lies?

At this point, I think S-E will need to make WHM so overpowered that it'll remove any form of negative stigma that WHM has accumulated since 3.4. Not make WHM an equal to the current healers, surpass them in almost every way.

I hate that it's come to that point though.