Thank you SE: WHM is fine where it’s at.

[Shurrikhan]

but it definitely isn't recommended anywhere in game.

For that to matter, there'd have to be more than the barest basics recommended in-game at all.

Whether slide casting is an intended mechanic or not is wholly irrelevant. It's not prevented and sees significant rewards when done.

It'd be great if they embraced that and made it more consistent. It'd be ironic, perhaps, as the whole mechanic was likely born of the same netcode mess that makes it inconsistent now, but it'd be an improvement nonetheless.

[NobleWinter]

I'm not sure why you think slide casting is irrelevant to a question about Square's playstyle philosophy? A lot of us want more weaving windows and intuitive play that allows us to always be casting but what if they don't even want us to always be casting? Have you noticed that healers are the only role that don't get movement tools? We are expected to walk or run everywhere while tanks and dps get dashes, disengages, and teleports. Even stationary casters like BLM get tons of mobility options. Clearly slide casting is optimal but I'm more interested in what they expect from a healer because this dictates what skills we get in the future. Seeing how Scholar got pruned for this expansion makes me really worried about their design intentions. I personally don't find this current expansion fun to heal at all.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not sure why you think slide casting is irrelevant to a question about Square's playstyle philosophy?

Where did I say it was? I specifically said,

Whether slide casting is an intended mechanic or not is wholly irrelevant.

No part of what I said precludes healers getting "dashes, disengages, and teleports".

Though, I'm not sure why you're writing it off as solely a healer issue. Summoner and Machinist gets none of those skills either and Bard's is a pathetic joke, which has been the standard across non-melee until RDM and DNC were each formed as outliers.

The tank role began with none and has only seen one particular type of movement skill added ever since, and only one per expansion across the entire role. Originally, BLM was the only caster (healer or offensive) with a movement skill, and precisely to compensate for it being especially immobile, while the rest were left with only a capacity that was vitally important at the time, Sprint (which consumed all TP, meaning only casters could effectively use Sprint mid-combat). Caster's uniquely viable Sprint, atop melee's greater need for mobility, is why melee have gotten mobility skills while casters of any sort traditionally have had none (AM being compensation for being the most casterly of casters and RDM being sold as its own utility-overladen hybrid).

I personally don't find this current expansion fun to heal at all.

Then, by all means suggest improvements. I'd be the first to agree that healers aren't fun right now.

But it has nothing to do with the content of my post, i.e. to whether slide-casting is an intended mechanic, which is itself, again, irrelevant so long as it works. Slidecasting takes up no necessary allotment for mobility capacity among casters; the devs are free to give casters as much or as little as they like. Since StB, Caster's primary mobility advantage has been removed, with design instead going the way of more frequent instant-casts and thereby reduced "caster costs" rather than compensation, but that doesn't have to remain the case with future expansions. Ask away.