Quote Originally Posted by Kitfox View Post
The problem with focusing too much on healing is that the amount healing needed is always hard capped by incoming damage, and gear progression means the incoming damage decreases over time, making any gear progression for healers fairly meaningless.
Well, it's true that trying to eliminate healer downtime is futile - But the stronger healers are, i.e. the less healing centric they are, the more likely they are to be dropped for another DPS.

If both your healers struggle to get by just healing, gear progression will not allow you to drop either of them until the next expansion. One of them will be able to focus more on DPSing or debuffing as you progress and they will stop struggling, but you won't be able to drop one. That only works if you barely need a second one in the first place and the gear pushes you over the line. We're actually much closer to the latter than the prior case right now, considering how much healers are DPSing even during progression.

So it is rather imperative to actually make healers more healing centric. Naturally, excellent and highly overgeared healers will still have downtime and spare resources and will want to do something with it - that's where offensive buffs come into play, I totally agree. But the first approach is to cut down on downtime and resource surplus. And I personally see Mana management as a good way to do that.