Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Bourne_Endeavor]

See, exactly what I'm talking about.
Community creating rules that goes against the original dev team choice.
Taking your example, why would people stop playing war because of the stance change penalty ? Because top tier didn't like it, and people emulate the best (some do it because they know they will always be right that way...). But did that stance change penalty really made the WAR that bad, so that it was totally unplayable and definitely not suited for any high level content ? I highly doubt so.
But still, some people will kick WAR from raids : "your class is not OP". But 99% of the time, the kicker isn't at top tier level. And 50% of the time, he doesn't even understand why the WAR is bad to begin with... the community just said so...
Understand that what devs are trying to prevent, is not bad gameplay or anything.
It is that kind of community driven behaviour that sometimes lead to harassement that they're trying to prevent.

And that debate will go on forever anytime the community's choice will conflict with the developer's choice. That is because player's objective is to clear content, when developer's objective is to make the game social interactions as friendly as possible by making the game more accessible (healer DPS being considered as a high skill level playstyle).

Actually, many stopped playing it because the penalty to stance swapping it feel cumbersome and needlessly put strain on what had been previously a near flawless rotation. Comparatively, Paladin butchered it. They had better CDs, higher damage and a much simpler rotation that didn't punish you for a mistake or if the boss jumped. Regardless, it was seen as an arbitrary change meant to force a playstyle that isn't rewarding. Shifting back to healers, the devs may dislike the community's expectations for healer DPS but they will never go away because this game simply doesn't require a pure healer. Nothing they do will prevent it short of making content demand enough healing that spending more than half your time DPS wouldn't be optimal.

Put simply, I couldn't care less. I focus on what the game functionally allows and requires. It allows for high amounts of healer DPS and requires little healing with few exceptions. Once again, while I am not going to call someone out in the middle of a dungeon, I'm also not going to call them a good healer for the same reasons I wouldn't call a tank who spammed Flash a good tank.

And therein lies the issue. DPS shouldn't be considered high skill level, which is precisely why Cleric Stance was removed. It's incredibly easy to weave in a couple dots. If you can't be arsed to do that when there is little outgoing damage, you're just lazy. There isn't any other way to put it, really. This assumes, of course, said healer isn't new to whatever content they are running.