Anyway, Paul Barnett was wrong.
https://youtu.be/gcwJGcqjU6s
We do have namby pamby healers who stand in the backlines (ideally, the melee AM seems to be a popular playstyle in North American times) and heal, and heal, and heal. Some do this while being mobile and having decent flash heals with lots of tools. Some do this while being tanky, because they’re playing a class designed to survive in melee range as backlines. Some provide useful/critical buffs to them team and important CC against their enemies.
Others are Archmages. The intent of the mechanic made more sense back in the days of Balance Essence being in Isha, but it never performed well and the gap widened quickly after the WP/DoK got tools to allieviate the short comings of their mechanic years ago.
I’m not sure of the solution, but I’m sure we’ll never begin fixing it if some vocal people don’t agree that there is even a problem.