WHM getting progressively more unnecessary in content?

[Yeol]

Except this is exactly what AST is. It can heal as good as a WHM, mitigate better (even in diurnal), can reliably DPS more and offers great utility.
This is everything a healer is capable of. And it can do it all.

Also I know a popular argument is that WHM si a simpler healer, but this is really not true. Just like Monk not doing that much more DPS than a DRG, WHM doesn't heal so well that it achieves something an AST cannot.
If WHM heals were so strong it completely simplified mechanics and raid damage that would be different, but 90% of the time they heal about as much as an AST does, with the difference in healing power only being shown on paper, not in use.

I've already said AST is the WAR of healers now.
WAR can hold aggro, DPs and self heal efficiently (He can do it all).

Doesn't mean WAR and AST should be changed. Not many people play them to their full potentials, but they can make wonders when played well. Nor does it mean other jobs should be brought to their level.

WHM is only missing MP recovery. That is the only thing that will really fix them.
AST and SCH have no MP issue compared to WHM. Give WHM a better way to get MP back and they will be healing+dpsing, then no one would mind having them.

[VanilleFang]

WHM is only missing MP recovery.

No, WHM is also missing utility. Look at everything unique the healers can do outside healing or dealing damage. AST has Disable and Cards. SCH has enhanced E4E and Virus, and Sacred Soil. WHM has... Nothing. This isn't even including fairy buffs or shields. Give me am example of something a WHM brings to a party that the others don't and I may change my opinion.

[bswpayton]

No, WHM is also missing utility. Look at everything unique the healers can do outside healing or dealing damage. AST has Disable and Cards. SCH has enhanced E4E and Virus, and Sacred Soil. WHM has... Nothing. This isn't even including fairy buffs or shields. Give me am example of something a WHM brings to a party that the others don't and I may change my opinion.

But why does it need it the job of a healer is to make sure nobody dies and the party doesnt whip and do some dps and whms can do that with ease

[VanilleFang]

But why does it need it

Because the other two healers can heal and DPS just fine as well. Why would anyone take a WHM if an AST of equal skill is available?

[Yeol]

No, WHM is also missing utility. Look at everything unique the healers can do outside healing or dealing damage. AST has Disable and Cards. SCH has enhanced E4E and Virus, and Sacred Soil. WHM has... Nothing. This isn't even including fairy buffs or shields. Give me am example of something a WHM brings to a party that the others don't and I may change my opinion.

Not every job in this game must have utility.

[Cynfael]

Not every job in this game must have utility.

True, but since utility is in demand, the trade-off needs to be excellence in another area.

WHM's potential issue is that not only do we not really need more of what the job is really good at (straight-up HPS), it doesn't come with many bells and whistles compared to its peers aside from impressive AoE burst damage, which is more of a nice bonus for dungeon trash than anything else.

Just being a good healer isn't really enough to distinguish WHM anymore. I think it will continue to be perfectly functional for all content, but it would be disappointing to see it fall into its own vanilla healer ghetto now that the other two healing jobs encroach on what used to be its unique strengths. The dynamic between SCH and WHM in 2.x was more clearly defined IMO, with WHM being desirable for the ease of burst raid healing that the SCH could not provide, but with the addition of a third healing job, SE is now going with the approach that all three should be viable for all healing needs. I think that was a good idea in general, but WHM being great at healing doesn't seem to be as strong a selling point as it used to be.

[Cynfael]

bswpayton, it's not my intention to be critical here, but you might want to finish leveling your AST and SCH before you get too attached to an opinion. It's not really fair to compare WHM at 60 with their added suite of instant heals and buffed-up burst damage capability (i.e. what they had been lacking compared to SCH prior to 3.x) to your sub-60 healer jobs.

You might also consider that you are better at playing WHM at this point than you are at playing AST or SCH, which wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption. You don't want to base your opinion of any job on what you see other players do with it, because for all we on the forums talk about the healer role as being fairly straightforward, there are a lot of players who are not very good with healers, period.

WHM has no pet skills or placement to manage, no stacks, no card buffs, no metabuffs, nothing to really manage aside from enmity and MP, so the role is very appealing to those starting out as a healer, and IMO it's easier to learn as a raid healer since the job has basically no mechanics to keep track of. SCHs in a raid do actually need to know how to heal beyond having their fairy summoned, and sometimes you meet SCHs who are clearly accustomed to being auto-follow dungeon baggage and don't manage shields or aetherflow stack usage intelligently. Also, you run into ASTs who constantly forget to use their card buffs or do stupid things like keeping Ewer on Spread for god-knows-what-reason. If a WHM can cast Cure I/II on the MT and Medica I/II when the raid takes damage, they're kind of functional, and that's a pretty low bar.

