I think we're all on the same page here:
- Healers who don't drop Cleric Stance to heal when it is clearly needed are not performing adequately in their role.
- A healer's primary role is keeping everyone alive. If they can do that and have time to spare (say, if Regen/Medica II is keeping everyone topped off), they can jump into Cleric Stance and throw out some DoTs, and maybe Holy/Stone II/III, if they've got plenty of room.
- If a healer is DPSing while the group is dying, they are not performing adequately in their jobs.
- All the cooldowns in the world (except maybe Hallowed Ground) are not going to enable a healer to not heal the tank/group.
- Tanks who blow all their CDs during periods of low damage are not performing optimally.
- Big cooldowns should be saved for big damage.
I think the disconnect is in people's assumptions, and the things people aren't saying. I doubt rockint would advocate not using smaller cooldowns at the start of a pull; they just seem disgruntled at the attitude where healers expect to be able to DPS and get upset when they can't. Cooldowns make the healer's job easier, which is really why tanks exist at all (it focuses the incoming damage on one point to give them somewhere to focus their energy), but healers should still be healing primarily (unless they're a Scholar in pre-30 content. Then the fairy does literally everything).