Quote Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry View Post
What I don't get is how they spent literally the entire expansion fine-tuning and perfecting SCH until it's the best healer in the game uncontested, yet WHM who had a horrible job mechanic that doesn't play to any of their strengths or benefits them in any significant way, and a trait that I'm almost convinced even SE forgot about with how utterly useless and unnoticeable it is has barely been touched.

I want to believe it's because they're overhauling them anyway so there's no point in touching things now, but that's me being optimistic. SE is stubborn and i can totally see them trying to double down on the awful Lily system rather than start over unfortunately.
I suspect because they stubbornly refuse to balance around how we actually play the game. As a more aggressive healer who spends little time DPSing, WHM would look pretty decent. It's also arguably the best dungeon healer. And we know they like balancing around dungeons for whatever asinine reason. Basically, WHM's flaws aren't emphasised enough outside a raid environment. DRK is another example of this. Look how quickly they backpedaled because the WF UcoB group ran DRK/PLD. Meanwhile, 4.0 SCH was more or less worthless in dungeons and wasn't exactly stellar in eight man content either.

The one hope WHM has right now is how utterly dominate AST became in Alphascape. Even JP has been favoring it over WHM, and they're notoriously less meta centric. That being said, the devs need to make a choice regarding WHM:

1) Fully commit to the raw healer identity, letting it practically solo heal—therein by making up for its lack of utility through potentially allowing five DPS comps
2) Give it proper utility; Bravery/Cheer come to mind. A 5-8% aoe Balance equivalent but no RNG. Something which allows it to compete with SCH/AST in the buff department. Unless*

Much as I want WHM to go the utility route. I won't deny the idea of a truly dedicated healer would be interesting. Of course, I don't know how much I trust SE balancing such a concept. But they have to pick one come 5.0 otherwise WHM will once again die.

*With that all said, I actually want Balance changed to Direct Hit. One of the significant factors in the meta wars as a whole is how Balance is undeniably the best card. If it were moved to secondary stats exclusively, except Bole, it'd have far less an impact. Food for thought, I suppose.