I think that MOST PEOPLE agree the situation isn't great. As much as I've been attacked for not agreeing that "moar dps buttons!" is the answer, I've stated many times now that I agree with the assessment that healing now is sub-par and could be better. I've even made SEVERAL DIFFERENT suggestions on how to deal with it, that could even be combined/employed together. For example, having a simple, medium complexity, and two high complexity healer kit Jobs, which could also be done while weakening oGCD kits, while also increasing frequency of smaller unavoidable damage would address all thee problems discussed.
...but since I'm not saying make EVERY healer complex with GNB's worth of DPS buttons, apparently I'm a "Sylphie" (whatever that is) and must be attacked and destroyed. And here I'm the one trying to approach a middle ground that will allow everyone to be at least somewhat happy. /shrug
Oh, and I do love healing's secondary function being buffing rather than damage. You'll get no complaint with me on that. I love PvP SCH's Adlo/Bio as buffing/debuffing utility.
I also agree that the line between DPS and healers is blurry as is, so pushing more that way is probably not healthy for the game's battle design, either. It's why I encourage variety instead of just making them all the same thing that pushes out the bulk of the player base.
EDIT:
And it doesn't look like you're getting anywhere with convincing anyone on anything about your singular views, however, either.
So perhaps you should stop talking past people and making caricatures of their arguments and actually listening to THEM and what THEY are saying, not the strawman you want to PRETEND they are saying?
I don't disagree with this. My issue with AST (other than aesthetics) has always been the randomness of the card effects and the wacky APM to use them well. Making GCDs for that would be an interesting way of getting around that problem.
I remember one of my pitches for Chemist (before FFXIV's healers got all homogenized, so back in SB or so) was that they had the normal slate of heals, but then they had "short duration, weaker effect potions" (basically like tinctures) that they could throw on party members. Something like +3% stats for 10 sec, incurs a 60 sec debuff so they can't be chain medicated (so you have to cycle through party members, not just buff the SAM over and over again), with the class having 1-3 different potions each on a cycling 20 sec or so CD.
There are tons of ways to do this, but the takeaway is that there very easily could be a buffer healer playstyle. They're already more or less doing this in PvP.