My first main was a mage, through all of BC and a bit of Wrath. I love my little gnome mage – still do. Throwing fireballs at peoples’ heads is fun. At the end of BC Reversion and I leveled a pair of druids and I started healing as we went. Once we hit Outlands we basically leveled in dungeons with me healing and him tanking. Analogue the druid was my first healer character; I hadn’t played other games with the dps-healer-tank trio, I didn’t know that I’d like healing, so it was a surprise when one day I woke up and realized that not only was this druid my main, I was a Healer with a capital H.
I leveled a paladin up as ret/prot, tanking my way to the top. Then I realized I needed her offset to be Holy. I still like tanking 5 mans on her – I don’t enjoy trying to heal parties as a paladin – but when I raid? I want to heal. Beacon, Shield, Holy Light spam is more fun than whacking things in the face and taunt-at-five-stacks.
I have a priest at 72, a shaman at 60, both dual specced, both with one really solid healing spec and one questing-dps spec. They are my most anticipated leveling projects. I want all four healing classes at max, and I’m not the only player I know with that desire. I read the druid news coming out of Cataclysm beta and I’m afraid I won’t like druid healing, so what is my reaction? Not “ok, maybe I’ll be balance” but “ok, maybe I’ll be a shaman.” My identity is not as a druid, but as a healer.
Why? I’m not really the most nurturing person ever. Actually I’m more of a bossy older sister who knows what’s good for you and will tell you so. I’m not an angel of mercy, swooping in and soothing your brow; I’m the “you screwed that up; here’s a bandage now get in there and do it right” battlefield medic.
I heal because I can fix everyone elses’ mistakes in ways that dps and tank roles don’t let you do; because I have to micromanage everything; because I can count on myself and never feel like I can count on every single other person in the raid. That’s why I like raid healing, too; when I see those dps health bars drop I want to swoop in and Swiftmend them. It’s why I pug, even though I have to deal with morons. I heal through stupid, because I can and because honestly I expect it.
I heal because it’s binary; they live or they die. Eaking out 10 more dps doesn’t appeal to me. Striving to keep one more person alive, that does.
I heal because it’s more fun. It’s more complicated than switching to adds, or waiting for phase 2 to drop your cooldowns. Second to second, the situation changes and you don’t have time to breath or someone dies.
I heal because apparently I’m perfectly content to stare at a matrix of health bars instead of the lavishly-designed boss fights. Perhaps in another life I would have been a whack-a-mole champion.
I heal because I feel like part of a team, taking things down; when you aren’t actually smiting the evil, it’s harder to forget that the other people in your group matter.
I heal because it’s the most fun part of the most fun game I’ve ever played and until something can be as fun as this, I’m not likely to switch.
Yeah, some of those are contradictory, some of those don’t make sense – but gosh darn it,I love healing! And no matter what they do in Cataclysm I know one of my alts will find a niche to shine in. Maybe it’s the hour of the disc priest or the resto shammy?
Awesome post! You articulated some of my thoughts better than I could
(Except my identity really is as a druid healer and I really want to keep loving my HoTs in Cataclysm too… I’ve got 3 healers at 80 and 1 at 73, and I still love my druid the most by far.)
A lot of people say that tanking lets them be in control, but I can’t see that. Maybe it’s a personal thing. As a tank I feel very much out of control; I can’t save everyone; I can only taunt and hope they get out of the bad themselves. When I heal I feel a bit like Superwoman – they’re throwing all the dumb at me and I can still keep them up! I can save an encounter! I can battle res the tank!
Also, I heal because it’s *easy*. I thought it would be horribly stressful (so I leveled 2 DPS first), but once I get into the groove it’s just… right. I’m a sucky tank because of raid awareness (and keyboard turning), so my tanking is usually panicky. I’m a sucky DPS because I get distracted and because I can’t target switch properly for the life of me. Healing is just right.
As for nurturing… WoW is the best balance. I am a naturally helpful person IRL, but I tend not to like people very much. (I’m training someone new at work and tearing my hair out… gah.) WoW lets me be nurturing and helpful and save them… in nice small increments. If I get tired of it, I can just log off.
I look forward to Cataclysm, and I’m sure I won’t be changing my main any time soon.
P.S. Good luck on your 4 healers project!
It is interesting how people say the same words but mean things subtly different.
“A lot of people say that tanking lets them be in control, but I can’t see that. Maybe it’s a personal thing. As a tank I feel very much out of control; ”
For me I feel very much in control when I tank but also a lot in control as a healer (but not as much). It is sort of like how if you ask people they will all say they want to be ‘appreciated’ but if you ask men and women separately what things make them feel appreciated you will get some very difference answers. Subtly difference, and with a lot of overlap, but those small differences add up to some of the fundamental differences between men and women. And then from those come the broad brush stereo types. It often works better to work from the subtleties up instead of working from the stereotypes down. A lot of people get hung up arguing from the high level stereotypes and getting refuted from anecdotal ‘real life’ (which is in the middle between the lower level subtle motives and the upper level broad brush stereotypes). I prefer instead to drive down and examine small differences in motives. Those can explain the bigger stuff while also explaining the exceptions.
