That’s because of the 5 sec rule.
Right. And as I said in a later post, players found out the value of mp5 gear over Spirit as another way of optimizing their gameplay. Now they didn’t have to stand around and wait as much!
Players optimize and the gameplay changes as a consequence.
Expectation is where you’re expected to pick right covenant and legendary.
Doing dps while you’re not in need of healing anyone is not expectation as much as its common sense, considering that if encounter allows for healing downtime, you wouldnt have much to do outside of staying idle, so its always better to press some buttons instead.
Sure, but the OP explains that he used to enjoy healing “back in the day”. And I’m simply saying that the difference between “back in the day” and “today” is that doing damage was neither the expectation or the common sense “back in the day”.
Times change. 
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Exactly, and with the proper usage of consumables (mana potion/dark runes), shaman totems, paladin buffs, shadow priest, and so on, you are in practice never out of mana in R25 in The Burning Crusade. This is why all mana cooldowns are gave to Arcane Mage, because they transform mana into damage 
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Not really no
Closest you have is holy priest
I think the “big brains” moment for me came early in Vanilla when somehow the information knowledge flowed to me that it was super efficient to use lower rank healing spells, because they were dirt cheap, could be spammed infinitely, and provided solid healing.
That just changed the healing gameplay completely. It went from carefully casting and canceling and trying to time everything perfectly and conserve mana to being a spam-bot that just mashed buttons like a crazy person.
And even after Blizzard went in and squashed that loophole of using lower rank abilities, the community (myself included) had figured out that this was the path to strive toward and pursue. Get your character into a state where you can just spam-heal.
That lower rank healing loophole changed everything. That set the course for years of healer gameplay optimization.
in my opinion you dont have to go out on a leg to dps as a healer. just dps in your down time when you can. every bit helps.
as a healer main, i usually just sunfire and wrath it when i have time. sometimes when i feel really fancy, i ll go into owl form and pop a convoke if i know i dont need the cd anytime soon. i have never seen anyone coming after a healer because they didnt dps enough.
i d just stay away from heal pala, monk or disc priests. they are meant to deal damage while healing.
however, doing absolutely nothing while you dont have to heal and are full on mana isnt really cool either. doesnt have to be constantly but you should throw out at least something once in a while when the time allows it.
Had been resto-healing since 2005. I can throw a dot or two on my target’s target now and then, and add my miserable numbers to the timed focused fire episodes, but honestly, dungeons used to be the ONLY way for a healer to actually HEAL.
Dpsers want to dps - and they do it all the time. Tanks - they might lack dps, but they also play the game they want. Healers (surprise!) want to HEAL, but all of the PvE content is DPS-specced anyway. Tiny bits of Legion weren’t, but that’s a drop in a ocean. I guess, SWTOR was the only MMO, designed with respect for the preferred role and integrating it in the gameplay.
So, no, the healer is not REQUIRED to DPS. Not even with the current “infinite mana” system. Anyone who disagrees - feel free to stick to your potions and bandages then, because that’s what you’re required to use.
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No cat form? That’s sad coming from a cat lover.
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Oh, reminds me of something super cool I was told during WotLK: that you could use a lower rank Shield spell during the LK fight that would fit just right to absorb the AoE dmg AND break the shield to return your mana. That way it was possible to shield spam the whole group without running out of mana. 
Sadly stuff like that doesn’t work anymore without the spell ranks. 
i love cats but i hate melees.
ya make all easy for the rest but tanks don t look healer s mana ( not all are holy pallys )
the can t even look the healers mana just fly in
and dps you spend more mana good plan
I’m only really smiting when healing is not a concern in TBC. Say, one of the pally tanks I know has a very smooth dmg intake in Shadow Labs, so I dare smite a bit more in there instead of the occasional wanding and shadowfiend. Even then, I’m better off fakecasting a Gheal, just in case the tank gets crit or something bad happens, so I can get off that heal quickly when I need it the most… it saved my tanks’ lives many times.
But oh boy, it’s difficult to find a good opportunity in heroics.
I am specced for extra damage however, because it’s useful for getting my occasional mob farming done, and don’t want to take a 50g tax for respeccing over and over again. 
