Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Recon1o6]

Good healer battle design is a mix of unscripted/variable damage, and fixed scripted damage with a smattering of debuffs and mechanics.

You want some variability in order to keep the healer from zoning out on an optimisation timeline, but you can't make it too much otherwise its down to luck if the party lives. Fixed scripted damage should be there to establish a baseline amount of healing and downtime- enough so the healer has to heal, but not so much they got to blow everything every 30s. Debuffs and mechanics are to help establish a range of difficulty.

A 50/50 healing/downtime split is what the aim is. While that can be achieved with more scripted damage, that doesn't make the healing much more engaging.

Good healer job design meanwhile is having a good toolkit with several damage options and healing options, each with their own strengths/weaknesses and playstyles.
This is why 2,1,1,1,1,1,1 is such shit design and why healing kits, even if they had the level of damage needed to justify them, are still lackluster. There's simply no synergy or thought.

[Rilifane]

Good healer battle design is a mix of unscripted/variable damage, and fixed scripted damage with a smattering of debuffs and mechanics.

You want some variability in order to keep the healer from zoning out on an optimisation timeline, but you can't make it too much otherwise its down to luck if the party lives. Fixed scripted damage should be there to establish a baseline amount of healing and downtime- enough so the healer has to heal, but not so much they got to blow everything every 30s. Debuffs and mechanics are to help establish a range of difficulty.

A 50/50 healing/downtime split is what the aim is. While that can be achieved with more scripted damage, that doesn't make the healing much more engaging.

Good healer job design meanwhile is having a good toolkit with several damage options and healing options, each with their own strengths/weaknesses and playstyles.
This is why 2,1,1,1,1,1,1 is such shit design and why healing kits, even if they had the level of damage needed to justify them, are still lackluster. There's simply no synergy or thought.

This is one of my biggest gripes with healer design but also some other class design: FFXIV has an insane emphasis on making everything predictable, neatly line up on its own and function in isolation.
The very few synergies healers have are extremely minor like a healing buff through Asylum or Physis II. Almost every skill functions perfectly at maximum value in a vacuum.
Ironically, WHM is the healer with most dps neutral synergies via PI, Temperance and Asylum - simple as they are. SCH really only has Recitation and Protraction but the latter is usually complete overkill and the heal buff is irrelevant with the insane amount of self heal tanks have. AST has Synastry, Neutral Sect and Horoscope but all of them are strictly tied to GCD healing. SGE has Krasis, Physis II and Zoe although the latter is generally kept for Pneuma anyway and Krasis suffers from the same problem as Protraction.
The healing toolkit is bloated and disconnected, it involves little to no decision making or planning.
The obsession with almost everything (dps, healing, damage and mechanics) being on a 30s * x timer makes it even worse.
Oh look, tankbusters happen roughly every 60s in most content. The lv 86 single target skills have the same cooldown. What a coincidence!. It's almost as if SE gave us a square shaped object and a board with holes in various shapes and only the square shaped one lights up, blinks and has "Put me here!" text written on it and then SE says "Look, I know this is going to be really, really difficult, but try to solve this puzzle correctly".

Working with synergies and working around misaligned timers is something that spices up gameplay a great deal because it keeps you focused. It is the reason why I'm strongly against healer combos. 123 is fine as a tiny part of the toolkit if the rest is already interesting and not as the only solution.
"Look, now you have three buttons you press in a set order ad nauseum! Exciting, right?" - no.
The different short cooldowns games like SW:TOR, WoW and Rift had for their healer dps skills, ranging usually from 8s-25s, made sure that you never just pressed skills in a set order.