As stated in the thread title, I don't totally understand why gear damage is a thing.

I can sort of understand from a raiding perspective, the same reason why cooldowns don't reset after a wipe -- a time sink to make progression take longer and stretch out the content. And I also understand that it gives players a simple little task to do to make the game feel more interactive and fleshed out.

However, I don't understand why three strangers should be made to suffer when I accidentally forget to repair before I queue for a dungeon as healer. I understand punishing me for being forgetful, but why a system that punishes the strangers as well? I just did this in The Vault. Either I had to step out and force them to wait for a new healer, or they had to deal with my pathetic heals (and almost complete lack of dps, making the dungeon take about 10 minutes longer than it normally does when I DPS heavily) because the right side of my gear hit 0% during the first pull.