Quote Originally Posted by Mychael View Post
I should add, though, that in the situation I described above with DNC, you could make up for the deficit by having TWO such jobs in your party--i.e. two half-healers, half-damage dealers make one damage dealer and one healer.

I'm not absolutely against adding more healers (though I seem to be), I'm just afraid that healing classes are more susceptible (than DPS or tanks) to becoming obselete to minimally-better options. I'm probably just paranoid, but I'll stay that way.
Two mediocre hybrids don't make up for a solid healer or solid DPS on the field. It looks good only on paper.

If you're using the mess with WHM in FFXI as your reference, the problem was more due to lack of staying power and a wonky formula with which to calculate heals. Pre-abyssea, SCH and RDM could easily outlast a WHM between Sublimation and Refresh. Two jobs that could restore their MP vs a job that could not. Secondly is the cure formula, which was recently revamped because unlike nukes and melee DPS, which had stat penalties, healing since the game came to the US did not. As WHM in XI was pretty much the only real healer, it was ludicrous that they were not the best and most efficient at healing, and the devs noticed that and changed things (several years too late).

Sharing the role of healer with other jobs is not what can hurt WHM. It is when other jobs have something that should come baseline like staying power and WHM lacks it that they get kicked to the curb.