Patently not true. Painsmith, the boss that people are whining “iz hard” currently has an intermission where there is no dps and no tanking. Think the good dps’rs aren’t off healing where they can to help?
Depends on tank, I’ve seen some even tell me “drink” thinking I’m low, and other pulling when the party is at 30% and I’m at 10% mana.
I think the issue is less the march towards optimisation, and more how Blizzard designs content with healers in mind.
In ye olden days a lot of encounters were sort of inverse tank and spank. The party (or raid) is going to take damage and can’t do much to avoid it so they need you to top them up. Obviously things will vary from pull to pull but by and large you were busy healing - and things were tuned such that you needed to do so efficiently. If you just let Thrall take the wheel for 30 seconds, the party is going to be dead 5 times over because they can’t do much about it. If you just spammed your lest efficient heal you’d go OOM before the mobs were dead. You needed to use 90%+ of your GCDs to look after people.
The difference today is that all classes - especially tanks (although it varies a bit every expansion), tend to be a lot more self-reliant, while equally lots of damage is avoidable. Be it dodging things on the floor, or interrupting/dispelling things, kiting mobs etc. Hence the fact you often end up with lengthy periods where you don’t need to heal and so “should DPS”. You often only find yourself in the “every button’s a heal” situation if you are undergeared - or someone’s made a mistake.
But that’s down to Blizzard really rather than the players.
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I mean, the playstyle still exists, sure.
But honestly, all healers should be prepared to DPS when the group allows for it. To not do that is to believe that you doing nothing at all is somehow contributing to the group more greatly than you actively doing DPS, which is nonsense.
Most healing classes have a way to fire off a quick “gotcha” heal if the situation changes suddenly so you don’t really need to be “watching and waiting” for unpredictable damage.
With predictable damage, that’s part of the play. You will know when it comes and thus stop DPSing in preparation for it. A good healer will learn this so they can use their mana and skills wisely, whilst a less competent healer will continually “address damage as it comes” without any real idea of what to expect, thus feeling they need to be on watch duty all the time.
But you should never consider that DPS “ain’t my job mate” if you’re a healer. It’s not your primary role, sure, but it’s something you can do of course. Healers are capable of pulling off about a 25%-30% of a DPS classes’ DPS in a run, which is effectively like causing the DPS of all your DPS classes inthe group to be buffed by something like 10-15%. You wouldn’t say no to a buff like that would you?
I mean, my principle role is DPS, yet I will compromise my DPS (energy) to do things like lessen my damage intake (feint) or lessen that of the group (stuns) as the situation requires me to do. To argue a healer “shouldn’t feel a need to dps” is to endorse the very mindset of DPS that never use DR/AM nor cleanses etc that everyone and their mum loves to complain about.
The difference is, DPS usually take away from their DPS when they do these things (they should still do them mind) whereas a healer DPSing when the situation allows loses nothing. So if they expect me to use cleanses and off-heals to help (which I do), you can bet your backside I expect them to DPS rather than sit there and do nothing when they can.
Otherwise they just make themselves look less attractive honestly. If I can take a healer who’ll do 1.5k-2k dps overall on a run and keep the group alive as needed versus one who does the same healing but about 300 dps, it’s not really a competition is it? It’s probably a bigger DPS difference overall than whether someone picks a meta DPS or not honestly given we’re talking about a 1.5k-2k dps overall difference.
This is all assuming the group is running in a way where the opportunity allows of course. If the tank is doing huge pulls and thus big healing is needed, that’s a different story. But if it’s a case of steadier pulls with damage downtime, then yes, the healer should be DPSing really, especially towards the end of a pull when dmg intake is low.
Many such cases
I was just recently saying “Hey, hey guys! Look, I do dps now!” 
That said, mana via kicking is generally less efficient than Mana Tea and using it when you’ve got big healing. My personal take on fistweaving is it’s great when the team is avoiding avoidable damage; but it does nothing to help you when all the dps have stood in a fire and need big heals. For those days, you wanted the healing cleave legendary, which gives you a lot more freedom to stand where you like and only take opportunistic kicks rather than relying on them.
But I am glad if people are trying MW out and finding that it works. It honestly always did work - up to a +15 or 16 at least - but our state in PvP was a joke and our mana margins were razor thin, so we got a bad rep and the pug world basically banned us from applying to groups 
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