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

[Reksanden]

We had close to that in SHB launch. Healers were in extremely short supply.

The lack of a new healer at the time was also a pretty strong gut punch.

I started as AST back then but couldn't stand the ShB launch state of it, and swapped to WHM... And had an "ehh" experience overall, sans the story blurring my memory of how not-fun playing it was. And I can guarantee that even without the times that I didn't queue with friends, every single queue was still instant.

Overall, their state is roughly better (poor SCH), and AST was a complete turn-around from 5.0 and it's actually somewhat enjoyable to play these days - but god I miss HW and SB AST so bad it hurts