Is it fun?

[Grimoire-M]

This part of the healer's kit needs to be changed. Even if it was just 2-3 different DPS skills that we could cobble together for a rotation of sorts would be nice (like an insta cast damage spell on WHM to alternate between that and Glare with the occasional Dia getting thrown in instead of the insta cast damage spell), cause this entire thing just sucks. The WHM Holy Spam I don't mind so much as that's riding the line between DPSing and healing well enough that it makes the pulls be interesting enough.

Agreed, but the devil is in ‘how’ we go about this. Average tank mains complain about having three different WAR clones and a Gunbreaker when it comes their overall rotation structure, and GCD wise that is what holds true. No one’s pretending that they don’t have intricacies, just not enough differences, much the same as healer DPS currently.

My proposal would be to add differences between Scholar and White Mage that make their damage rotations feel distinct while Astrologian leans into cards more, but I would also note that some tangentially related issues that their DPS kits should also be solved. The things that White Mage currently lacks are Movement options, and 2-Minute burst to synergize with Astrologian and Scholar’s raid DPS cool downs. By contrast, Scholar’s Energy Drain, Ruin II, and Dissipation are all in bad spots but mostly serve DPS related purposes when utilized well, and mostly need tuning. What Scholars want is aspects of Arcanist they used to have (Bane, DoTs) back, and something extra on the DPS side to weave alongside healing cool downs would be appreciated. Scholar and White Mage are also most commonly differentiated as the oGCD and GCD healer respectively, so there is room to continue that precedent on the DPS side.

Worth chewing on those notes when coming up with any suggestions you may have in mind.

[Almagnus1]

My proposal would be to add differences between Scholar and White Mage that make their damage rotations feel distinct

And how exactly do you suggest to do that?

The things that White Mage currently lacks are Movement options

If you haven't mastered the cast and scoot movement.....

[Rilifane]

If you haven't mastered the cast and scoot movement.....

I'd like to see you keep perfect uptime by slidecasting alone. While this works for some dungeon bosses it's completely impossible in ex/ savage.
Everyone can slidecast, that's baseline mobility; same with dot. But boss fights are not designed in a way that everyone can easily keep uptime and cover all movement with slidecasting alone. AST has fastcasts for free weaves and mobility and LS, both completely dps neutral and SCH has up to 3 ED Ruin II per minute which are a slight dps gain.
WHM doesn't have a single dps neutral movement option unless you can dump at least 1 lily during a transition. Lilies also compete for healing, movement and weaving which further limits their use for on demand movement/ weaving.
A good AST co heal can somewhat compensate for that weakness by carrying enough healing to free up lilies for movement/ weaving instead of relying on them for actual healing. But designing a healer around getting heal-carried by another healer is poor design.

[Almagnus1]

I'd like to see you keep perfect uptime by slidecasting alone. While this works for some dungeon bosses it's completely impossible in ex/ savage.
Everyone can slidecast, that's baseline mobility; same with dot. But boss fights are not designed in a way that everyone can easily keep uptime and cover all movement with slidecasting alone. AST has fastcasts for free weaves and mobility and LS, both completely dps neutral and SCH has up to 3 ED Ruin II per minute which are a slight dps gain.
WHM doesn't have a single dps neutral movement option unless you can dump at least 1 lily during a transition. Lilies also compete for healing, movement and weaving which further limits their use for on demand movement/ weaving.
A good AST co heal can somewhat compensate for that weakness by carrying enough healing to free up lilies for movement/ weaving instead of relying on them for actual healing. But designing a healer around getting heal-carried by another healer is poor design.

I think the bigger problem here is that SE wants a pure healer... the playerbase hasn't played any of the healing classes as a pure healer since like ARR (even then, Green DPS was a thing if you were good at juggling Cleric Stance). Probably the best way forward is to follow the example set forth by Assize (except drop the mana regen from the other DPS skills) and attach either an AoE flat heal AoE HoT to them all so the healers are healing while they DPS which will lessen the need for their pure healing skills. That way SE can create a more interesting DPS rotation as the healers don't stop healing while focusing on DPS.

The playerbase has basically said healers are green DPS, it'd be nice if SE had the class design follow what the playerbase wants.

[ItMe]

The playerbase has basically said healers are green DPS,

Have we?
What, just because most content has straight minutes of downtime where you don't need to heal?
Our MP tools are good enough that we don't need to worry about attacks emptying our MP, so there's no real reason to stand around bored.

