Should healers now be allowed to play how they choose to play?

[Gemina]

Having no idea how the group will perform isn't an excuse to not DPS though.

Oh, please don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make excuses for not DPSing, but I am trying to enlighten a reason to it. Basically, I totally get both sides of this argument. I will never say that a heals-only healer is optimizing the role, or even playing close to their own potential. But I will defend them from posters that I feel are being belligerent.

I have made similar mistakes myself through the expectation of proper cooldown management from tanks or my co-healer being capable of handling a fight where they insist on staying out of Cleric. Each and every time I'll apologize or the tank will and no one cares. Although anecdotal, I find people far more tolerant of wipes where the healer stance danced and messed up along the way. On the other hand, I have heard that is more an Aether mentality.

I agree completely, and more often than not the tank takes responsibility for the wipe before I can, but either way, it's usually a shrug, and lets carry on mentality. Multiple wipes is where someone finally says, "Alright. We have to talk about this."

The tolerance though can go both way though, can't it? It has been spoken that some people definitely prefer the healer to DPS during downtime, and simply tolerate it when they don't. But how about the DPSing healer? If a wipe happens when the healer is DPSing, is it not tolerated as well? Perhaps less so since this is what leads to healers being vote kicked opposed to a healer who only heals?

This meta confuses my brain :/