WHM DPS needs to stay this high.

[ForteNightshade]

As long as they adhere to this design philosophy players will never truly be happy. Despite having the strongest heals and the highest damage potencies WHM will always feel neglected as long as the other healers bring buffs that the other 6/8 raid members find to be more valuable, especially if they contribute with faster encounters. Additionally as long as they try to instead impose "value" for a pure-heal class by reducing the effectiveness of buffs, which has not only led to the gradual and complete death of Selene but the general neutering of the AST card system, then the identity of a "buffing" healer will continue to suffer. If the intention is to bring healers to a point where any healer combo can handle combat with minimal favoritism, then WHM needs to be made separate from the BLM design philosophy even if the two classes are iconically mirrors, and given a "buff-role" switch similar to SCH's fairy choice or AST's stances. Something that takes away something from their kit, but adds party synergy that the 6 out of 8 non-healing party members can salivate over. Only then will they be able to allow healer buffs to both be meaningful decisions and something the playerbase can feel good about.

And this will remain true no matter what they do for a "new" healer, be it debuff, haste, reflect, evasion, or whathaveyou.

Unfortunately, the devs seem utterly determine to maintain White Mage's identity as the selfish healer. I had hoped they would simply give White Mage Bravery and Cheer so it could compete with Astro's cards seamlessly. That just doesn't seem to be the case and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they stubbornly hold out on buffing Astro's utility purely to keep White Mage from falling out of favour again.

[Ayer2015]

Unfortunately, the devs seem utterly determine to maintain White Mage's identity as the selfish healer. I had hoped they would simply give White Mage Bravery and Cheer so it could compete with Astro's cards seamlessly. That just doesn't seem to be the case and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they stubbornly hold out on buffing Astro's utility purely to keep White Mage from falling out of favour again.

compete with AST? AST is a mess currently.

[ForteNightshade]

compete with AST? AST is a mess currently.

I was implying it would compete with Stormblood AST. There wouldn't be a need to change the cards from what they were if they simply gave WHM utility.

[Ftail]

Unfortunately, the devs seem utterly determine to maintain White Mage's identity as the selfish healer.

Why is that a bad thing when they are currently top healer?

[Lagomorph]

Why is that a bad thing when they are currently top healer?

It's a bad thing for two major reasons, I think.

Firstly it's very difficult to balance. Raid buffs like chain stratagem, card, divination usually have a consistent expected dps contribution in top level play. Sure you could give white mage the personal dps to make up for not having these buffs, and they would be a competitive healer. In casual play, though, the dps contributions of the aforementioned raid buff amount to a lot less, thus the white mage personal dps advantage in that settings actually becomes very overpowered. Currently though, I'd argue that even in top level play whm personal dps alone is far ahead of a scholar's or astrologian's combined personal dps and raid buff contribution.

Secondly, there is this stigma in the community surrounding selfish classes, and it's really unhealthy for the game. As much as a few white mages around here would like people to believe, they were nowhere near as bad off in stormblood as some people say. In fact, out of the 3 final raid fights and 2 ultimate fights, 4 of these fights included a white mage in the world first group. Neo exdeath, god kefka, ucob, and uwu all were cleared first with a white mage. Only on final omega was the world first group one with an ast/sch comp. Despite this, the community had it set as the norm that whm was bad because the speedrun groups never used one. I don't think that there is a way to balance whm with personal dps alone while simultaneously removing this stigma surrounding them. Clearly right now white mage is the favored healer, but look how far ahead of the other healers in terms of raid contribution they needed to be for this to be the case.