Why must the ability to heal as a DPS = underwhelming performance as a DPS?

If by "you guys" you mean mmjarec, then yes. The rest of us know exactly what we are talking about and are simply trying to explain it to him but he keeps getting lost and confuses the issue.

Hopefully though not all is in vain because obviously the developers also fail to see the issue and maybe if any of them bother to read this they might get it too...

In Progression Raids, you bring the best - you don't bring subpar classes. If a DPS class it not able to compete with another DPS class - then that class is done. Same applies to tanking and healing. Hybrid tax has no place in this game, if you're worried that the class off spec is going to be too strong in healing and tanking while dpsing in pvp - here is an easy fix. As you choose talents in each tree - they have a negative effect. For example a talent that enhances a dps ability would hinder a tanking ability or heal ability to the point that spending a GCD to heal or taunt would be so small that it would detrimental to use.

Then why do dps sins get taken when they are hundreds less dps on a parse. Ive offhealed and saved wipes as dps sorc so obviously its not all about dps

If players want the DPS specs to be "up to par", then the DPS specs should completely lose the ability to heal in any way, shape or form. Whether or not a player uses the healing abilities they have does not negate the fact that they DO have those abilities. Why should a sorcerer who can heal do as much or close to as much DPS as a sniper who can ONLY DPS and cannot heal?

The same would apply to tanking, although it is much harder to completely remove the ability to tank or offtank.

Hows your NM progression going with dps assassins and sorcs. Post your videos please.

Tie Taunts to stance - other abilities can also be made to work differently depending on the stance/cell used.

I'll second that request. It's hard enough with a GOOD melee class and 3 GOOD ranged classes. No one seriously\competitively runs assassin DPS as their melee for NiM. And there's a reason for that.

Don't knock Sorc DPS, though. I've seen great success with it. Their numbers for PvE are competitive.

I disagree with that. How do you balance bloodthirst then? Unspec-ed heal ability is more a utility ability than sustained output. It is closer to match/balance it against something like sniper shield than damage output.

Not sure I have missed any recent conversations from the dev. But I remember dev has said that they aim for all dps to be within 5-10% of each other. I believe the current perceived extreme unbalance of sniper and assassin are not intended.

And back to the original topic, I also believe there is no intention to make "heal as a DPS = underwhelming performance as a DPS". Current dps charts don't seem to support that theory too.

Alas they do, just look at IceHawk's post on page 9 of this very thread, and that's just a sampling of the best, the less competitive it gets the wider the gap becomes, to where it approaches 20% on average. That's a far cry from the developers' promise of 5%-10% which no one would argue with to begin with.

Or just do what EQ2 does, and have abilities have two different specs, PvE and PvP.