Tinfoil Hat Time! A new Lens to Look at Healer Changes!

[Ruzha]

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

[EaMett]

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

I mean. It's part way in your answer. Balance through homogenization is a bad design move in general (baring some types of games). It most definitely wasn't the best move they could make so it's born either from a desire to fix things quickly (less work, cheaper costs) or is the result of not understanding healers / imposing for some meta concept.