Why do healers feel like they get a punishment for getting better.

[Mortex]

The problem is they don’t promote healer dps but make it a necessary thing in ultimates and min itemlvl raids. There are some things square can do too make healer more fun it isn’t that hard, they just have to man up

And in that quote they need to stop making the game to easy for certain jobs. You can still clear fights with not 100 perfect gameplay or when your gear gets better after weeks. But making the jobs piss poor easy doesn’t help when you don’t have a skill ceiling as a player that wants to master his job.

[Saefinn]

And in that quote they need to stop making the game to easy for certain jobs. You can still clear fights with not 100 perfect gameplay or when your gear gets better after weeks. But making the jobs piss poor easy doesn’t help when you don’t have a skill ceiling as a player that wants to master his job.

I feel like the solution is very simple in principle and it kinda already existed and still kinda exists with DPS.

Difficulty tiers.

They could have balanced healers like this:
New Healer - Easy. This is to accommodate the current level of healing. This give an entry level for the skill floor. Makes healing as accessible as it is today. For those praising the current healing, this new healer could have encompassed what those people like about it.
White Mage - Easy to Mid. I considered old White Mage a good job to get started with, I would give back some of its stuff its lost so it has more variety as the new healer could take some of the edge off from the pressure of being accessible (though it still would be, because WHM has always been accessible)
Scholar - Mid to Hard. I would go as far as making it an evolution of the 2.0 experience, but that's me. It has been more strategic than WHM and historically SCH had a more planned approach, which can be harder to master.
Astrologian - Hard. Because it has hybrids of WHM and SCH and has more juggling and in some ways more versatile therefore has more to think about than WHM or SCH and also is more planned in approach. It could be appealing to keep it one of the more complex healers.

Some MMO's rank classes/jobs based on their difficulty level to play.

And whilst we're all sat here trying to think how they can accommodate all of the different approaches people have to healing jobs and what they get out of it. The whole point of having different jobs or classes is to accommodate those different approaches, rather than trying to think how /all/ of them can accommodate them.

[ParadoxHealer]

Healers are being treated as the pet class in this game; the changes made to the role and jobs and the way a portion of this population discuss the role have the attitude that healers should be structured to be easy for the masses rather a job/role that the individuals playing can enjoy and find challenging. Jobs that people previously loved were minimized and simplified for the masses; healers were punished for either not playing the way certain people felt they should or because the non-mains did not like the challenge.

The changes made to the different jobs were essentially to please a portion of the population that had complaints about what healers were doing. The majority of the posts discussing the changes make it clear that the complaints were NOT from healer mains but rather people who were playing other roles and did not like what healers were doing or people who forayed into healing to open all jobs or get fast queues. The boards are clear that the majority of AST mains did not "fish for balance" and saw utility in the variety of cards. People who mained SCH saw the options created by switching between Selene and EOS. People who mained WHM saw that appropriate DPS or stuns could be an option to assist healing. The people who mained healers enjoyed the differences in the classes and variety offered by the different structures of the three healing classes. Now, this attitude of "pure healers" and limiting DPS has made all three classes bland. The challenge of healing and the options for some diversity is gone; the classes feel drastically similar and do not hold the interest or challenge they previously did.