My take on the simplicity of healers and the healer problem

[Jamini]

Then it seems like it's time to give WHM and SGE 2 minute buff skills so they can contribute to burst as well. AST and SCH being head and shoulders above the others becasue they have 2 minute burst, but also all the capabilities (if not more utility, shielding, and mit) seems like a bad way to balance the healers.

I do want to bring this back up too because...honestly this isn't true. At least it's not for higher-end raids.

Looking at people who do parse (I do not. My client is completely incapable of running ACT. However I have plenty of logs thanks to people who do)... SGE and WHM contribution is legitimately right in line with AST and SCH contribution.

- Grey-parsing healers (below the 25th percentile of people who finish a particular fight) tend to favor WHM and SGE by a few hundred DPS in overall contribution.
- Green-blue parsing healers (25th to 75th percentile) are literally almost dead even. At the 35th and 34th percentile SCH and WHM literally are within eighty dps overall contribution. In one parse between myself and a WHM where we were 34th and 35th equally... the difference in our DPS was 1.4% between ourselves, and literally 0.1% difference over the course of the entire fight.
- Purple and higher parsed healers very slightly favors the buff classes. The very highest parse on P6S has a difference of 324 between their WHM and SCH. A difference of 4% at the absolute pinnacle of play, and a grand difference of 0.4% in the overall fight.

Less than a single percentage point of your group's damage is not "head and shoulders". It's a drop in the bucket that literally only matters if you are intentionally running for a high score.

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I will also point out that SGE + SCH groups have significant trouble with P8S2 this tier. That fight in particular has a ton of healing that needs to be pumped out quickly, and it can be difficult without a very detailed plan to properly heal and mit through those hits.

[VerdeLuck]

I do want to bring this back up too because...honestly this isn't true. At least it's not for higher-end raids.

Looking at people who do parse (I do not. My client is completely incapable of running ACT. However I have plenty of logs thanks to people who do)... SGE and WHM contribution is legitimately right in line with AST and SCH contribution.

- Grey-parsing healers (below the 25th percentile of people who finish a particular fight) tend to favor WHM and SGE by a few hundred DPS in overall contribution.
- Green-blue parsing healers (25th to 75th percentile) are literally almost dead even. At the 35th and 34th percentile SCH and WHM literally are within eighty dps overall contribution. In one parse between myself and a WHM where we were 34th and 35th equally... the difference in our DPS was 1.4% between ourselves, and literally 0.1% difference over the course of the entire fight.
- Purple and higher parsed healers very slightly favors the buff classes. The very highest parse on P6S has a difference of 324 between their WHM and SCH. A difference of 4% at the absolute pinnacle of play, and a grand difference of 0.4% in the overall fight.

Less than a single percentage point of your group's damage is not "head and shoulders". It's a drop in the bucket that literally only matters if you are intentionally running for a high score.

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I will also point out that SGE + SCH groups have significant trouble with P8S2 this tier. That fight in particular has a ton of healing that needs to be pumped out quickly, and it can be difficult without a very detailed plan to properly heal and mit through those hits.

That seems like a problem if SCH does 4% more DPS and also has more ultilty, mitigation,and benefit to the team than a WHM. WHM really only has high output GCD healing and spamming glare. It's utility is both extremely lacking to AST and SCH, and it does lower damage.
That doesn't seem quite right from a balance perspective. Not even to mention we just had a tier where AST was absolutely dominant because one of it's buttons was so good it just invalidated a mechanic and it was a must pick, directly bumping out one healer in particular.
Having better damage, better utility buttons, and more options for OGCD healing and mitigation.

AST could also solo heal DSR on patch 6.1 due to it's high damage contribution, high heals, and shield and mitigation buttons.

[Jamini]

That seems like a problem if SCH does 4% more DPS and also has more ultilty, mitigation,and benefit to the team than a WHM. WHM really only has high output GCD healing and spamming glare. It's utility is both extremely lacking to AST and SCH, and it does lower damage.
That doesn't seem quite right from a balance perspective. Not even to mention we just had a tier where AST was absolutely dominant because one of it's buttons was so good it just invalidated a mechanic and it was a must pick, directly bumping out one healer in particular.
Having better damage, better utility buttons, and more options for OGCD healing and mitigation.

AST could also solo heal DSR on patch 6.1 due to it's high damage contribution, high heals, and shield and mitigation buttons.

I do not believe you actually understand what I mean. Allow me to explain it tn clearer terms.

1. You are literally talking about the top 0.01% of all players in the game. SCH and AST only begin to pull away from SGE and WHM when you get to the top 15% of all players who even bother to have cleared savage fights. Right off the bat that's a very small number (something like 10% of any game's population even raids, and fewer will clear even one fight in a tier. Much less all of them.)
2. That 4% is not personal damage. It is raid contribution. So you can immediately throw out all of that utility from additional considerations. Same with Chain Stratagem. Both of those are baked into the rdps number
3. You are correct. WHM mostly has high healing output... and in some fights that is extremely helpful. To the point that in the top 20 parses that are currently on P6S (selected because it's a dummy fight that doesn't really have massively hard-hitting mechanics. IDEAL for SCH and AST) nine of those clears have a white mage! Tied with AST for nine top20 clears! Meanwhile SGE and SCH have 11. The breakdown of healers in the top 50 even skews a little the other direction with SGE and WHM having 29% and 27% of the top 50 overall clears respectively (this week) , and SCH and AST are 22% each (this week)

My point here is that your information is not backed by empirical evidence. If anything buffing healers are less represented at the top, even if they have slightly more contribution. Because ultimately all healers are actually in a pretty good place!

