Strongly disagree. Being a healer and being a "healbot" are two entirely different things. Being a "healbot", as in person who insists on only casting heals, cures and buffs, even if it doesn't make sense, has been counterproductive in 3E, 4E and 5E. In 3E a wand of CLW supplanted you in most ways. 4E we've discussed and 5E is similar to 4E in that even the healiest healer can do a meaningful amount of damage and CC and prevents far more damage than they could ever heal.
Real healers play to win, not to get people injured then heal them. Healboting is fundamentally perverse unless it is the greatest benefit and last time that was true was in 2E in larger parties only.
Every player I know IRL who long-term played healers (and that's several) loved 4E's approach because they got to do stuff beyond blowing every spell slot making other people's HP go up slightly.
The problem isn't that you don't get to heal every round, but that healing as a goal is simply not there and it actually hurts the party in the long run by making combats longer and days shorter, and if done recklessly can actually cause party members to die. Also, one's ability to heal, buff and support is directly tied to one's ability to kill -if you can't hit then you are useless as a healer-, so you have to go and join the bonus to hit threadmill, and in turn you only become relvant by your ability to hit, everything else is an add-on if not afterthought. It is not a nice experience.
Also, you are fundamentally painting my opinion in a bad light and doing some gatekeeping. by defining a healer as "someone who wants to win" (IOW kill) turns out I've never played a healer then. So I guess my opinion and experiences don't count...
(Also that wand of CLW has never been an issue for me. That's what social contract is for, I make pretty clear that I'm playing a class that heals because I want to heal and going out of the way to get one is a vote of no confidence. Also I've never played in this mythical platonic sandbox where you can get every item you want and can take months of years of downtime in order to craft to your hearts content. I've never been in the position where the group doesn't value my contribution because someone bought one of these wands).
That’s a bit surprising to me. The wisdom/charisma pacifist cleric was one most loved leader builds I’ve ever seen, both by the player using it and by the rest of the party.
It healed ridiculous numbers, had strong buffs and powerful aoe control, it was great.
The pacifist cleric was more of a control build, and it wasn't very pacifist. It lacked the means to be pacifist. Actually my preferred build for healing is a lazylord. It suited me better.
Some people regard "control" as outside their chosen role as a "healbot", and equally can be sad if they can't cast a heal, cure or buff virtually every action.
Now this is a severe oversimplification. It is not that I want to heal every single turn, but I expect most of the relevant things I do in a combat to be buff-heal-cure related. Not to have to constantly "Push this button for damage and possibly the thing you actually want to do" just to fulfill a mandatory damage quota.
Funnily enough the most non-WOW thing of 4e
They did try to fix that with the Pacifist Cleric later on in Divine Power, but it was probably bias from the designer that being the 'designated healer' was boring because how often that role could be hoisted on a player who didn't want to because it was percieved (rightfully so or not) to be essential to the party make up. There was clearly a conscious effort to make the 'Healer' less of a necessity than in previous editions.
This in a nutshell. To make it bearable for people forced to do it, they made it very unfun for the people who loved to do it.
