The problem with all this analogy about pegs and holes is that it's so accurate, because SE's shown that if they run into a 'square peg, round hole' problem, their solution is to cut the corners off the square peg until it fits. A circle is the simplest shape, it has one side and one angle, and the healer DPS rotation has trended more and more towards this form. One side to represent their Glare-Broil-Malefic-Dosis, and one angle to represent their DOT. They have some extra thing on the side like Assize or Phlegma yes, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised to wake up to news that 'In 7.0, Assize will no longer deal damage, but deal increased healing!' and all the Sylphies will wet themselves with excitement that they'll be able to use the 'pretty twirly move' without accidentally contributing to the RDPS of the group.

I was discussing the state of the game design with a friend last night, and came up with an analogy of my own. SE's seen their new players, these 'sprouts' and decided 'look how precious they are, we must protect them from the birds that try to attack them, we must keep them safe', and put them under a protective glass dome thing (my mother used to do it with empty 2L drink bottles). When the plant grows up enough that the protection is too small, you're meant to remove it, but by keeping this super simple design for healers, SE's actually caused the sprout to run out of room to grow, and now they're like one of those watermelons that grow into a weird shape because of the container they're forced into. Ironic the company's called Square Enix, cos they're turning their 'precious new players' into Square(tm) bonsai watermelons.

I don't think anyone was complaining about how 'complex' the DPS rotation was for healers in HW or SB, they were complaining that WHM was garbo because the Lily system back then was garbo, and AST buffs were 'quite good'. So if SE had just reworked the Lily system to be SHB Lilies, but kept the SB design of healers for their damage rotations (multiple DOTs, cards having varied effects, etc), and actually done their job of balancing potencies, noone would have any issues. They have boiled healers down to one nuke, one DOT, SGE vs SCH is Phlegma vs Chain Strat, and they STILL can't get the damage balance right. How much more are they going to push healers through the belt-sanding machine before they realize they will never balance them, so long as raidbuffs exist? What are they gonna do next, remove Chain Strat because people still can't align it with everyone else's buffs?

I've been playing Other MMO and if I were to list 'every talent or skill for a healer class, that has an effect on the RDPS of the group' it'd be an essay of it's own. I think Disc Priest alone might actually have more entries than all four healers in FF combined, it's honestly sad that this is what some people not only accept as 'good design', but actively fight to preserve. Even 'a different, third button to press every 6th GCD to replace Glare' is anathema to them, it's mindboggling