Just wanted to drop in and give my love for the art of healing.
My entire career in WoW was healing ever since release. My first ever character was a Resto-Sham, who I eventually sold on eBay for $700...but the itch was still there, so I made a new character when BC came out: a BE Holy Pally. Got that toon up to 70 and raided the shit out of Kara until I was as pimp as I could possibly be at that point...and stopped playing.
Cut to WotLK release, and I once again jump back in, and this time I make a DPS DK. Level that dude up to like...74...and quit again. Couldn't hold my interest.
A few months ago, I got the itch yet again!...and leveled that DK up to 80, pimped him out in ICC gear to a point (like 5500 GS) and started getting bored. DPS is fun in that you can go nuts and hold your own...but it's hard to feel like you're making a big difference. On a typical 25 person raid there are going to be something like 17+ DPS...so it's not like any one of you can really make a substantial difference on the fight. Hard to feel important.
I missed my healing. I missed getting tells about how I saved everyone's asses. I missed getting cherry picked to run instances because people knew I was the shit.
...so I picked up my 70 Pally and recently pushed him to 80.
Cut to today, and I've currently got him sitting at about 5.4K GS (with a good shield I'd be at 5.6K easily) and have run ICC only a few times, but every time I have, I've gotten those "pat on the back" type tells from various people in the group, and even get tells last night from one of the better guilds on our server that they wanted me to join them. Despite being 300GS lower than most of the healers, I was still firmly the 2nd best healer in the raid. Chalk that up to me actually trying and them being bored perhaps...but regardless my effort was noticed.
Even as I ran randoms, I get random tells from folks saying how I saved everyone's asses with a clutch BoP, or by really pushing my HPS to carry a lower group.
It feels awesome to be wanted and respected...and I never got these tells as a DPS, even if I did awesome things.
Healing to me is just more fun, even if I'm generally spamming only a few buttons. My reaction time and awareness can make or break runs, and while you could say this of any class/role (even DPS), people notice and recognize good healers and tanks.
Maybe it's cause I'm a bit of an attention whore...but being a healer has both been more fun and rewarding for me than DPSing ever was.
...and hell, I have a DPS offspec as my Pally for solo'ing stuff, so I can have the best of both worlds if I need it.
Glad I made the switch back to healing. Healing...I love you, I miss you, I'll never leave you again.