How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[ty_taurus]

Fair enough.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that no two Jobs will ever be identical. SGE and SCH are probably the closest in the game (in terms of damage), but Pneuma/Plegma/Toxicon and Ruin2/Energy Drain are still not the same. Or of one prefers WHM/AST, Dia and Combust are different, Gravity and Holy are different, Earthly Star and Assize are different, and PoM and...what, Astrodyne?...are different, and Lilybell does no damage and isn't on the GCD. When people are saying comparable to, they don't mean an exact copy of (so I've been told).

On the part about not wanting an exact copy, yes. If someone genuinely wanted a job like White Mage to play exactly like another job, such as Warrior, or Black Mage, or whatever, then they would say "Just give White Mage X job's rotation." Saying "I want White Mage to be more like x job" can be interpreted as more like it literally, which to be fair can be confusing, particularly for someone new looking in on the conversation, but other ways that sentiment has been said is also something like "comparable to" or "feel like" in regards to the general level of complexity. Generally speaking, at least when I make those statements, I believe I also expand upon what I mean in the rest of the post more often than not. Because this is a conversation that has gone on for a long time, though, there are also times where I might be referencing it from a past conversation and not fully explaining it, which does get weird in a forum environment because not everyone is a part of every conversation, or even remembers past conversations.

The example I shared earlier was a more literal copy, but that was to help reflect the part of Warrior's complexity that White Mage lacks. You could do plenty of different things to replace that singular concept, but my point was ultimately that there is a hole in White Mage's DPS gameplay that prevents it from being on Warrior's level, because Afflatus Solace and Rapture are not comparable to Fell Cleave both in use-cases and even in use volume, and there is no sense of gradual generation of resources that you can play around with regarding certain cooldowns. Warrior can disable the cost of Fell Cleave, and can generate more resources for Fell Cleave with external actions. White Mage cannot do that. My example is directly reflecting the part of Warrior's kit it doesn't have to point that out, but it's not a request of mine, and as I've said before, I think Paladin is a better tank for White Mage to take inspiration from than Warrior.

In regards to Scholar and Sage, I'm reminded a lot of the whole Super Smash Bros Captain Falcon/Ganondorf situation. Super Smash Bros Melee introduced several characters that nowerdays would be referred to as "semi-clones" where a new character seems to reuse many of the same animations and abilities from an existing character, but their moves have different properties, so while they're not exactly the same, the feel very similiar, especially at a casual level. One such example is the main villain of Legend of Zelda, Ganondorf, who is a semi-clone of Captain Falcon, a character from a sci-fi racing game. This is something that has historically been criticized by Smash players, and is something fans of Ganondorf have always been upset with to some degree. Over time, they have made small adjustments that have edged Ganondorf further away from Captain Falcon, but they still operate on many of the same core elements even today in Smash Ultimate.

Here's a comparison from Melee.
Here's a comparison from Ultimate.

It feels like the most probably outcome for Sage will be how this change has developed for Ganondorf, slowly getting a few more elements unique to it, but overall feeling like the same skeleton of a job for years to come.