Did people even ask for changes to AST, like they do / did for MNK and MCH?

[Semirhage]

It's more to do with people accepting White Mage as the lesser of three evils. While equally flawed in its tediousness. White Mage's simplicity works better because that's always been the overall focus of the job. Scholar, meanwhile, lost a huge amount of its identity as the more DPS focused healers that managed a pet. While Astro had its whole card system revamped—a change many players still hate.

Oh I get that- I'm just trying to tease the premises behind one of the prevailing opinions around here to their logical conclusion. So we have the boring simple healer and the two complex healers. The complex healers became boring and simple too. What makes me roll my eyes is the suggestion that we return the two more complex healers to their former glory, but starting from the boring and simple 5.x is good enough for the WHMs. Making it less boring is a task to be solved going forward. Or something. Which I think is partially highlighted here:

This is the first time since Creator White Mage is actually valued beyond being the "prog healer." Last expansion, you were pretty much expected to play Astro even in mid-core statics not only due to FFlogs but because Astro was objectively better in nearly every category.

Excellent! Finally a place outside being a throwaway progression healer. I don't think this is a point in 5.x WHM's favor. It's because the two perenially overpowered healers got hit by a bus. I guess the flaw I see here is that A) making SCH and AST overpowered "good at everything" healers again, while also B) keeping WHM as Babby's First Healer who's only good at direct damage and direct healing are two concepts that to me smell like they inevitably lead to...well, a healing landscape where WHM is the job that gets trashcanned by the two that are just better in every way. Again.

I'd like all three healers to get a deluxe spa treatment and emerge in 6.0 as fun, smooth, and great jobs. What I disagree with is the implicit claim that "the significantly simpler healer" versus "the complex healers" is a tractable problem that we'll just iron out in design details. I think pigeonholing WHM in the "braindead simple healer" category is exactly the cause of its tedium and chronic underpowered state, and trying to "bring it up" to the other two while also enforcing this "pressing more than three buttons is too hard" identity on it is only going to end in exactly what happened in Stormblood. But hey, at least ASTs and SCHs were having fun then.