It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[Kraniel]

The real issue is that SE has made several game design decisions that are so involved with one another that they just can't revamp healers without revamping many other things in the game.

In my personal opinion, what is really lacking is class identity (which we kind of had up until HW~SB).
Just as an example, we could imagine something like :
- WHM being the main healer class, with a myriad of healing skills
- AST being more support-oriented (i.e. buffs/debuffs)
- SCH being a barrier support and DPS hybrid

But let's say that, hypothetically, this was the state of each healer in the current game.
Who would play WHM ? Probably no one, right ?
Even if AST and SCH had only one single-target heal and one AoE heal in their kit, that would have been enough to heal through the current content of the game. Everyone would only want a combination of SCH/AST in their party.
So what would SE do to justify the existence of WHM ? They would bump the healing requirements of raids and dungeons, which would in turn create a "main support/off support" meta where WHM is the king.

And this is where the real problem lies, because SE wants classes to be as equal as possible ; they're doing their best to try to avoid creating a meta where one healer class would be required in a specific dungeon/raid.

This means that :
- All content has to be standardized
- All class toolkits have to be standardized

On top of that, since SE also wants all healer classes to be accessible to new players, this means that healing requirements have to be weak.
So we're essentially looking at : Dumbed-down content that always feels the same. Tada !

Which is why in the end, most of us agree that the only viable solution with the current game design would be to give more DPS spells to healers, so that at least they're more busy during fights. But yeah, if SE thinks that even that is too much to manage for the majority of their playerbase, then unfortunately i think we're stuck with what we have my gents.

I really think it's a shame, because FFXIV allows you to play every class on the same character. This model is pretty convenient for MMOs where you have to adapt your party roster depending on the content you're going for.
"Oh, we need strong heals for this one ? Sure, i'll switch to WHM", is what i wish i was saying instead of "Darn, i can't join as AST because there's already one in the party ? Well it's ok i'll just switch to WHM, it's the same anyway lol"