I actually think this is a good way of looking at it, and I can agree with much of it.

My biggest problem with WHM was never it's "pure heals" style. WHM does incredible damage already with its 3 Aeros and Stone 3, but when you ran out of mana Shroud didn't last as long as LA for AST. Assize helped but it's cool down was too long to make up for how much mana Stone 3 would eat and healing would take.

The big issue with WHM for me isn't that it's "just heals". It's that if the content is easy enough you don't need big heals, and the built in mana management is so poor you can't spam DPS, then yeah WHM does seem boring and kinda useless.

You can make content harder or you can make mana way more manageable and let them throw more DPS. Now that WHMs can manage mana they can add a lot to DPS AND keep the party alive with those insane good heals. It's not as fancy as SCH/AST utility but the changes they made probably also put WHM back where it was before AST.