Why is the healer class basically a one spell dps class?

[Deceptus]

The main issue is, as always, The Developers vs The Players.

The developers want healers to be as the traditional Healer role. Maximize healing, minimize damage with JUST enough personal damage (DPS) to do complete the MSQ. The problem with this, as has been stated NUMEROUS times, is that they're not developing the game that justifies what they want to achieve. Mobs don't hit hard enough to warrant the kind of healing they're advocating for so good healers are DPSing 85+ percent of the time weaving in OGCD heals.

The players want healers to be more of a Support role and I think it would be healthy for the game to actually embrace that.

Support means buffing allies when they're healed. Support means debuffing enemies.

If a healer was allowed to spend GCDs on buffing allies instead of personal DPS they wouldn't need to be spending 85% of their time spamming a filler spell.

[Lyth]

...

There's tends to be a fairly narrow perception of what 'buffs' and 'utility' entail. Buffs are really only interesting when there's some element of prioritization to them. Systematically clicking on players and applying 'damage up' is about as interesting as throwing rocks at the boss.

I think that buffs are most interesting when you're dealing with mutually exclusive ones which cannot directly be compared in terms of effectiveness (i.e. movement speed vs. regen). This works especially well with an aura or totem system, but none of the present healers have anything resembling this. It doesn't have to be particularly complex or involve lots of choices, as long as you're constantly required to re-evaluate what you have up.

[BrokentoothMarch]

The state of healers has been incredibly depressing since Heavensward, if we count hindsight. The overabundance and attention the other two classes get, especially DPS, in favor over healer could be advocated on the mere fact that there has been two major and paid expansions without a healer in sight while the promised "balancing concerns" turned out to be little more than gutting and homogenization of an already tenuous class.

I actually used to be a dedicated AST. As in, aside from DoH/DoL, I would exclusively play Astrologian as it was the only class I found fun, let alone out of the healer pool. After the ripping out of our identity (the cards) and a complete purge of any time magic, I can safely say I'm far more of a tank main, though even then that's during the rare times I'm not just plain crafting. WHM seemed unappealing and SCH felt like a crawl, many an expectation of mine let down because it turns out the fairies mean bugger all when it comes to strategic intrigue.

I honestly hate the notion of a "healer" class anyways. I've always advocated taking more of a "support" stance on it as that is what'll give us more options. With the introduction of Sage, however, it's becoming pretty apparent that healers are once again pigeonholed to healing and token DPSing, despite the fact that the introduction of Viera's made me hopeful that we would eventually see Green Mages that could shake up the healer role. However, it's just plain not going to happen. Despite the healing community regularly being on fire with obvious rejection (If anyone remembers the "Class Rework Satisfaction" poll from Stormblood days) of these decisions from the devs, the latter seem content to shove what they think is right down our throats. It's hard not to feel like there's just constant contempt for us, or at least me, when I identified strongly with the healing niche. Of course this results in further dwindling populations for healers. Who wants to play the class that feels like the devs hate anyone who tries to be more than a healbot.

The trust system, in my opinion really only asserted this further. They'd rather fix the queue times by just replacing players by what's essentially just legal bots instead of fixing the core issue which is the large majority disagreeing with how balancing is being done for healers and even tanks. DPS' simply run the show in their eyes and they get all the focus, yet even DPS mains aren't thrilled considering the poor queue times this results and, let's be real, I don't play an MMO to play with bots. I can't imagine they do either.

More of a rant than a tackling of the actual question, but the point is that: In my opinion, the devs simply don't care about healers. Sage exists because it's been since Heavensward since we've received a healer and even by neglectful standards, that's utterly ridiculous.

God bless those who still enjoy healing. They're better people than I.