Scholar is a horribly designed job and shows zero thought goes into healer design

[Semirhage]

I actually agree on WHM being the best designed healer point, sorry Semi

It's kit is reasonably cohesive, it actually goes some way to embracing the content meta of valuing DPS above all else and there's a decent amount of interactivity between the various aspects of it's abilities and cooldowns. Nothing clashes (If you put stylistic choices aside at least) and it doesn't feel too badly bloated.

Predictably one facet of the game that hurts it is the overall lack of incoming damage for much of the game which causes it to spend too much time spamming glare/holy relative to the rest of it's kit but IMO the biggest problem with WHM is actually the 2.5 second GCD.

I'm pretty confident that if FFXIV had a 1.5 second GCD like WoW, WHM would actually be pretty damn good to play in moderately challenging content and upwards.

Yeah, we've disagreed on that for a while. I think WHM's kit has the same problems that the entire role does: a bunch of redundant healing abilities that are far too close to being identical for my liking. A snoozeathon of a downtime kit. A skill ceiling that funnels you toward spamming a single button over and over again- a reward that's just boring.

I always side-eye when someone says WHM is the "best" designed, because...I think they're all designed like various flavors of dog vomit. And calling WHM the "best" one leads to everyone's favorite solution: yeah, let's leave all of the attendant problems with current healer design on WHM and actually design fun into the other three! That's the best way forward! Vomit is suddenly okay when WHM has to swim in it. ~*~

Edit:
WHM is like the crap mutant Through A Mirror Darkly version of BLM. Black Mage is the barebones zero-utility member of the caster DPS...but it's fun. It has a niche (raw damage output). It's got a mile-high skill ceiling. Its intended use is straightforward with little bloat, but it affords so many opportunities for messing up, recovery, learning opportunities, and skill-building. It's the most iconic of the three casters, but it's not the designated easy job for beginners. You *can* play it like a Blizzard Wizard or a Fire spammer and put out quite mediocre damage, and that'll drag you through quite a lot of content.

In contrast, WHM takes BLM's no-frills, tacks on SMN's infinite safety nets, and tops this pot of gruel off with a real winner of an identity: "well, it's got...uh...it has two GCD heals that refund damage! And it can clear content!" How fun. It's the easy one! Skill ceilings are for everyone else. WHM gets to be the one that...has the highest population!

There was a real opportunity to grow it into the BLM of the role, once upon a time. Now it's the Glarespammy easy one. Real fun to take through MSQ solo duties, wheeeee.