Quote Originally Posted by KarmaYraeon View Post
Understandable, though I will say that it isn't that its identity is that it is a safety net to compensate the other three healers, but simply that it has the capability and freedom to do so. Its reliability would be its biggest selling point compared to the other three.
This describes Stormblood.

WHM is the safest pick! The healiest of the healers. Nevermind the fact that free, highly-available oGCD woven heals are more effective in FFXIV's combat system. Or that the other healers can quite comfortably heal content, and in fact their majorly wider and easier access to both defensive and offensive utility means AST can usually solo heal Ultimates first.

"More heals" isn't anywhere near as useful as it sounds.

I've said it many times before: the casters have the pecking order figured out. Ignoring the ridiculous favoritism toward BLM and melees in BLMeleewalker, you've got the two "utility" casters (with raises, party damage buffs, and defensive utility) sit lower than the selfish one that brings nothing else. The selfish one is easy to pick up, but widely considered difficult to master. It brings nothing but damage, so it's allowed to have the highest damage output as its identity.

Meanwhile the healer role is the Upside Down to the caster role. The "selfish" healer is often the worst, and has many cheerleaders arguing for that to remain the status quo. Why? What does WHM bring if it's the worst? It doesn't have utility to make up for anything. It has the crappiest access to mitigation. The longest cooldowns on its oGCDs. No minigame to juggle. Its job gauge is passive. In this state, it's just the designated baby rattle job. Purposefully designed to be the playpen for people who don't want to learn anything. Imagine redesigning the casters like that. I can see the job guide now. "BLM: this job is meant to be an entry point to the caster role. Its simplicity is the perfect introduction to the caster playstyle! More advanced players may want to pick up RDM or SMN."

Or they could just, like, pick the jobs that are actually designed with this game's combat system in mind and make sure they have highly available, comfortable access to their skill floors while focusing on building an actual gameplay loop instead of fixating their entire job identity on being -real gooder- at the skill floor.