Has anyone quit healing?

[Teno]

snip

I played the most in ARR, and this is where I raided the most. We had no choice but to use a GCD for healing but that still didn't mean we were gcd healers. Optimizing the fairy was more prevalent. Even with the optimal paper str tanks back then we only just dropped a juicy gcd here and there. Majority of the time was spent dpsing, all the way to bahamut, including for the healbot whm. If anything, people had more trouble accepting str tanks as the norm.
The only thing that was frowned upon was if people died because a healer was in cleric stance (hence the change much later on). And that was usually in pugs.

As for deep dungeons yes they're bad, because you're really essentially a spam bot. The notion of job is very diluted for a healer as a result, especially with sustaining potions. Tanks make up for it with better survivability, better offense, and generally more to do. It's just griefing playing a healer, and masochist considering the gameplay in solo content. Some people like Auroramoon pull it off but they're outliers.