I'll still take the bad SCH in a dungeon, but bad WHMs tend to squeak by in raids because they can usually slide under the radar as long as they are not blatantly neglecting to act.

[bswpayton]

bswpayton, it's not .

But Im not really basing this off of my own game play exp , I just hit 50 on my astro yesterday so yes i have two in the 50s and one thats level 60. Im going from my tanking experiences, and me playing dps and seeing more scholars doing poorly than the other two healers. Doing extreme primals and seeing almost always the scholar is the first to die before they get a revive or something. What the op mention is she doesnt want whm to be reduced to a dungeon healer well thats what the number one content in the game is but thats beside the point, but from what I have seen a scholar isnt a good solo healer when hp gets low compared to what the others can do like I mention earlier, the raid scene is niche its numbers floating around here on the forums somewhere its post asking why people dont raid. To base whether a job is good or not on something that is so niche just doesnt make any sense to me and prob never will. And I didnt take offense either about you being critical this is a forum ha so its perfectly fine to do that here.

[Rawrz]

But Im not really basing this off of my own game play exp , I just hit 50 on my astro yesterday so yes i have two in the 50s and one thats level 60. Im going from my tanking experiences, and me playing dps and seeing more scholars doing poorly than the other two healers. Doing extreme primals and seeing almost always the scholar is the first to die before they get a revive or something. What the op mention is she doesnt want whm to be reduced to a dungeon healer well thats what the number one content in the game is but thats beside the point, but from what I have seen a scholar isnt a good solo healer when hp gets low compared to what the others can do like I mention earlier, the raid scene is niche its numbers floating around here on the forums somewhere its post asking why people dont raid. To base whether a job is good or not on something that is so niche just doesnt make any sense to me and prob never will. And I didnt take offense either about you being critical this is a forum ha so its perfectly fine to do that here.

Scholar does great solo healing. It always has an extra set of eyes to watch for HP drops. Scholars, like all healers, excel when they know the content. When they can strategize and plan. They have the extra benefit of mitigation, so they can literally heal the party from the past, spending a GCD before it happens, to spend less gcds after or to reach healing outputs they could not have otherwise.

Scholars are constantly asking themselves, can the fairy handle this? When can she not handle this? When should I step in? Should I OGCD heal or does it need shields? An example would be sophia EX. Shes actually really easy to solo heal as an SCH.

Succor during the tilt phase for free healing without loss of DPS. Cintami is happening. 1 of 3 choices.

1) Virus and Fey Cov it. No healing necessary outside of the free succor from tilt. Whispering dawn to fill HP back up at no cost to you.
2) Indom it. Literally all you need to survive. After this first cintami, weave an indom.
3) Fey Illu + ET + Succor or just plain succor. Doesn't matter.
4) Sacred Soil and done. Youll be cutting it close, but if everyone has decent HP and no vuln theyll be fine. Works amazingly if divine veil or dragon kick is up.

I do these things while cohealing and die a little when I see a WHM or AST spamming medica/helios. I've literally already taken care of the massive raid wide aoes and now you're overhealing and wasting your GCDs. Scholars are very stingy about their GCDs.

Next comes the tank buster. Guess what? You don't even have to heal that! You know why? You're a scholar and you're great at identifying when someones doesn't need healed! Adlo if the tanks are bad at CDs or if they have 2+ vuln stacks. They are just going to tank swap and you're going to command Eos/Selene to heal that tank up.

Had an AST the other week in a pug that couldn't heal Faust Z even with me popping Sacred soil, indom, lustrates, virus and spreading Adlo on top of fairy management. They thought it was my fault that we couldn't beat faust, because we kept wiping, even though the AST did 0 DPS. Ive since solo healed faust every week and can still manage to get an opener off + final stretch for some DPS as a Scholar. Our WHM has so much fun out DPSing our PLD. Its all about how you play your class. That AST had amazing tools like Disable and Synastry, that they never used. You just haven't noticed your good SCHs.

[Cynfael]

Basically everything that Rawrz just said.

To reiterate, I recommend forming your opinion based on your personal experience with healer jobs at the same level; if you judge based on how other players do, you will not get the real picture. There are simply too many players out there setting poor examples, and they are steering you wrong if you think that SCH or AST are at all lacking right now.

There are legitimate reasons why some WHM players are expressing concern over how the other two healing jobs are steadily encroaching on their niche. I don't think that WHM needs massive buffs or an overhaul, but I do think that WHM needs to be examined for tweaks in light of the fact that they are no longer the only healer that brings multiple regen effects to the table (their old niche vs. SCH's regen effect being tied to Eos) and that raw HPS is not necessary or desirable beyond what is needed to clear duties. WHM works just fine, but IMO the job has lost a little bit of what makes it unique aside from having the easiest kit.