Things currently wrong with frontlines that the community would like to see fixed

[Cidel]

snip

See, by your logic, "whichever [healer] has the best ability to fulfill their specific role (an excellent tank and healer combo) is the one that would widely be considered the best," we're back at square one because it's already been established in other threads and by Kyani here that AST's balance in that department is fairly skewed in favor of survivability (tank) over heals. I'm aware that healers often need to take on the role of tanks in PvP; but that's not the case all the time and if being focused on isn't part of the equation, they have to work harder to (and more often than the other 2 healers, are unable to) keep up with party-wide damage, especially if they have chosen the tank stance (Noct) over healing (Diurnal). If you're going to try to continue arguing that AST will keep up with the other 2 (as equally skilled) healers on keeping more than one person alive, I really don't know what kind of matches you're selectively remembering.

...and doesn't have to worry about micro-managing a fairy which runs all over the place.

micro-managing the fairy gives SCHs their high skill floor for their(rewardingly) high skill ceiling. Just because that aspect is there doesn't make them any less a powerful healer when its done right.

But anyway, I'm not going to go on about SCH vs AST here. The latest "FL tier list" (supposedly joke)thread already had some healer strength discussion in there.

Edit: didn't even read the stuff on the 3rd page. Kyani has a good write-up on what SCH is capable of.