What's your predictions for each healer for 5.0 ?

[RyuDragnier]

WHM: Will still be a powerful addition to the party, perhaps more so due to strong personal DPS.

AST: Still mandatory because of cards, may become the official "main healer" for raid parties so WHM can DPS to push.

SCH: Will probably have MP problems at launch (again) resulting in either the return of Energy Drain or the reduction of MP costs for Adlo and Succor (again).

[Sylvain]

So, imo something like this will happen

Healing wise
All healer will be viable. SCH seems slightly overtune especially with the dome regen and on demand crit (even the critlo is nerfed)

DPS wise (including raid buff)
The meta will probably still be SCH+AST, however it will not be as strong as it currently is simply because both SCH and AST buff have been gutted. The 10% crit will not be super powerful at the beggining of the xpac.
Regarding WHM, I think SE utterly failed at making them easier. I think they'll be the hardest healer to play to achieve great dps. (and thus contribution)
SCH dps has been super simplified and his most potent tools are still ogcd, SCH will as usual try to minimise their gcd use to the bare minimum
AST dps will slightly go down (relatively speaking) with the absence of the Lord. On the other hand their dps will be very stable.

WHM however, with the addition of Afflatus spells will either have very high personal dps or on par with SCH/AST.

WHM dps tool are stronger than their coheal counterpart, however they can't weave as effectively as AST and can't don't have access to good ogcd.
With the new afflatus spells being all instant, two kind of WHM will arise.
Those who manage to have very high uptime by keeping their afflatus for movement / weaving
Those who don't

One crucial thing to concider, if a WHM uses his 3 afflatus while standing still and not weaving anything, then their Afflatus Misery is a very low dps gain. Yess it's 900, but 900 over 4 gcd. so 4 Glare > 3afflatusheal+1mysery
On the other hand, if WHM manage to use their Afflatus while moving or when healing is necessary. In the sens that No matter what happens, they could NOT be casting Glare on that one GCD, then their dps will be off the chart. I'm specifically pointing that they would use Afflatus spell when casting a Glare is not possible. That means the Afflatus-heal isn't concidered a dps loss (since you could not cast a Glare anyway). Which implies that their Afflatus Misery could be the equivalent to a 900 potency ogcd. (Remember, I'm considering they would cast those spell when they could NOT be casting Glare.)

Adding up their spells being quite stronger than other healers, I think very good WHM will be able to dish some truly amazing numbers. (I don't think that would be enough to compensate SCH/AST of equal skill tho). And if they'll be playing with good coheal who with proper ogcd mapping and stuff. I wouldn't be surprised to see them with very consistent DPS

However this is against what SE seems to aim for WHM... to make them more simple? If anything SCH and AST will be easier to optimise.

MP management
AST not having access to the Ewer, Extended Lucid Dream / Light Speed, they will remain the healer with the worst mp management (400mp per dps skill)
SCH will have an extra 1000mp every minute in the form of Aetherflow, granting them more leeway. (Effectively 2.5dps skill worth of mp every 60s)
WHM will have an extra 1000mp every 45s, as well as 12s of unlimited mp every 3min.

According to people who have attempted Titania, heavily spamming your offensive skill will make you burn through your mp. (For the first patch at the very least)
With the removal of mp song and mana shift, healer won't have "back up" mana and will need to be careful.

The WHM staying the healer with, yet again, unlimited mp, will surely make it quite valuable during early prog, allowing for more dps oriented gear.

So while in perfectly under control situation, all 3 healers should be fine, it is really important to consider that the WHM being the only healer with no mp issue may (or not) be a serious thing to consider during prog.

[Brandedblade]

snip

While its not blatantly obvious, proper use of Recitation should also help scholars out with their mp sustain, since Adloquium costs 1000 mp and Succor 1300. So if used on their gcd heals its effectively the equivilant of an extra Aetherflow of mp gain. On their aetherflow heals it simply means that aetherflow window will have an extra aetherflow. The value of that would depend on how healing intensive the encounter is however...

[Sylvain]

While its not blatantly obvious, proper use of Recitation should also help scholars out with their mp sustain, since Adloquium costs 1000 mp and Succor 1300. So if used on their gcd heals its effectively the equivilant of an extra Aetherflow of mp gain. On their aetherflow heals it simply means that aetherflow window will have an extra aetherflow. The value of that would depend on how healing intensive the encounter is however...

Fair point, I forgot about recitation.
This would in fact add up quite nicely.