Everyone wants to be in control. Hence I can appreciate the control aspects of healing. But I am not so nurturing so that aspect is less of a factor. In men ‘nurturing’ aspects are more likely to be expressed as ‘protective’. Protective is similar to nurturing and has a lot of overlap but those differences add up. In this case they add up to me considering myself a capitol T Tank even though I through some decent heals around frequently and enjoy it quite a lot.
Also, I felt a lot more ‘in control’ as a tank once I got enough gear and skill with cooldowns to be able to survive most DPS stupidity or healer slacking.
The interesting thing is that the person I discussed this tanking/healing thing the most is another girl. She mostly agrees with you about tanking, she thinks that a tank can do wonders to save a group. Might be because she’s a good one and I’m not…
Knowing us, it’s pretty obvious why I feel better as a healer and she’s very comfortable* tanking: I’m more the team worker type, I don’t like responsibility, I’d rather give advice to “powerful” people than be “powerful” myself (in IRL and in game); she’s the bossy type, “if you want something done, do it yourself”, she doesn’t have any problem being “mean”** to people.
It’s been working out find so far, since she’s our RL/acting GM, and I’m the sidekick she can bounce ideas off.
* Her main is a tank, but she’s got healer alts she enjoys; my main is a healer, but I don’t enjoy my tank alts very much.
** Not mean per se, just honest – “you can’t raid because you stand in the bad”, “we won’t promote you because you don’t sign up regularly”. She doesn’t have a problem with this, I cringe just at the thought of having to tell “bad” stuff to people.
I really loved this post. I’m a self-certified healer with a capital H too and lately felt disillusioned and fed up with it all. Blame the summer lull, pre-expansion excitement, the having 3 level 80 healers and the been there done that, whatever. I was a bit fed up. Fed up enough to dust off the mage and hunter and start plunging into the cesspool of dps raiding again. Ugh.
Luckily the last couple of raids with my guild have been nothing short of awesome, including a one-shot on our first heroic Saurfang kill tonight, plus my first successful heals of hc Marrowgar and Dreamwalker. Healing’s become fun again, and especially as it’s on my first and true love, my holydin. And to log off and read a post championing the things about healing I fell in love with in the first place? Best nightcap ever. Thanks
Seems to me the notion of “control” applies to both healers and tanks, it’s just that tanks are the first line of defense/control, and healers are the last line of defense/control. The squishy middle ground is handled by crowd control and DPS killing stuff before it’s a problem. The middle is a bit more flexible and tolerant of mistakes, but the first and last lines of defense (tanks and healers) often butt right up against the binary success/fail states.
It’s a bit like an Oreo cookie; top layer (tanking), squishy middle (DPS) and the bottom layer (healing). Without one of them, the cookie either doesn’t taste right or is just a mess.
Good post.
I’m a female wartank, with a resto shaman alt for comparison, and want to contribute a little bit on this topic… pardon the necromancy, I just discovered your blog today. Through wordpress’s tanking tag, btw.
See the weird thing to me is that you think of tanking as being a protector. Oh sure I know that’s ultimately what a tank is doing, but in combat, that’s not really what you’re actively engaged in. In combat, I’m thinking about the enemies, not the party. (Even if I were thinking about the party… I’m not really sure what I could do to help them survive. Vigilance, I guess.) I really love getting into a gigantic boss’s face and just haranguing them and aggravating them but no matter how much damage they try to pile on me I just won’t die. I laugh and laugh and then, when he finally dies, I grind his face into the floor with my heel. Dominated.
Which I suppose is a form of control; I control the enemy and his movements. On he other hand, one of the things I like about tanking, especially on a warrior, is that ultimately my life is out of my hands. It forces me to have faith in my healers. When I pop a cooldown, I’m not thinking, “I’m going to live longer!” or “I’m going to take less damage!” I’m thinking, “This will make it easier on the healers.” So in this way, I find tanking fulfilling because I give up control and have to trust others for once.
Just some thoughts. I may write on this myself, it bears thinking on.
I think that is a good way of looking at it. It is more of an ego trip I suppose. As well as totally depending on your party having your back. In a way it takes more trust also. “I am going to run over that hill and take on the whole enemy army. As long as YOU the healer have my back and YOU the DPSers back me up we will win. Ok, here I go!” Total trust wrapped in an ego trip. “It is all about ME! All you mobs come get some! I have enough AOE threat right here for everyone! BANZAI!”
So I think you are right. While it IS the role of protector we don’t really think of that while we are doing it. At least I don’t. Even when I am grabbing agro off of someone it is as much protecting their lame ‘can’t control my threat’ butt as it is just saying “No! It is all about ME! Get back here! I am the center of the world so get back in MY orbit. MY hammer will be the last thing that goes through your mind! WAHAHAHAAaaaa”
Ehm… what were we talking about?