I miss five second rule :(

I don't think dps have an easier job. Doing good dps is as hard as doing good healing. I think the legit difference is that if someone does bad dps, it doesn't often wipe the group (only if you are hitting the timer or letting adds get out of control or something). Healers don't have that luxury.

The problem with the 5SR wasn't so much the case of someone sitting aside for a bit so regen would kick in. It was that all of the clearcasting procs counted towards 5SR, which ultimately just felt like random free mana.

I healed a lot back in the MC, BWL days (and I do it now too) and I remember the healer rotations and canceling casts. It made you feel smart when you did it right, but I'm also not sure the best thing for the game is to reward players for standing around doing nothing.

Now getting more "depth" (for want of a better word) isn't a bad goal. I think there is a way to do it through mana. Downranking felt compelling in those situations where you are choosing between the cheap small heal and expensive big heal. (It fell apart when the big heals were never worth it because your spell power juiced up the low rank spells so much.) Flash Heal vs. Greater Heal or Flash of Light vs. Holy Light isn't that same kind of decision because of the cast speed and the way other class mechanics can elevate one or the other. But imagine there was literally a Medium Heal that was Greater Heal at 50% of the healing power for 50% of the mana. That kind of gets you downranking in a less clunky way.

Q u o t e:
A heal that does about 50% of greater heal for about 50% of the mana? You just described Flash Heal.

Not quite. As others have pointed out, FH is designed to be an emergency button. You trade off mana efficiency for speed. The problem is that mana isn’t taxed enough (despite all of the nerfs we’ve done) to make that a really strong reason to switch, while on the other hand tanks get hit so hard that waiting can be deadly in any case. That’s why Flash Heal vs. Gheal doesn’t work right now. I’m talking more about three types of heals: the tank healer, the rogue healer, and the oh snap button. The latter might have to be enormously more mana to justify its speed. Or you could even give it a cooldown.

Q u o t e:
Anyway the point is we should be choosing our spells rather than spamming them.

Yes. But many things need to change to make this really work. Tanks can’t always be about to die and you can’t treat mana as an unalienable right. Otherwise the expensive, fast heal always wins. This isn’t the case for paladins, but HL has gotten pretty fast and FoL heals for a really small amount. The intent was that paladins reversed the design of using the small heal a lot and in inefficient big heal in emergencies (and I don’t mean once a fight emergencies). But they aren't really choosing anymore than the priest or shaman are. (Druid heals work even more differently.)

Q u o t e:
Doing good DPS is much easier, imo, because all you have to do to do good DPS is emulate somebody else that you see doing good DPS. You can find specs, rotations, gear choices, and some very fine-tuned mathematical discussion in a number of places on the web. All that's required is duplicating the suggested methods, which is where there is a "skill" variant - but all the ability info can be provided.

If that were true, you’d see very similar dps numbers from player to player with similar gear in similar scenarios. You don’t though, which implies skill has a big effect. Again, given the choice I’d rather have a bad dps dude in my raid than a bad healer. I just think sometimes these “dps is faceroll” ideas are short-sighted. On some encounters, dps need to crowd control, interrupt, move to keep themselves alive (when they aren’t blaming the healers) and worrying about threat and enrage timers. Yeah if the mage fails to notice that the pull occurred it’s likely to be less messy than if the Resto shaman did. Raid leaders still yell at their dps'ers plenty though. :)

Q u o t e:
Greater Heal is not any more efficient for me, and is lackluster for disc priesys anyway.

Greater Heal is lackluster for many Holy priests also because it is slow and the advantage it gets for being slow – healing big – is often overhealing. Imagine another scenario: all your heals now heal for 50% for the same mana cost they do now. Greater Heal suddenly looks a lot more attractive because Flash Heal can’t often keep a tank alive (which is incidentally the conundrum paladins are often in).

Q u o t e:
GC said to imagine a less clunky design where we had to make a choice for our spells. We're in that design now, except there is no choice.

Then we’re not actually in that design are we? :)

Q u o t e:
GC....you are no doubt sincere and absolutely know more about this game and game design than I....
But your singleminded pursuit of what you see as being "fun" is not necessarily what everyone else sees as "fun".

I don’t define “fun.” The team does. We make sure to talk to lots of players so that we’re not too far removed from the players’ experience. Of course we play the game ourselves a lot too. But if I can’t speak for “everyone else” then you really can’t either.

If you think healing was more fun in the MC days, that’s cool. I’m not trying to talk you out of it. There were some aspects of healing that were more fun then, but there were a lot of clunky or frustrating mechanics too. The challenge of logistics often won out over the challenge of the encounters themselves.

I had a blast in Molten Core and some great memories. I'm not sure I'd enjoy it as much today.