I just really wish they would have fullfilled their idea of "pure healer" when they announced it, for Shadowbringers was it? Instead the "pure healer" or "more traditional healer" or whatever it was, went into the completely opposite direction.

I was never the biggest fan of DPSing as a healer too much. I don't mind DPSing a little but if I am to do DPS 95% of the fight in high end fights, then the design of the healer in its core is utterly flawed as mentioned by OP. I dislike the idea of them giving us back DPS tools and making that more exciting because healing would still be bad. It doesn't fix the healer role. It just makes the wrong thing within it a little bit more bearable, instead of spamming 2 buttons, I alternate 4 buttons wooooo. And before anyone rolls their eyes and says "Do you want to do nothing and just cure spam?".
No but if you think that a more interesting DPS rotation for healer is what will fix healers, you're not really wanting to play a healer. You want to play a really easy to play DPS.

Healers need fixing from two sides, the encounter design and the jobs themselves need fixing.
The fight design needs to change, damage is way too low, way too slow, way too predictable. It just needs to be higher and WAY more frequent and come in many different forms. It also needs an element of randomness, not during highly coordination heavy mechanics but during downtime and mechanics that are easier and faster to execute. Tank damage should encourage healing more, I can tell you exactly how often I've healed a Tank in the current savage tier, including progression, just because of pure single target tank damage - twice. I use an Excog once at the start of E12S because it's essentially free until I need it again, not because it's required, and the Dog tankbuster actually requiring some attention from at least 1 healer, though thats only once because for the rest they'll have invulns, so don't even bother. Slap a crit excog on that tank and forget single target healing for the rest of the fight.

Healers themselves just need a lot more interactivity within their own healing toolkit. It's just press the button and forget it until it is back up. It also doesn't help that our main source of healing comes from CDs. Scholar hasn't gotten a single GCD heal since its release. CD's encourage weaving with DPS instant spells and the problem is, that it's the most optimal thing to do. Looking at E12S, I have used 4 Succors and 2 Adloqiums. I have spent about 14- seconds healing in a 9/10 minute fight. As a healer, I spent 14 seconds casting healing spells. Don't get me wrong, using stuff like Soil feels great, it makes a difference, it's strong, feels good, fits well with the SCH theme and it's nice if I get to use it. But the problem is that we have too many CDs, we spend so little time on healing and a lot of time on DPSing. Even as a WHM, my cohealer having 29 healing GCDs used and a whooping 153 DPS GCD spells in the same E12S run.
Not to mention the toolkit itself having either no interaction with the rest of the kit or having really terrible interaction. The only ones that are somewhat acceptable are Spread Adlo and Plenary indulgence because they require somewhat immediate reaction, they encourage (or more like their whole idea is to) use a healing spell before/after. It enables you to heal. Having recently played WoW, I was surprised at how little time I found to DPS and my toolkit itself having a lot of things to look out for, it's not just set and forget. One actions powers up the next, one action enables the next, an interesting loop is created. It felt great to heal because I got to heal, it was necessary and it felt good because my healing spells were interesting. I also can't weave DPS spells in that game, I am forced to heal, as a healer. Forcing a healer to heal is what the game devs should do. Instead they enable us to DPS and it is not a little bit of DPS.

And here is my next point. Healer DPS is way too high. I was only 1k behind my tanks in progression, on farm I did slightly more DPS than my tanks and these are 90%+ tanks. If my cohealer and I decided to not DPS at all, during a savage fight, we wouldn't be able to beat it. We would miss way too much DPS and the group won't be able to make up for that. The problem herein lies with the entire design philosophy. They said healers wont have to DPS to clear a fight. That is not true. As mentioned before, 26k-ish DPS is pretty hard to make up for in just a few seconds. This makes progging in fights like UWU UCOB or TEA absolute hell. The healing required is there until you realize how high it really is. Then you drop it. You adjust your CD's and then it's back to spamming DPS spells because ultimately, that is more important than healing. If YOU don't adjust your healing to be as little time consuming as possibe, you won't beat the fight. In fact, the healing part is a little fun even in prog in fights like TEA because you play it more safe, you get to use more of your healing spells, right, there is some diversity. The toolkit isn't great but it's better than 2 buttons doing the exact opposite of what you're meant to do. Until you internalize the damage and spend all your energy on DPSing again because if you don't, you won't beat the fight. It's ridiculous how rewarding it is to press 1 button. Really??? About as much damage as the tanks??? It's insane to me. The entire damage and healing part of FFXIV is a flawed mess. It's Chaos, a bad one, a frustrating one. Made even more frustrating by the fact that they've gone so long ignoring us, telling us to "try it out first" until the next "try it out first", not listening to player feedback in this very specific regard. Never really telling us that they're aware of the problems either. Just talk to us about this but they won't even do that. I'll keep playing Healer because I like keeping everyone going, I just wish the act of keeping everyone going was more than just ignoring 80% of my kit and mindlessly spamming 2 buttons. I remember telling my group that the hardest fight was E7S, the first two minutes. Because nothing happens and I have to spam Broil for 2 minutes straight, not falling asleep during that was the hardest mechanic in any fight. A more interesting DPS rotation woulda been cool, visually more interesting too maybeeee. But maybe, yknow, healing as a healer with an interactive toolkit would have been real fucking great during those 2 minutes. Alas.

/rant over