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

[TheDustyOne]

I'd agree with this if we were talking about its HEALS and a game like FFXI.

That is, imagine if FFXIV was a game where WHM was focused on casting Cure, Cure 2, Cure 3, Cure 4, and Regen all the time. In that sense, it would make sense to have a slow cast, turrety playstyle.

...but I suspect you aren't talking about that?

I'm talking both heals and DPS. The entire kit should be thematic to the job and not just disparate mish-mashes of abilities. Big, slow, turrety nukes where you build up to bigger, slower, more turrety nukes, and heals that are just as big, slow, and nukey.

In FFXIV every job is contributing to the downfall of a mob. And when no healing is needed, you attack to hasten that downfall. Some will baulk at that, but that's on them to accept how the game is designed rather than wishing it to be a completely different game. Current healer kits aren't compatible with what the rest of the game has designed, and it's easier to rework the kits than 10 years worth of content.

I also should note there's...not a lot of nuance to WAR.

The gap between worst and best in a job doesn't mean what you describe; it just means that it's far less punishing to mess up, even if it was harder to optimize. If anything that's what makes WAR the best representation of "easy to learn", because messing up WAR doesn't lead to the lower results of a messed up GNB. It also doesn't mean that somehow WHM is harder to optimize than WAR because the gap between the worst WHM and best WHM is bigger. What it could mean is that WHM is potentially too punishing when you have to rely on healing outside your oGCDs and Afflatus spells, the reason that isn't a problem however is because that's the nature of healing, you'll sacrifice your own DPS to help out the party, better to lose a Glare than to lose a party member. That discrepancy is going to be there as a sort of pre-requisite for healing jobs I think.

You're not going to convince anyone here that WHM is somehow harder than WAR outside maybe pressures of healing, but considering Tanxiety is also a thing, you're still not going to convince people that WHM is harder than WAR. Maybe on a complete optimization level where you remove as many GCD heals as possible (even that requires tanks being on point with their mitigation, which requires a well thought out mitigation plan), but in nearly all levels of play, it's still casting Glare over and over and over and over and over....

ForsakenRoe has proposed a WHM to you in the past where the difference between using the full DPS kit and only casting Glare would've been about 3%, that's an abysmally small difference even compared to the Warrior logs, and yet you rejected that for being too complex and/or punishing. Despite the fact that it would be less punishing than CURRENT WHM if you didn't want to use Dia and Assize. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that the discrepancy can be down to number tuning and job requirements rather than just skill differences, otherwise you may as well say that SMN is just as hard as NIN because they have a similar gap between least and best skilled.

The problem with using Thaliak compared to using Extreme or higher content is the large discrepancy between players; some can have near-afk levels of uptime and still clear, while others will sweaty-try-hard and minimize their healing to just oGCDs and Afflatus while using Misery under buffs. Extremes and Savages at least ask players to put in an effort to meet the requirements it sets; beat this enrage or wipe, heal past this check or wipe, mitigate this attack or wipe. Casual content doesn't ask this particularly often.