It's time to hire dedicated Tank an Healer devs!

[Claire_Pendragon]

IDK man. WHM is the standard cleric/priest. After that we get
-- an orator with a pet fairy
-- A fortune teller with a "globe" made of cards and a smidgen of time magic
-- And magitek fin funnels that heal you with lasers

I don't think a lack of creative and diverse class concepts are what's inhibiting more variety in healer gameplay.

Your argument is just as fallacious as his.
The Devs clearly have an idea what a "healer" is, and dont want to deviate far from it. So while his argument is "technically" incorrect, it's not too far from the truth, as the fact that all healers are just the same robed casters, but with 4 different weapons, and flavored job stories, shows exactly how the Devs see the Healer role.

Ill use an unrelated example, and then build off it to illustrate what hes getting at.

(1) Using a game making engine, with extreme limitations, you can come up with "work around" ideas, and sometimes by accident. And also through glitches. This leads to unexpected surprise mechanics you never would have thought up for your game.

(2) Building off that, what if they were feeling creative back in 2.0, and created a "Melee Healer"? They have to give it tools to deal with mechanics that require healers be at ranged, but also still spend the majority of their time in melee range.
This would lead to some new, and creative ways to play a healer, that would never have been thought up, because they arent sticking to a cookie cutter mold.
(before someone say something stupid like "melee healers arent possible in 14" which i hear all the time, examples of "alternatives", is similar to what they are going to finally do in EW. (but with DRK) Salt and Darkness. Get into melee range, and drop a ground AoE. Similar to how SCH has to use Ruin2 for heavy movement scenarios, the melee healer can trigger the ground AoE to pulse out dmg for a few GCDs, at a minor potency loss. (personally id go with something more complex, but SE wants simple healers) The healer would also need movement abilities, like gap closers/escapes/dashes. They would need shorter cast bars (preferably no cast bars... lets actually make healer fun maybe...), in order to spend more time avoiding melee AoEs. And in scenarios where the boss is moving, AND you need to stay away from the boss, a means to contribute to dmg, even if just slightly.)

But yes, "diversity" in this case, really does allow for MORE, not less. Sticking to a mold, and only offering minor differences on par with a "color pallet swap" just isnt all that interesting, nor will we really get anything truly exciting.
WHM is the base.
SCH is just WHM but a fairy that can solo heal dungeons! until Lv30+, then its just WHM with a constant regen.
AST is WHM with a party buff every 30s. (AST was made near the end of the "uniqueness" mentality of 14 (before HWs release), and it really was unique! but its still constantly being dumbed down into being as close as possible to a "WHM, but with a 30s CD")
SGE i havent played, and while it "seems" more interesting to me, i couldnt help but be disappointed its just a WHM with a cool weapon skin. (but im a sucker for cool armor/weapon skins. I only play DRK and WHM because of their weapons, even though DRK is the least fun tank, and WHM is the least fun healer)