White-mage is doomed - and why

[CrimsonGunner]

its clearly your not trying to even read a sherd of what i wrote but even so i will indulge you and answer your questions.

I'm not opposed to buffs on WHM just for their being buffs.

But neither is 'had buffs' whenever virtually every backline supporting caster 'had buffs' a decent basis for identity.

a decent basic for identity is not up to just you to decide ,there are support who sole basis for identity was giving different buffs to teammates and a gamestyle can be based on it. the solid example is bard classes from different games that focus on songs that gives different buffs to their members, if you prefer a simple style like theme you can take sona from league of legends or look at how bard mains wished to have their songs actually give buffs as they used to in the past and have a gameplay style based on their own songs. an decent basis for identity can be "have buffs" just cause you don't see it or find it fun ,does not mean it cant be and again you have multiple healers don't like it move to the next one.

"Honoring the classic" merely have us an additional GCD cost after rez in which to put up Protect. Sure, we could reduce Protect's duration so that isn't so 'cast once and forget about it until the target's death', but would that be any more... fun? At best, it'd give us some faint thing to do during downtime... while taking up valuable button space for a modest to-be-maintained defense bump.

one, it would be better then just spamming glare glare glare all the time and be meaningful to keep not only people alive but actually reduce the damage taken which means less healing needed from you = more time to support and dps making it much more meaningful.

yes it will be more fun if you care about actually reducing damage and maintaining your defense buffs which gives you more stuff to do.

two, we already have that in bozja and eureka that you need to reapply buffs if you die, you can choose not to but its exist there.

Alternatively, if the "Protect" or "Shell" or "Reflect" that you wish to have honored are not meant to function as they did before, why call them that? And what becomes the issue with the likes of Stoneskin or Benison or any other means of protecting against, shelling against, or potentially even reflecting some more immediate and timely amount of damage? (Though, let's be clear: if anyone deserves a reflect, it would probably be SCH or, at a pinch, SGE, not WHM.)

you can still have the same spell or effect either of them can apply or their core effect be used while still remaining true.
for example reflect can be used to also reflect healing effect to allies,
have protect as a trait for a defensive spell or maybe a trait for a healing spell or have a condition where it triggers and its an aura around you. you have different possibilites to make protect work in such a way that it stay true to its spell original purpose only executed differently.
as for why not just call them diffferent names, the answer is simple if you call them something different ,they are different.
you see the rename is a bluff cause the effect identical but none the less it does not change the fact that in the end it still a different skill/spell that is not related (look at protective barrier and aqua veil)

and no sge/sch don't necessary deserve to have reflect.

What specifically is it from WHM's other iterations that you think WHM should uniquely lay claim to (in exclusive possession or in advantaged iteration), as opposed to SCH, SGE, or AST? Most of what exists in its previous iterations are not going to be "good and fit" in FFXIV, and merely 'having buffs' is not going to suddenly generate further WHM identity unless it goes some different way with them (which prior iterations can only differentiate as far longer duration and/or "less interesting than on SCH/AST/SGE").

if it were a perfect world i would want him to have his defensive aspect more but if you want to claim something from past spells and iterations without ground breaking meta powerhouse and without me claiming to his buffs/debuffs since you dont want that then bout raises. past iterations could revive multiple people, could raise to full and even give a buff that auto raise and cause whm is considered the progging healer job, you can have him handle raising people better and faster like red mage does and keep all the other the same, have him raise them even to half/full hp cause if casting a defensive buff after death is wasteful surely casting a healing gcd/ogcd might be worth saving.

again you just need to think and you can find good stuff, just cause you dont like buffing people don't mean everyone like that.