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

[Genz]

Because the game hates "healing" :

- one shot = healers are powerless
- vulnerability stack, can't be removed = healers are powerless
- QTE = healers are powerless
- "KO on the 2nd strike" = healers are powerless

And the root cause is, the devs hate players' agency ; proved continuously since ARR. They don't want us to go against their design, and healing is fundamentally about turning a situation around (healing the raid-wide aoe at the start of a fight isn't really "healing", to make things clear)

[Ultimatecalibur]

Because the game hates "healing" :
- one shot = healers are powerless

Considering the power of healing in game anything less than a one shot is non-threating.

- vulnerability stack, can't be removed = healers are powerless

Vuln stacks are supposed to allow for punishments to scale with the number of mistakes, but only really punish the healers rather than the dps/tanks that made the mistake.

- QTE = healers are powerless

These are mostly added to allow for cinematic effects. Both Susano and Varis show how to used QTEs and healing together.

- "KO on the 2nd strike" = healers are powerless

Most of these are about either forcing tanks to tank swap (for OT engagement) or for dps to actually spread out rather than just stacking on top of each other.

And the root cause is, the devs hate players' agency ; proved continuously since ARR. They don't want us to go against their design, and healing is fundamentally about turning a situation around (healing the raid-wide aoe at the start of a fight isn't really "healing", to make things clear)

They don't mind player agency, but they have gotten very lazy about how they prevent mechanics cheesing. They developed Extreme and Savage fight design formulas by the end of HW and have not really deviated from them during StB and ShB.