Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
I've argued against this position since Stormblood. It's been floating around here for a very long time, in various forms. Something like, "WHM is simpler so it's unfair if it does more damage. More complex classes deserve more output for their higher complexity. If they do less for more work, that doesn't make sense".
Well we can argue about difficulty being a correct metric for DPS output, but if you actually look at current statistics for this savage tier, ordered by rDPS, you can see that SE is actually following this formula:
bard > dancer > machinist
black mage > red mage > summoner
You can see that even jobs with amazing support like dancer, bard or red mage outDPS the ones that don't bring much to the table. Why? Because their rotation is very easy and quick to master.
Why would anyone take machinist over bard or dancer? Why would anyone take summoner over red mage? Or even reaper! It currently ranks the last of all melee.
Because the simplicity is often welcome, for prog or just to chill and/or focus on mechanics. An entry level player will probably perform much better pressing whatever on machinist than trying to keep up with dots, songs, procs and many more on bard.

So I think THAT is their goal with WHM even though they failed, I agree with you that currently it doesn't have much except some convenient panic buttons and it needs a boost in some direction.