Reason I mentioned Feral and Balance was not as the actual specs, but as skillsets that Resto can dip into and 'do damage as a healer'. Though, in several parts of the past Feral has been horrendously ignored/forgotten about, lacking cohesiveness, throughput, and general care for the design. Despite these dark times, some players stuck with it, because they loved the class, despite Rogue being easier or having more DPS or whatever.
I'll reword what I'm trying to convey, once again: Ren, you are advocating for 3 healers to be 'swimming pool' and one to be 'inflatable backyard pool'. I am saying that by doing this, you leave that one healer (WHM) stuck in a situation where, once a player feels they have experienced the depth of the class (which will happen sooner, due to less overall depth, backyard pool and all that), they are forced, by your design, to either reroll (requiring they level a whole other class) or just put up and shut up that they're on the 'simple healer'. I'm saying that all four healers should be 'swimming pool' ,and that I have confidence that the playerbase will swim at the depth level they find comfortable. Shallow end for less able swimmers/learners, deeper end for able swimmers, sort of middleish for 'people who are starting to get good at swimming, but still shallow enough to set their feet down on solid ground if panic sets in'. I don't get how this isn't getting through, it's like you read 'deep end' and just assume I want to throw them all into the ocean to let them drown
As for timespans, yeh I'll confess I never played EQ or read anything about it beyond it's age, and that some WOW devs were from top EQ guilds. BUT, I can also link this: World first Gordias, now I'm pretty tired, eyes blurry etc, but I'm pretty sure that's Aero 3 and Stone 3 being cast. And here's WF Deltascape for comparison.So yeh, 'as late as SB' might have been true for like, your friend circle or something, but the rest of the game was busy pumping DPS and struggling to keep up with the horrendous MP costs WHM had on Stone back then
Since Ruin and Ruin 2 were equal potency back then (with R2 being more MP hungry), some SCHs did actually do that, bonk enemies with their book for bonus damage. Here's a thread on reddit on the subject that took almost zero time to find. Note that since Broil was added in HW, rendering the 'equal potency R1/R2' thing moot, this means that the idea was occuring during ARR. OP of the thread also mentions FCOB by name, if you prefer to find out that way
On that we agree at least. Why does WHM seem to always get designated as the 'depth of a puddle' healer? Because it's the only one that starts at level 1? DH in WOW started at 98 out of 110, and it was unbelievably newplayer friendly!