but the goal is a noble one: total job balance across the board and 100% viability no matter how difficult the content is.
Looks at PLD and WAR at the start of this tier
Looks at WHM at the start of last tier
Actually, looks at WHM any point after week 8 when AST SCH invariably ends up the 'meta' again because of the raidbuffs

We are down to one dot, one nuke, maybe one extra thing like Assize. And they STILL can't balance WHM vs AST because they're inherently not comparable. How much more needs to be sacrificed to make the classes 'balanced'? Do we need to remove the DOT too? And yet somehow, despite having different raidbuffs, or none at all, the DPS output of the melee is more closely balanced. Looking at 'overall across the tier, 95th percentile' on the verboten site, the difference between the top melee (DRG) and the bottom (SAM) is about 300 dps. Comparing the healers, the difference between top (SCH) and bottom (SGE) is also 300.

'So what's the problem, that's the same difference!'

The problem is that the DPS are doing twice as much damage as the healers, so the difference between their top and bottom as a percentage of their total output is lower. In essence, despite being 'the same integer value', the difference between the two healers is actually TWICE as large as the melee! Bearing in mind the melee have much more intricate rotations, Raidbuffs vs not, different positional bonus strength, etc, I think we can safely say that the presence of raidbuffs, or the intricacy of the rotation, should not and/or does not have a significant impact on the amount of output a player can get from a class. Or if it DOES, it's the LACK of damage rotation that's causing the wider gulf, which would be the opposite of their intended outcome, either way the question remains:

Why do the healers need to keep getting lobotomized for the sake of 'balance', when we can see that it's clearly not working? Why not, instead of kneecapping AST way back when, increase the power of WHM to be more competitive?