Back in another thread, I saw a suggestion for a "Cure Mortal Wounds", with an unusual side effect - the caster could give up the d8's of healing to revive a recently deceased character (back to 1 hp, I think).
It got me thinking about cure xxx wounds spells, and how in many ways, they're rather underpowered. For being available to dedicated healers, they have a serious lack of scaling - look at how burning hands and fireball scale in comparison - 1d6/level (to some max) vs. fixed d8's + 1 point/level. It really shows when you compare Cure Critical Wounds 4d8 + 1/level to Heal's 10 hp/level! Also, the mass cure spells start a level after the most potent basic cure spell. With an "average" party of 4, you're only healing 4d8 + X damage, and that's spread out to 1d8 per person - pretty paltry if you ask me (and the channeling of positive energy only makes the mass spells even worse).
Now, I can see where the game designers don't want healing to scale at the same level as damage spells (though, by the time you get to Heal, that concept gets broken) because it's no fun to fight an enemy that can heal as quick as you can dish out damage - that just leads to a stalemate until one size or the other runs out of ability to deal damage or the ability to heal.
Still, I'd like to see some minor changes to the cure spells. One option might be d4's of healing per level - progressing slower that spell attack damage (and keeping in mind what could be done with inflict spells). Another option, based off the Cure Mortal Wounds spell, is to add the ability to remove status conditions via cure spells instead of healing HP damage. This would have to be balanced very carefully against existing spells - I'd say that the ability to remove a condition in this case would be best delayed at least one level (for example, Cure Critical Wounds might be able to double as a Remove Blindness/Deafness spell).
As for the mass spells, I'm not sure what could be done to "fix" them, short of dropping them a level or two. Right now, they really feel too costly. I know that I have never picked the mass spells for any NPC clerics I've made, and after one use, tops, I've never seen one of my players pick a mass cure spell.
What say you all?