But...I...I don't wanna DPS, I'm a healer...

[Welsper59]

I see what you are saying, but I personally don't find words like "intended" and "mandatory" to be relevant here. What matters to this discussion is the "meta," if you will.

The devs could release a statement tomorrow revealing their grand design that any sort of behavior be practiced or abstained from, but it wouldn't do a thing to change the way that players interpret game mechanics.

Also, you can do a lot of horrible and incompetent things and still complete 99% of the content in this game. I really wouldn't use completion as the bar against which to measure whether or not a behavior is "mandatory" when playing decently isn't itself remotely mandatory in most situations.

That is very very true. That's something that would really help if they did reveal such a thing lol, but as you said, we're going to do things the way we want to as long as it's possible. The OP, however, just essentially wanted a clear cut and simple answer. Intention and mandate are relevant terms for this subject to get the point across, at least to me. We're always in favor of letting people play the way they want, as it'd be wrong for someone to push their own agenda unnecessarily unto another. The meta for this subject is a 3rd variable agenda among the player base. We're essentially forcing that onto someone that doesn't feel it needed, when that person is clearly right to feel that way. If you've cleared the content, you've played the game. Even if you were carried, you've played the game in your own way. It's when that becomes a reasonable problem, as in this lack of action by a player is making it impossible to do something or causing strife in the group, that things need to change somewhere in that group of people, be it the player lacking something or the person complaining. I mean, if someone keeps complaining about a 4man dungeon taking a few minutes longer because the healer doesn't DPS much/at all, I'd be more inclined to just tell the complainer to GTFO rather than the healer.

Playing up to the standards that we players have for each other (which is entirely subjective) is not something someone should feel obligated to be concerned about in any situation. If they want to be successful, they'll adjust as needed for the group/activity. If they don't do that, they simply won't get far. The other players are not obligated or forced to keep this player who refuses to adjust (or maybe just can't). This is nothing new to the MMORPG genre. Play how you want and understand the limitations related to it.