Told you we'd get screwed.

[Saefinn]

that can be true, but can it really be higher than tanks when healers suck so bad?

if you look at MH Item Level distribution, WHM is the highest among ALL jobs

SCH and AST are somewhere near middle but still higher than some DPS jobs

I know the part reason healers have higher average MH item level is because there're only 3 jobs, and I'm not saying healers don't deserve to change

What I want to say is current healers, despite we dislike it, actually appeal to larger player base

As long as healer population remain as it is now, or even go higher in EW, it's less likely that the healer design get changed.

From opinion polls I've seen, SCH has always been very low with AST also being low, but higher than SCH and WHM in a better place. WHM is simple and fluid and there's a demographic for that, even if I think there is some room to still satisfy those bored with it.

I don't think using how many people are playing healers or are maining healers as a good metric for how people feel about them. Because some people are healers at heart, healing is their comfort zones, they may be healers for their static or in their friend groups and so on, so these are all factors that will skew results. Like if you take me, my group has 3 people who are healer players, two of us find we're not having a lot of fun and the third still has complaints but not as much. So the two of us who aren't having too much fun swap places from time to time. Healing is also my comfort zone and always my preferred role in an MMO, so it's something very hard to let go and I tried in ShB. I was able to at least find some consolation in swapping from SCH to AST.

Opinion polls I think are better, but the downside is there's no official one that's been done. People on reddit have done them, but one can still argue a sample bias. I think the kind of data you're looking at makes more sense if you're looking at it within the scope of a role and not overall jobs, you'll still get your stubborn "I will still to my guns despite hating it" type, but it's a better indicator that more healers enjoy WHM versus SCH or AST. But it's no indicator that the current healers appeal to the larger play base.