Honestly, I would say you are missing the point.
Does it suck to forgo an attack to heal your allies? No, not really. What sucks is forgoing an attack to heal your allies, and healing them for less than a single attack's worth of damage. If I forgo attacking and spend my entire turn healing my ally for 6 hp... and then on the enemy's turn, they get hit three times for 9 damage each, taking 27 damage... then I wasted my turn. I didn't even prevent a single hit's worth of damage, and now all three enemies are still around to hit him again. I'd have been better served attacking in every instance, unless he was so close to death and I knew the DM would keep hitting him after he fell to zero, so I needed to heal him just enough to only get hit once after he started dying and I knew that my character could not possibly deal enough damage to drop a single enemy. But even then... I haven't actually saved him, and would be relying on the other party members to take out the enemies so I can spend my next action healing them again, and hoping they just aren't straight killed after that.
Shouldn't there be hard strategic choices? Sure. But what is the real hard strategic choice between these three options: 1) Auto-hit any enemy for an average of 10.5 damage, no save (magic missile) 2) Auto-hit multiple enemies with a dex save for half starting at 10.5 in a small area of effect (Burning Hands) 3) Auto-hit a single enemy for 10 damage, dex save for half, as long as you set the area of effect directly on top of them, or have them in a 5-ft wide corridor so they can't bypass the spell, and it takes your concentration, and it is a 2nd level spell not a 1st level spell (Cloud of Daggers). That... isn't really a hard choice between the three. Tactically, the only time Cloud of Daggers is useful is if you are in a 5ft cooridor. And it does less damage than the cheaper spells. So... if we want more tactical choice... then cloud of daggers needs to be a better spell.
Because, let's not kid ourselves. There are already some ridiculously good spells that people can use. So taking the mid to bad spells and giving them a boost... just makes it so they are actually contending with the good spells. Which increase the number of tactical considerations at play.