That isn't what I said, Mr. "Don't read hidden meanings into my posts and you'll do better"
If the party is using hit dice, then I, as the healer, AM NOT HEALING. This should be really obvious, but Hit Dice are not something a healer (as the rules stand) interact with at all. You may as well be saying that 1st level healing spells are balanced because a Long Rest restores all hp. These are things you use if you have no healer, or your healer is tapped, they are not part of the healer's tool set.
Also... since when have I compared a PC to a PC? I've talked about the spells, but that is a universal thing. And if PCs aren't balanced to be hit by spells used by monsters... well, that's a problem, isn't it?
Finally, I've been comparing one monster, against one target, with one healer in the party. Does that sound like the actual game to you? of course not, you are going to have multiple monsters attacking multiple party members.... but you are also likely to still only have one dedicated healer. That doesn't make the healer more effective, it makes them less effective.
I never said it wasn't only one spell? Funny how you keep reading assumptions into my posts. But what I have talked about is how the new divine spark has been recieved
The Damage? eh, it's nice, but isn't very high. Good if you run out of spells
The healing? OMG this is far too much healing, and how many times? This is far too much.
But they are identical numbers. In general, not just in a single spell, damage and healing are judged differently. People are acting like they should never be equal, and healing should always be highly limited and low. And I disagree, because all that does is ENCOURAGE the whack-a-mole that people hate so much.
What would they be balanced around then? We can look at other healing spells, but Cure Wounds is the best single Target healing in the game for quite a big chunk of gameplay. That seems like a really good place to start, but I suppose you have a different place to look? Hopefully it isn't the thing I was referencing that you quoted, the AC of their party members, because I don't think back-seat players are very highly looked upon.
There is a reason to go back to the 4e style of using hit dice to heal in order to provide better healing. In 4e, a healing surge healed you for 25% of your maximum hit points.
You could only use this once per encounter with Second Wind, or outside of battle, after the 5 minute short rest. Most spells that allowed you to heal gave you your healing surge value plus a bonus of some kind.
This allowed for a Healing Word to provide a significant chunk of hp, but it also limited how much healing one could receive over the course of a day. The usual argument about healing spells comes down to this-
*The ultimate limit to how much players can accomplish in a game day is their hit point totals. Every spell slot or ability that provides healing is
in addition to your use of Hit Dice.
When you take these things in aggregate, only a tough encounter can really drain the resources of non-spellcasters in any real way. In fact, some non-spellcasters, like the Fighter, even have a resource to heal on their own, that is recoverable.
So consider a 4th level Fighter with a 16 Constitution. Let's say they have 36 hit points. To actually stop them from engaging in fights, you need to get them down to 50-75% of their total hit points. By themselves, with no one else, you need to consider 4d10+8 healing from Hit Dice, and their Second Wind, which is another 1d10+2 that can refresh after a short rest.
Then you have to take into account whatever healing they could get from their Cleric/Bard/Druid/Paladin/Ranger in the party, not to mention cheap potions of healing (in a game that doesn't give you much to spend money on) and the Healer Feat.
If you're the kind of DM who uses an attrition model for adventure design, even if you limit resting using grittier rules, or ban the purchase of healing potions, this is already a high bar to achieve in order to feel like you're actually draining resources from the party.
If healing spells get better
without changing anything else, that bar might become stratospheric. And this is assuming you actually can fit in the fabled 6ish encounters per game day.
Anything that the players can do to rest more often also has to be addressed, since that gives them more ready access to resources.
I can't stand this model personally, I want healing magic to feel worthwhile again. But at the same time, I'm not going to force extra battles just to pad out my adventure, and I also like big setpiece battles that are tougher than normal (and thus, might require better combat healing).
But as long as this is the way 5e is built, we're going to get pushback even if we mathematically prove that combat healing is terrible, because there are DM's who are looking at daily resources players have, and already feel it's too much.
I'm sure if Divine Spark leaves the playtest intact, that's going to be one more issue for them, especially since they also seem to want players to regain all Hit Dice at the end of a long rest, instead of half...