A syphoning healing spec? Like a warlock? No thanks.

He means like doing healing through damage, like a chloromancer in rift. Chloros in rift have this buff that will, for example do 300% healing to your tank based on damage you do to a mob. For example, if I hit something for 300 damage, my tank would get healed for 900 health. Usually the heals end up being higher, as tanks in that game of like "increases healing taken b X%."

Keeps the mage dps low while the healing works out to be the same as a cleric.

Only thing I can think of in wow like this is this: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=81749/atonement

Hunters can already tank, and our faithful turtles have been tanking raid content for a long time now. I'm always fascinated by the position of "so what if my spec has all these other abilities, there's no reason they shouldn't also be incredibly awesome at your job".

Should a resto druid be able to produce comparable dps to balance, because all his other abilities are somehow beside the point?

If frost is expected to do dps equal to the other specs, then the other specs must be given utility/control equal to frost, right?

*shrug* I think the variety between class and spec is what made this game great. Anyone remeber when it really used to matter what your raid composition was? I'm not alone here. The more they homogenize and simplify the game, the more people have stopped playing...

Last comment: viable raid dps does not neccessarily mean top of the meter in addition to all the other stuff my spec can do.