Just remove healers.

[Renathras]

Sadly I think that would still end up with White mage being in the same state it is now. Which is how it has been in the past. People never seemed to mind that as much before. I wonder why...

Perhaps, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people DO like healing as it is now. To rip that away from them and tell them to pound sand and have not even one healer option left to them seems unnecessary and vindictive when it could easily be left alone. Especially since WHM arguably "just works" as-is. It's they very no frills, "just the facts, ma'am" of the healers, and always has been. And why people didn't mind as much before comes down to each individual, but I think it's because SCH and AST were there for people that wanted more complexity so they had their outlet and there wasn't an echo chamber amplifying effect causing people that were content with it to become disgruntled. In SB, the biggest complaint of WHM was that the Lilies were garbo (the initial rollout was just terribad) and that it needed a damage buff by the end of the expansion since SCH/AST buffs (being amplified by player gear) had grown so much over the tiers.

Off-topic but can I add Red Mage was the only job I ever looked forward to being added to the game and was disappointed by it. It's supposed to be a jack of all trades but really feels like Black Mage with more utility and a melee rotation tacked in at the end instead of a mix of White Mage and Black Mage. But people love it for some reason... I can understand the utility. People really love their weird janky job gauges I don't really understand it. I mean I think they are cool mechanic, but people have an odd obsession with them.

It's funny that to this day, I feel RDM should have been a healer.

In normal FF games, it's a caster with low to mid-level (around 3-5th level) White and Black Magic spells. So basically Cure, Cure 2, Esuna (or at least the "lesser" stat effect cleanses like Poisona and Soft), the low level buff spells (lower level Protect and maybe Shell), and then the first two tiers of Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder, along with some BLM utility spells like Frog or maybe Drain/Osmose. They also can wear medium armor (leather as well as cloth) and use better weapons than just staves/rods (swords and bows) to deal more damage in melee or ranged/back rank.

EDIT:

Well, this is basically how HW era WHM worked - Cure 1, Cure 2, Cure 3, Medica, Medica 2, and Stone/Aero (and in theory, Water) spells. Remove Medica 2 and replace Stone, Aero, and Water with Fire 1 and 2, Blizzard 1 and 2, and Thunder 1 and 2, and give it a 1-2-3 melee combo for when its out of MP/to buff its spells somehow, and that would basically be a traditionally FF RDM transplanted into FFXIV. RDM and Chemist were the two Jobs I thought could most readily be added to FFXIV as healers without really altering their class fantasy much considering that HW (when I was thinking all this) WHM basically worked more or less that way already, just without the melee.

As to your question:

Because RDM still scratches that itch for a lot of people. You CAN Vercure. You won't in much content, but you CAN. You CAN Verraise. You...will do that in a lot more content, lol And sure, you aren't a SAM or DRG, but you can melee. If you don't do it in the right part of your rotation, it sucks, but you still have that. I've thought for a long time they should adapt the playstyle (maybe with a stance) where you could lean into one or the other. Like a melee stance where your weapon strikes are all enchanted and after doing the rotation 3 times or something you gain access to the finishers, a caster stance where you skip the melee phase of today entirely and just go into Verholy/Flare + after building up mana, and a hybrid stance (or maybe stancless) which would be the hybrid playstyle of today. But as I've noted before, FFXIV's combat engine/Job design is rather rigid and doesn't really allow for alternate playstyles so much.

I know I, for one, would LOVE RDM if I could cut out the melee phase and just play as a caster. Played lots of games and MMOs at this point and I prefer ranged no matter the game. Healer as casters, snipers in FPS, I just like having distance and being able to get a good overview of the field and not be right up in the enemy's grill. I get that some people love that, though...so I play WHM instead of RDM and SMN instead of RDM...then they added the Ifrit charge... <_< Don't get me wrong, it's cool looking...but I don't like being in melee unless I'm tanking. >_< I wish there was ONE full time caster in this game other than BLM. I think BLM is the only one that (of the casters) that does that.

Of the healers, I think only AST? WHM still has to go melee for AOE (Holy) or in PvP (Seraph Strike), and SCH/SGE both have melee AOE, with SGE also having to go near-melee for Plegma. Don't get me wrong, I drift into boss hitbox to get AOE spreads and the like when needed, but I don't like being forced there as part of my rotation. Tanking I tolerate it because...well, enemies tend to want to hug whoever has agro. No real getting around that one, lol

But back to RDM; even so, people can heal if they need/want to (imagine if they added Vermedica to RDM, they could solo heal 4 mans; 2x Vercure is roughly as powerful as a Cure 1.5), can Raise if they need, and more or less on demand (the only time it's really iffy for them is in the middle of their melee/burst phase since it would break them out of it), and can get their caster/melee hybrid fantasy in. I had a friend that we'd routinely allow (since he loved doing so) to solo-heal 4 man runs we did (as a full party) on RDM since he just got such a kick out of doing it. SMN can't fill that fantasy because (a) SMNs are pretty different than normal spells and it has no melee "rotation" other than Ifrit's 1-2 combo and (b) Physic on SMN is so pathetic it's really nonsensical they haven't either made it scale on INT or removed it from the game - it isn't the same ability ID in the code as SCH's anymore, and hasn't been since at least ShB.

My one consistent complaint is that they don't get Vercure until level 54 and Verraise until 64.

If I was a multiclasser dabbling in both attack and defensive magic, either the first or second spell I learned would be basic Cure. It's the whole draw of practicing White Magic, imo, the ability to heal. Yet you master somewhat advanced spells like Aero and Thunder (both learned at a higher level on CNJ/THM respectively than when CNJ learns Cure) like 40 levels earlier. And Verraise they should get at level 50, because as it is, you can't even support heal through all the CT raids, and you can't Raise in the HW 24 mans (or other HW stuff). I remember complaining to RDMs early on for not helping raise in HW 24 mans and one pointed out (to my embarrassment, I must admit) that RDM doesn't get it until 64, to which I apologized as I genuinely thought they'd have it earlier (I hadn't played it at that point) since it was so core to their overall identity.