Pre-50 content isn't much of a challenge these days. Trust me, you won't get away with DPSing 95% (or anywhere near that) of the time on White Mage for a lot of endgame stuff. I won't say it's the most sophisticated of tasks once you get into the swing of things, but I'm not sure making it overly complicated to keep people alive would be a good thing. I find it to be a comfortable middle ground: Enough stuff to toy with, but not so much that you can't keep it easily managed. That goes for most of the jobs. If you want a ton of complexity, it may not be the game for you.

I came to this game from playing Final Fantasy XI. I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn't always have a ton of things you could do in your downtime. XIV fills those gaps; there's plenty of stuff I can do on my own or with non-party members.