Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

[Renathras]

Fair point - to a point - about things not being likely. Though I'll note some are far more likely than others. Things that don't require new additions, coding, new mechanics, etc are much more likely too happen than those that do. It's why I think a 4 Healers Model that left WHM and SGE as they are and reverted (partially) SCH and AST to SB forms is most likely since it wouldn't require a single new thing to be done other than whatever art assets for the upgraded spells were going to happen anyway in DT.

As for if I'd find it agreeable;

It would depend on the specifics of how it was done. For example, while it seemed you were trying to make it kinda like current WHM, the Holy change isn't. The first one would need to make Holy just what it is now, not turn it into Plegma, for example. But if one of the lines of choices allowed someone to have EW WHM by choosing those and it was balanced against the other to where they both did comparable damage and healing, then it would probably be fine in that case. Though I do wonder at how intuitive the system would be for new players and how the leveling process would work in cases of some stuff (getting Holy at level 45 has been iconic for 10 years), but it's not like that stopped the Devs before (RIP Stoneskin...)

EDIT:

I do have to reiterate, though, that this is VERY unlikely - they wouldn't JUST do it with Healers, they'd need to do it with every Job in the game. WoW is often said not to have a dozen or so classes, but 3x that when you consider that specs are essentially separate classes in all but name.

SE wouldn't JUST do this with healers. They'd need to also do it with tanks and with DPS. We'd go from effectively 19 classes to effectively 42 (factoring in the two new Jobs and them each getting two trees). And that's if the trees were "pick one or the other". If we factor in all those branches as individual choices, then you have all those interactions and the age old debate of "illusion of choice cookiercutter" or not.

EDIT:

Probably close to post limit...

Water takes the place of Holy, and Holy just becomes an additional burst. You've stated before that you don't like how Holy is relegated to an AoE spam button that's useless most of the time because it offers no single target value, and have proposed making Water the starting AoE spam spell instead. It's not literally current White Mage 1:1, but doesn't seem like something you'd oppose to seeing as how you are fine with having a semi-occasional burst button in Phlegma. If you'd rather change it to something else, by all means you can shift its use to something else, but the triple Glare > Holy combo idea may be too much for the left path takers.

Right, but...

1) That doesn't help, because then we just have another useless in boss fights AOE button that we never touch in 90% of content, so that's no better, and,
2) That doesn't satisfy the "leave it alone" side since it's still trying to change things even while saying it's leaving it alone.

The point in having two paths seems to be that one would preserve the status quo while the other would be the changed version.

It would make sense for, at that point, Water to straight upgrade into Holy. If that's the objective here.