Far as I am aware, exactly one team is recorded doing solo DSR AST. It is one of the absolute best teams in the world.
The damage I am including Is not personal damage either. It's raid contribution (so it includes a portion of all buffed damage, taken from the person buffed.)

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Edit:

I also forgot that you are neglecting to note that WHM doesn't exclusively have heals.

1. Regens. Regens are vastly useful and efficient heals. While technically healing, their fire and forget nature often makes them really ideal for the current structure of high-end fights. (Where you have periods of a LOT of damage, then a long recovery period.) - Pairing SGE/SCH with a WHM/AST dramatically makes the job of both jobs much easier as their abilities are complimentary. (And yes, SCH and SGE both have regens. But WHM and AST regens are notably better)
2. Asylum. While not a mit, the +healing on this works on basically all forms of recovery. It's also strictly better than Fae Illumination (which only impacts spells) and combos really well with tank heals like Shake it Off, Aurora, Heart of Corundum.
3. Divine Benson. While ST, it is a shield.
4. Temperance. AoE mit and healing up. Core for WHM play in savage content
5. Aquaveil. A single target mit. Comparable to both skills on SGE and AST.
6. Liturgy of the Bell. A beautiful combination of Panaheima AND earthly star. While it's not a shield, this ability basically means I as a Scholar do not need to do much of anything except pop soil during the entire duration. It's insanely good.

Could WHM do with a group shield? Yes. Do they starkly need it? Not really. Again the difference between the best WHM and the best SCH or AST is a minuscule amount, even less when you consider that healers are less than half as much damage contribution as a DPS is.

[Deceptus]

Could WHM do with a group shield? Yes. Do they starkly need it? Not really. Again the difference between the best WHM and the best SCH or AST is a minuscule amount, even less when you consider that healers are less than half as much damage contribution as a DPS is.

Every.healer.does.not.need.to.be.able.to.do.everything.

The entire point of the revamp was to emphasize shield vs regen healers to attempt to encourage bringing one of each so you don't stack a job.

Same thing was attempted with tanks, it failed miserably. This Shield vs Regen healer thing is looking to do the same because every healer is becoming a copy of each other.

[VerdeLuck]

1. You are literally talking about the top 0.01% of all players in the game. SCH and AST only begin to pull away from SGE and WHM when you get to the top 15% of all players who even bother to have cleared savage fights. Right off the bat that's a very small number (something like 10% of any game's population even raids, and fewer will clear even one fight in a tier. Much less all of them.)

And the problem with this is the community sees these stats and takes away that AST and SCH are better than WHM and SGE if the healer isn't bad. the only scenarios where they're better is when the healer player is bad and parsing low so why settle? Do they want to settle with a bad healer player?
I get these stats but the reality is not what you see on fflogs. Tell that to any MCH player who braves PF when technically MCH is better in unorganized groups and gets asked constantly to swap to BRD or DNC.
People in PF groups and in casual/midcore groups absolutely do not care that technically at the level they play at it's negligible, and those are the groups people have to interact with when they attempt to play endgame content.

[VerdeLuck]

I also forgot that you are neglecting to note that WHM doesn't exclusively have heals.

1. Regens. Regens are vastly useful and efficient heals. While technically healing, their fire and forget nature often makes them really ideal for the current structure of high-end fights. (Where you have periods of a LOT of damage, then a long recovery period.) - Pairing SGE/SCH with a WHM/AST dramatically makes the job of both jobs much easier as their abilities are complimentary. (And yes, SCH and SGE both have regens. But WHM and AST regens are notably better)
2. Asylum. While not a mit, the +healing on this works on basically all forms of recovery. It's also strictly better than Fae Illumination (which only impacts spells) and combos really well with tank heals like Shake it Off, Aurora, Heart of Corundum.
3. Divine Benson. While ST, it is a shield.
4. Temperance. AoE mit and healing up. Core for WHM play in savage content
5. Aquaveil. A single target mit. Comparable to both skills on SGE and AST.
6. Liturgy of the Bell. A beautiful combination of Panaheima AND earthly star. While it's not a shield, this ability basically means I as a Scholar do not need to do much of anything except pop soil during the entire duration. It's insanely good.

I just want to come back to this since this poster in his rush to justify why WHM should not get any buffs or help with becoming more viable, listed out 6 things he believes are utility WHM has other than heals, and half of them are either straight heals or a heal potency buff while active.
A single partywide mitigation, a single target mitigation, and then a single target shield. The rest is just healing, something that WHM has in spades for sure, but nothing really needs it due to SE's fight design and how people play, we want to avoid overhealing as much as possible.
Compare this to its direct competitor who has a partywide mitigation, a single target mitigation, a single target shield, and also has a heal amp that puts shields on its heals allowing it to do partywide or single target shields as it sees fit.
This competitor also does more damage, which is what really matters in these fights, and has enough healing potential to easily pass heal checks.

Why in this situation would you take WHM? It just straight up has less to offer, unless your group is bad and parses low, something no group wants to admit. This seems to be a bit of a problem that AST and SCH are overloaded in their kits and others struggle to keep up outside of early prog, which is why the AST+SCH combination seems to be so ubiqutous and dominant.

What I was trying to say with all of this is that WHM needs an identity, it needs a reason to pick it. AST is considered a must pick for certain strategies due to Macrocosmos and cards, SCH is considered the same for Expedient and Chain Strategem. What is the situation for WHM being a must pick on fights? Why do you pick it?
It either should be brought back up in parity with the abilities and damage of its direct competitor or given a unique reason to pick it, something that only it can do. Right now it's just raw healing output, but that is very much not something that gels with how the game is played at this point.