I consider healer damage a bonus because I don’t think blizzard balances the dungeons or raids around healers doing damage. In that sense, a healer doing damage is actually a bonus or an icing on the cake.
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I’m not sure that’s explicitly true. For sure they balance around an expected total group damage. But I imagine they’re looking at the whole group when they do that rather than factoring in the expected damage of all five people. We know from the interview in this thread that they consider damage to be part of the utility that a healer brings as well even if they expect that they’ll spend most of their focus on healing.
And I also wonder how high Blizzard looks at the math that closely. M+ is an infinitely scaling piece of content so obviously there will come a + level that isn’t explicitly designed to be fair. I wonder what Blizzard’s cutoff is for a level where they expect normal people to be able to complete it?
The majority of people responding in this thread aren’t saying that, though. Most people are merely highlighting that every GCD not used is an opportunity for damage that won’t be realized. Depending on the level of difficulty you’re doing and standards of the group you’re in, that may be completely fine. Not optimizing every GCD will mean very little to the success of most runs. But it also means the content will take longer, which again, is only a problem if your group has expectations that the content be completed as quickly as possible.
The people responding in this thread that players who don’t maximize their GCD are useless are elitist jerks who you’re probably better off just ignoring. Nearly everyone reading these words will rarely if ever be in a situation where maximized GCD use makes a difference in the ability to complete the content.
And to go even deeper there’s owlweaving… I really hate that Blizzard hasn’t killed feral owlweaving with extreme prejudice at this point.
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Yeah. Talk about never letting a GCD to to waste. I like the idea of owl weaving in principle since I like the idea of dipping my toes into other Druid specializations for any reason… but I really wish I didn’t have to do it since the changing GCD speed is a bit disorienting. If they made it so that owl weaving was only good when I couldn’t get into melee range I’d be happier.
Oh well. For now owl weaving is still good so I shall owl weave while complaining about it.
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I like having owlweaving available for times when I can’t be in melee but the enemies are still vulnerable. It’s great being able to add damage where otherwise output would be zero. When I’m 2 feet from the mob and they aren’t immune to physical damage, it just feels miserable popping into moonkin. Even if the GCD time didn’t change, I’d still hate the play style. To each their own, but I really despise popping into moonkin from into melee.
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I think the majority of people tend to agree that healers should contribute DPS during down time.
Adding my two cents. My belief is that everybody’s goal should be to do everything they can to defeat the dungeon/boss. Otherwise, what’s the point of being there? That being said, it feels much nicer as a healer when my extra moonfire or flame shock is appreciated, rather than when I’m chastised for not doing chain lightning or owlweaving…
Healer main, play nearly every healer spec, and definitely part of the “healer must DPS crowd”
The context of that article is not whether or not healers should do damage or not, but rather whether that ratio is good or not currently.
You quoted the second paragraph in response to it, but missed the first paragraph where “We definitely feel like healer damage is a part of that package that they might bring”.
The first paragraph is confirming that healer DPS is not only EXPECTED but something they ACTIVELY DESIGN AROUND. And in that context, they prefer their healer’s be healing, as opposed to JUST doing damage, as you often see in higher play.
This literally reads off that healer DPS is the norm (which makes sense, as it’s almost always been the norm in WoW and most MMOs), that the Shadowlands end game had sufficient enough avoidable mechanics to permit healers to DPS without needing to heal for windows at a time, and that they plan to correct this by including rot damage to ensure there is always something to heal
But remember, DPS means an encounter ends faster, which means there is less damage going out in total , which means healer DPS is effectively healing, indirectly
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you know Grim Rails M+ only happened SL season 4 right. Tell use you dont know m+ w/o telling us you dont know m+ 
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Since I actually read all of that article and not just the cherry picked sentence you’ve chosen to try and push your narrative, I still feel exactly the same.
If there are periods of time where no healing is required, you should be DPS’ing.
If there aren’t those periods of time, then you should of course be healing. The #1 priority is to try and keep the group alive.
