The arrogance of some people

[Niwashi]

I will do that if necessary, although I CERTAINLY don't expect to and I will ABSOLUTELY tell the tank that it was their fault if they attempt to use your reasoning and blame it on me. It's not automatically the healer's fault if someone dies/there's a wipe. There are four people on a team, sometimes other people screw up. Why does the healer have to take the fall?

If you could have prevented a problem and chose not to, then the consequences of that problem are at least partially on you. It may be on others as well, if they also could have prevented the problem, but that doesn't take away your own part of the situation, and it's the healer's effectiveness that's under discussion in this thread. The most effective healer is the one who can keep everyone up even when everything goes south, not the one who can generally keep everyone up, but only so long as nothing goes wrong.

If they take shock damage from failing a mechanic or standing in an AoE, in your situation that's the healer's fault for not "anticipating unexpected" damage. Meaning I should expect my tank to eat AoEs and babysit them?

Expecting it would be a stretch, but knowing there's a possibility it could happen and so preparing for it, doing whatever you can to prevent it from causing a problem, would certainly help to increase the chances for a successful run.

Whether that fact translates into meaning that you *should* babysit them depends on how important that effectiveness is to you. A lot of the content in this game is simple enough that you don't really need to be at your best all the time. So if you like the excitement of a more aggressive and dangerous playstyle instead, you can usually get along just fine with that. As long as the rest of your team is ok with it, there's nothing wrong with choosing excitement over effectiveness. (I play that way myself sometimes.) Just don't go around pretending it makes you a better player.