Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Sebazy]

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Agreed, the issue here is that the overwhelming majority of group content asks so little of healers. You have to go right the way back to 2.0 and Amdapor Keep bosses to find a noteworthy DPS check in a dungeon. And whilst we've seen a few more HPS checks on certain big pulls, they are still far and few between, not to mention random and erratic enough that it's understandable if it spooks a new healer that likely had no idea that a difficulty spike was about to run them over. Why does the first pull in a completely random and innocuous looking dungeon hit harder than almost any dungeon boss in the game? It's absolutely laughable.

It's no surprise that new healers hit the end game with literally no idea of what to expect or what the game is about to ask of them once they move up to Extremes unless they've been watching guides or speaking with peers. 2.0 did an excellent job of using dungeons to prepare people for the endgame. But they've turned into HP sponges pretty much ever since Pharos got nerfed hard.

With regards to adding more engaging gameplay for healers. It still absolutely boggles my mind to this day that SE didn't take AST and give it the ability to feed it's potency into someone (or something) else rather than nuke directly. Generate cards with GCDs. Add some diminishing returns on the card buffs so the AST can't just autopilot everything on one person. Experiment switching to flat potency rather than percentages, perhaps even a mix of the two to spice things up. Allow them to throw cards at Earthly Star for AoE buffs to add more depth. There's so many novel directions SE could go with this.

But instead we get 1 nuke, 1 dot.

[RopeDrink]

Agreed, the issue here is that the overwhelming majority of group content asks so little of healers. You have to go right the way back to 2.0 and Amdapor Keep bosses to find a noteworthy DPS check in a dungeon. And whilst we've seen a few more HPS checks on certain big pulls, they are still far and few between, not to mention random and erratic enough that it's understandable if it spooks a new healer that likely had no idea that a difficulty spike was about to run them over. Why does the first pull in a completely random and innocuous looking dungeon hit harder than almost any dungeon boss in the game? It's absolutely laughable.

It's no surprise that new healers hit the end game with literally no idea of what to expect or what the game is about to ask of them once they move up to Extremes unless they've been watching guides or speaking with peers. 2.0 did an excellent job of using dungeons to prepare people for the endgame. But they've turned into HP sponges pretty much ever since Pharos got nerfed hard.

With regards to adding more engaging gameplay for healers. It still absolutely boggles my mind to this day that SE didn't take AST and give it the ability to feed it's potency into someone (or something) else rather than nuke directly. Generate cards with GCDs. Add some diminishing returns on the card buffs so the AST can't just autopilot everything on one person. Experiment switching to flat potency rather than percentages, perhaps even a mix of the two to spice things up. Allow them to throw cards at Earthly Star for AoE buffs to add more depth. There's so many novel directions SE could go with this.

But instead we get 1 nuke, 1 dot.

I'm one of the few who enjoyed Cleric Stance because it emphasized the need to differentiate between downtime and healing requirement, often showing who knew fights like the back of their hand and who was uncomfortable in their role, and could offer the odd heart-skip to keep you awake (despite orbiting around reactive moments in the game, eg. a DPS eating an otherwise avoidable mechanic). Alas, this just compounds the present-day problem -- because if we still had Cleric Stance, the unincentivized simply wouldn't use it, and I recall a lot of them using it as a beat-stick to justify their lack of desire to press an aggressive button.

As such, it was eventually removed, and the simplification continued, with nothing being added in return to counter-balance it. I tried AST - back when it actually had the mini-game of card management, which has since turned into all cards doing the exact same thing. I remember when each Scholar pet was unique in their own way and could even be targeted, much like Hunter pets in WoW, which are now basically background noise beyond having to summon one before you start your duty. White Mage was the one that constantly remained in a very similar place, even when the Lily system was added, which is simply fuel towards an occasional AoE nuke to replace the lack of second DoT.

Again, I'm one of the few who enjoy healing even in this state (as my fun doesn't rotate around how the Healer actually functions), but I can see why people complain, and I have no hope of this changing overmuch for the foreseeable future due to the very one-directional way Square has handled it for the past few years -- but I would be happy if they at least started to incentivize pushing beyond the basic requirement. Thus far, the only thing telling new players that they should occasionally do a little damage during downtime is a bit of dialogue during the Adventurer's Guild role-trials at the start of the game which nobody actually does unless they want the "Brand New" gear.

EDIT:
Bear in mind that me saying I liked CS doesn't imply I think it was good or that it should come back.