now that I have blood lily and Afflatus Rapture, White Mage actually makes sense now! that and the significant aesthetic upgrade from Glare and Dia makes it on par with all the other healers for me
so now my personal preference ranking is probably more like Sage > Scholar / White Mage / Astrologian, with a fair amount of wiggle room depending on what flavor of healing I feel like doing for the day
hear a lot of people complain about FFXIV's healer design but tbh I really really like all of them, easily my favorite jobs mechanically. especially with Scholar/Sage, I really like having to combine your heals to get the most out of them, in anticipation of mechanics, rather than "use these skills as often as possible in this order" that feels like what DPS jobs more often than not boil down to. tanking is still my favorite role, but I'm kind of meh about how FFXIV does tanks - they feel like DPS with tank stance and some mostly-passive mitigations slapped on. (I play elementalist in GW2, so my standards for how much active anticipation / mitigation / improv ability parkour you need to do are very very high.)
that said, I've yet to raid savage or do an extreme synced, so maybe my opinion will change! (I've also only played Dark Knight and Gunbreaker on the tank side so far - partner recommended I try Warrior, so we'll see how that treats me!)
(fallen london stamps by