If you are too lazy to press a dps spell instead of standing still but do have the energy to pick a quote out of context to push your pro-standing still agenda, I feel bad for the people you play with.
Here the thing. EVERY DPS and tanks are filling in their gcd. It maybe for dps or for defensive (if it’s in gcd) and on top of that non-gcd ability like interrupts. So you’re telling me it’s fine for healer to stand around and wait for stuff to happen and it’s a fair game play? I had played a healer this season and got her to ksm and it’s too boring just standing there doing nothing. And no I do not need to press healing buttons every single time because there are times where there is just no dmg happening. I have no clue why people seems to think dmg is non-stop. Am I really been lucky with my pug group that I have never encountered this? All 30+ +15s(and higher) keys and a bunch of +10s and +5s
DPS is the easiest role in the game. Always has been.
No its not. Role name is very relevant. It describes what your duty obligated to the group is.
The term “healer” is more or less just a relic of the olden days of vanilla where players didn’t really HAVE anything else to do. Starting from TBC onward, though, they started having tools.
It’s more important to understand that while the role is called “healer” it is in fact a “support” roll.
But let’s look back into MMO history? Most moderns MMOs are built around everyone having interaction, but even in older MMOs, the difference between a player acting as a pure healer versus being able to pivot to extra DPS was always a “okay vs great” player situation.
Final Fantasy 11, where healers were INTENDED to be pure healers for ages, STILL had healers contributing to DPS checks. White mage was still expected to cast Dia and Holy, red mages were still expected to know how and when to cast their minimal damage black magic spells to setup other players as well as when to use their class major ability to just dump their MP onto a target for clutch plays.
And even in MMOs where healers were DESIGNED and INTENDED to be pure healing roles, the players who always stood out and got priority invites were those that could do that job well AND more.
Which is why “kit healers” became the norm in the first place. People who don’t DPS as healers today in WoW are the same kinds of players who would get invited to groups and immediately replaced for another player who COULD do that, provided one was available.
The fact that kit healing bakes it into your role by default is a BLESSING. The GAME is giving you the TOOLS to close such skill gaps to ensure you aren’t consistently being overshadowed by stronger players.
The only difference is that WoW gives you the option to stay relevant AND room to improve, whereas older MMOs were rather…harsh in this regard.
But history lesson aside, consider WHAT a healer DOES!
Your job is not to JUST keep people alive. Your job is to be the glue that holds a group together, to set the pacing of content by televising and reading your tanks and other players, to be READY to ADAPT to the situation at hand AT ALL TIMES.
And DPSing, in WoW especially, is on of THE BEST ways to fulfill your duty to the role.
And if you’re actively resisting the nature of your role, it doesn’t matter if the medium is DPSing, or coordinating healing CDs, or externals, mismanaging resources, or refusing to work with your team AS a team…it’s all the same thing at the end of the day.
And if you aren’t willing to utilize ONE portion of your kit on PURPOSE, and you aren’t consistently being praised for stellar play and clutch decisions, then you are purposefully holding your team back.
You are not a team player.
You are not a good player.
You are not a healer.
Because you are not thinking and acting like a healer, but a player who refuses to grow and learn; you are actively CHOOSING to be the ANTITHESIS of a healer.
You not DPSing on purpose is just as bad as a healer who let’s someone they save die on purpose without a valid reason, or a tank refusing to use their defensives, or a DPS refusing to use their personals.
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every role is easy in this game. It’s not even a hard game.
You are free to be wrong 
True. But in this case, I’m RIGHT.
Nah all roles are easy dps is the easiest of the 3.
Get dbm, dont stand in fire. If your dps is bad set up a weak aura to help your rotation.
you’re only 1/3 right
If healers have to DPS you need better DPS. I only had as a healer. Too many casuals trying to out DPS the DPS and letting groups die. It’s different if you pushing hard content as top 1% whereas you don’t have the gear nor people who have already cleared the content to copy from.