[Semirhage]

I think the bigger problem here is that SE wants a pure healer... the playerbase hasn't played any of the healing classes as a pure healer since like ARR (even then, Green DPS was a thing if you were good at juggling Cleric Stance). Probably the best way forward is to follow the example set forth by Assize (except drop the mana regen from the other DPS skills) and attach either an AoE flat heal AoE HoT to them all so the healers are healing while they DPS which will lessen the need for their pure healing skills. That way SE can create a more interesting DPS rotation as the healers don't stop healing while focusing on DPS.

The playerbase has basically said healers are green DPS, it'd be nice if SE had the class design follow what the playerbase wants.

I wouldn't even say Green DPS necessarily what the playerbase wants (though I'm in that camp. I think it's way more interesting than straight heal spamming). It's what their game design encourages. They can wax on and on about "pure healing" as much as they want. The low healing requirements, the huge gaps of time between unavoidable damage, the nonexistence of any other options to focus on when everyone's at full HP, the tight enrages, the fact that higher party damage output is a good thing 99.99% of the time...it all dances around healers doing damage as the clear answer to those facts. Someone on the design team really got attrition healing into their craw and thinks XIV's healers need to be designed with that model in mind, but it ain't gonna happen. The GCD is too long for consistent crazy clutch healing. There's no concept of MP management within the GCD healing kits; you need to be able to choose your heals based on efficiency for that, and the functionally equivalent GCD heals in this game are differentiated largely by time and AOE size efficiency, not mana. Which is a knock-on effect from the fact that the GCD is so long: time becomes the most important deciding factor in a lot of cases. They want the game to be widely accessible, but to do that you need to minimize the unfortunate consequences of getting a bad healer, which is almost the polar opposite of what you want to make skilled attrition healing a thing.

It's as if they really want a job that's good at applying Water Resistance Down to enemies. And we keep telling them that's completely worthless in the game they've designed, but Water Resist Down is just the best idea ever guys, really.

[Anhra]

For both SCH and AST, it would be great if they had their damaging abilities reworked from the ground up, and with reworked, i mean, thrown in the Bin and instead, having something entirely new.

In Scholars case, the Job could have it's main focus on multiple DoT abilities and skills that influence it, like being able to reset the timer of active DoTs or make certain ones "explode" for their full duration instantly.

as for AST, i would suggest to have the card system reworked into what it used to be: every card having a different effect. One of said cards for example, could allow AST to allow the next single target spell to become a AOE or vice versa (iirc, 1.0 had a similar mechanic for casters, which could simple be recycled for this). AST's card system has great potential to create a really complex and unique healer and it is a shame that neither Squeenix or a good part of the Community doesn't wish for that to happen.

[Rilifane]

From what I've seen ingame and here we seem to have a fairly even split between people wanting to go full green dps and people wanting pure healers.
The problem is that I don't think the latter knows what they're asking for. Pure healing is demanding, even if by "pure" we're only talking about 50-60% healing uptime instead of the more extreme 70-80% some games had. If someone is really good at keeping uptime they spent half their active time healing but that's most likely a veteran player that knows the ins and outs of their class. For someone playing at a more average level that means they already spend the majority of their active time healing and any sort of emergency or mishap will likely result in falling behind in healing which tends to be difficult to recover from.
And with the amount of healers that are overwhelmed and panic the moment something unexpected happens, DF would be a wipefest.
Even ignoring that pretty much the entire combat system would need an overhaul for this to work, SE has made it very clear that they place huge emphasis on accessebility. And turning healers into pure healers that spend at least half their time healing after being coddled for years isn't something they'll do.
That ship had sailed years ago.
The current design can only support green dps, wether people like it or not.

[ItMe]

Pure healing is demanding, even if by "pure" we're only talking about 50-60% healing uptime instead of the more extreme 70-80% some games had.

Damn that sounds wild!
What MMO(s) had 70-80% healing uptime?

[Grimoire-M]

Damn that sounds wild!
What MMO(s) had 70-80% healing uptime?

Arguably every single old-school MMO did if you count mid-fight MP resting as part of the strategy. A good number of korean MMOs (RO and similar) also just let you go hogwild on spam once you reach certain breakpoints and expect you to do so if you want to deal with some of the BS the harder content offers until you outgear it. Buffing was still king in most of them.