Why does SMN have Physick?

[purgatori]

They did mention they want to split the two jobs completely. It just hasn't happened yet.

I'm glad they haven't yet. I wanted to level a healer so I could do the role quests in ShB and having SMN along as a bonus was really nice, especially given that I came to really enjoy how the job plays, and I think it will in fact end up replacing RDM as my magical DPS.

That aside, yes, physick is bafflingly useless. I wasn't entirely convinced of this before picking up the job; I thought, "it has to have some utility, right?" But no. It's just there.