Regarding AST, unless they add some sort of mp refresh tool (on top of lucid dream), or Simply reduce their mp cost, I'm afraid AST mp bar will deplete quickly.

Perhaps Something as small as making Draw refresh 5% mp would be enough.
Without Sleeve Draw, that would make them on par with WHM and SCH (Assize / Aetherflow)
The extrabit from Sleeve Draw (pretty much wasted on pull tho..) woud be a weaker Thin Air / Recitation (on a gcd)

[ForteNightshade]

Scholar, without a shadow of doubt, will dominate the early game. Their sole potential weakness from what we've seen is MP economy. It remains to be seen, however, if their extremely powerful healing toolkit will offset that. I, personally, think it will, if only because one of the biggest MP drains for Scholar was Misama II. The fact Lustrate is completely free cannot be understated.

This leaves the ever familiar battle between White Mage and Astro to live on once again. We really cannot say who pulls ahead because everything essentially rides on whether Astro's neutered Balances cards can still outpace White Mage's potential damage. I fully anticipate Divination being reduced to at least 120s if not 90s sometime this year. Which may give Astro a mid-game edge. If I'm being honest, I'm concerned for Astro. It easily underwent the most divisive changes. And I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the single target focus causes a lot of disdain throughout Shadowbringers.

Which makes me seriously wonder if a solo healer meta slowly crops up. Of course this will heavily depend on the healing difficulty of both Savage and Ultimate. We know they intend to follow Creator yet again, which leads me to believe we'll see an encore of Deltascape—the easiest tier by a mile. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if healer actually became easier just due to the sheer power Scholar and White Mage have. I can't see a scenario where solo healing Ultimate ever becomes popular but Savage? If Alte Roite returns... maybe.

[Yuyuka3]

These sum it up best:

I forsee that the data will reveal that Scholar has too much aetherflow and nothing to unload it on that makes sense in the encounter and they'll give them someone akin to Energy Drain again.

I think WHM will get shafted as usual and naysayers will once again be proven wrong.

I think AST is going to reach levels of braindead we didn't think were possible for the class.

To be honest, I think it will be the same it is now.
All healers will be able to heal every content and because WHM still does not have any (offensive) raid buffs, the meta will be AST / SCH.
I can see people saying that WHM is more fun to play than the other two, especially because of the lazy card changes and the skills SCH lost, but I can't see it being part of the meta.
Meaning after all this time the healer balance "problem" still isn't addressed. To be honest I rather would have more complex and interesting healer designs than "balanced" healers, fun > balance, but maybe that's just me.

Edit: I think that potencys will be adjusted, if AST potencys are too low or it has too many mana problems, resulting in it being meta again.

Anyone who thinks WHM will be meta is uninformed at best, and delusional at worst. SCH/AST will be meta as usual, though considering how insanely good SCH's healing has become (even though it was already amazing), I really wouldn't be surprised to see a SCH solo-heal meta; and this is before their inevitable 5.1-or-earlier buffs.

About the highlighted part in the second post:
That happened in Stormblood as well. See how far that "fun to play" got us so far!/s

[Sebazy]

I'm still pretty happy with my current predictions and I'll stand by them. WHM/SCH for early meta, AST/SCH to be dominant a month down the line (assuming AST doesn't get heavily buffed before then which is a very real possibility in my eyes).

[Yuyuka3]

I'm still pretty happy with my current predictions and I'll stand by them. WHM/SCH for early meta, AST/SCH to be dominant a month down the line (assuming AST doesn't get heavily buffed before then which is a very real possibility in my eyes).

What's good about being discarded as soon as AST closes the gap, though? It's not really great design if you ask me, and I want all those idiots who tell me to play AST since it's better to shut up already. I want them to do more, but those things aren't very nice and got no place here.

[Sebazy]

Oh it's not good at all. I'm happy with my prediction, not the current state of affairs.

WHM has always been my preferred healer but it looks like I'm probably going to have to SCH for this progression =(

[Atlantasia]

MP management
AST not having access to the Ewer, Extended Lucid Dream / Light Speed, they will remain the healer with the worst mp management (400mp per dps skill)
SCH will have an extra 1000mp every minute in the form of Aetherflow, granting them more leeway. (Effectively 2.5dps skill worth of mp every 60s)
WHM will have an extra 1000mp every 45s, as well as 12s of unlimited mp every 3min.

Assize's MP restore will only be 5%, meaning it's only 500 MP back every 45 seconds. :/