Warning: the following post is full of broad, sweeping generalizations that are only true of me, and maybe not even then.
Imagine this as one of those “tell-all” articles featured prominently on the cover of Cosmopolitan, “Things Your Healer Won’t Tell You”, or “The Things You Think You Know (but don’t)”. Actually, don’t imagine it that way. I’ve never actually read one of those articles and they might be really lame.
I’ve been reading some blogs about what healing is going to be like in Cataclysm, posts about what Blizzard wants it to be like, and that has me wondering; are we healers all just plain nuts? There are things I do, things I think, and I’m not sure how they’ll match with our new healing methods.
- When you die, I feel guilty – no ifs, ands, or buts.
There’s a reason why we joke about “Oh, no heals for you” – because we can’t do it. Once you’re a healer, in that mode, it’s almost impossible to let someone’s health bar drop low without trying to heal him. Often, we don’t really recognize any health bar as a particular person. We know which ones represent the tanks, we have things organized so we sort of know who is where – but when I’m in the thick of things, I don’t ever think “Oh yeah I was going to let xxArthaaasxxx die, he’s a jerk”.
In Cataclysm, we’re going to have to let people sit at less-than-max health and that is going to be really really hard. All my instincts say “Heal that bar!”
- Healing is my thing
The same pleasure a rogue in super-epic-ilvl277 gear gets in topping a dps meter, I get in ending a fight with everyone alive. I like healing, I find it fun and challenging and the only job in the game that reaches out and grabs me by the throat. I’ve dpsed and tanked 11/12 fights in ICC – meh. I just don’t care to do that regularly. But I’ll heal ICC over and over and over again, because when I’m healing, every fight is different every time. You are fighting a boss and his minions: I am fighting death itself. Your scorecard is the amount of damage you put out; mine is the number of people I saved. If we wipe, you get upset with other people for screwing up; I get mad at myself for not saving them anyway.
- I find healing fun even as it is
But I do see their points – because I find healing fun in 10 mans and not so much in 25s. Spamming Rejuv on groups 3-5 is not really super fun. Spamming rejuv on the whole raid, looking where to place Efflorescence, rolling Lifebloom on a tank, checking to see if I need to spend a whole two seconds casting a single Nourish – that is fun, and I get to do that in ten mans. I’m worried that they will be crippling me by making me worry about mana. I’m going to give it a try, and learn how to roll with the punches. I mean, I was concerned that I wouldn’t like druid healing after the changes and now, other than missing my tree, I’m ok with it.
- I don’t really want to dps
I’ll qualify this. When I outgear the content, sure, dropping Hurricane is fun. But I want encounters to be hard and expect me to focus on healing, not hard and expect me to focus on both healing and dps. Maybe some people like this, but please, Blizzard, give us a way to avoid it. I have an off spec, I use my off spec, let me dps in that.
- My toolset is awesome! All except for the wonky egg seperator…
Blizzard has given all the healing classes a range of tools to use. Some classes have a billion, like Holy Priests. Druids have about 9 and that’s more manageable. Still, I eye them a little suspiciously. It’s like my utensil drawer. There’s my trusty spatula and a good knife, and then a whisk, and I guess I use that peeler sometimes if I’m using my knife for something else, but what is that weird plastic doodad anyway? And why does anyone need an asparagus trimmer?
My heals are like that. I love how Mastery works with druid hots. I love, love the way Efflorescence triggers off Swiftmend – it just feels right, like you’re blooming the heal and causing life to grow. But we have these nice fast or instant cast hots – and then we have long, comparatively slow casts of Nourish and Healing Touch and they just don’t feel right. I feel like one of them should be shorter, and one longer. Then we could really pick and choose what to use. As it is, I still am not using HT; if I have to cast anything, it’s Nourish because I almost always have a hot on the target already (and thus, get my mastery bonus plus the backed in bonus to Nourish). Healing Touch is that egg separator – it’s just taking up room in my drawer, I feel a bit embarrassed about it, and maybe one day I’ll use it but I won’t be bragging about it to my friends.
- We’re gossipy little backbiters
If your raid has more than two healers, I guarantee you at least two of them whisper each other multiple times during the raid. It’s like a rule. “That tank had four stacks of X””. “Healer Y is using THAT spell, can you believe it?” “Why won’t the mage decurse? Ok we’ll work around that”. I’m getting worse, too. I used to just gripe at my husband; now it’s whispers. Why don’t we say these things out loud? Well, sometimes it’s a healer-related FYI kinda thing. Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to sound accusatory. Also I think healers have a bit of an inferiority complex and we’re afraid that if we say “X did Y” that what the raid hears is “I’m a lousy healer and I can’t deal with this”.
(Someone please tell me this is really universal. It has to be, right? I’m not always the first one to start whispering…)
- I’ve played games that are like spreadsheets. Healing isn’t like playing a spreadsheet
Yes, there are bars on your screen and you spend a lot of time looking at them. No, this does not make WoW into “Excel with sound effects”. If you want that, go play EVE Online. If you think we have that, go play EVE Online. Now there is a game that has spreadsheets. Yeah, so sometimes I miss cool effects or visuals. Tough. I like my little squares of healing. They are the source of my power.
- I don’t want to worry about mana
But I will. I get that. I’ll learn. I just don’t want to – I’m terrified that every wipe in Cataclysm will be twice my fault – once because I let people die, once because I ran out of mana. That if I were a better healer my mana would stay full even when the dps is not doing their job. I want more enrage timers on bosses. Make it obvious why we failed. Don’t blame it on me! There is nothing worse than staring at people dying, and your empty mana bar.
- I’m still going to heal
Even if I do have to use my egg separator, worry about mana, deal with guilt complexes, whatever. Because that’s what I love in this game.
Bring it on.
“There’s a reason why we joke about “Oh, no heals for you” – because we can’t do it.”
Guess that’s why my main isn’t a healer… because while I often will feel bad anyway, I will let stupid die and will laugh at them.
Then again, I know who’s bar is whose… hyperawareness from being a tank and a raid leader. It’s why I can’t dps effectively.
And thanks for providing a counterpoint – like I said, these are sweeping generalizations true only of me, and maybe not even then. But I do know a lot of healers share my “can’t NOT heal” problem.
Hyperawareness is great – I respect anyone who can tank and raid lead at the same time.
Oh, yes, most of my mainspec healer friends [including my RL best friend] are the same way… they just have this compelling need to heal, even people being morons. I’ve even told my healing core “If so and so does [insert dumb thing] again, just let them die” and they can’t. Heck, one of our healers won’t stop healing till she’s dead or OOM even if a wipe is called.
I’m not down on any of ya’ll mind you. I have nothng but respect for the people who keep me from tanking floor.
As for the hyperawareness – I wish I could turn it off more easily. When I dps I miss so much potential damage because I’m saving runes just in case the bear tank needs me to strangulate or yank a mob… or this or that… I don’t dps enough to get the muscle memory down completely I suppose.
Tanking isn’t easy but I know what to pop when and how and how long and what to do if something goes wrong etc. [It doesn’t hurt that hubby and I usually co-tank and since we’re sitting next to each other we can make calls that way].
whenever a fight starts im always straight into heal mode on my holy priest i cant even let my brother die when hes annoying me:P
You were right on the money man. I feel exactly the same way. I have found that most hardcore healers have played both tanks and dps, then finally landing with a healer and loving it. I like the quote “Fighting death itself” sounds hardcore for being a healer, now i can make fun of my dps friend.
I went slightly different i played a lock dps for a long time then went healing and finally ended as a tank in raids but i still try and heal and DPS aswell i love playing all 3 of my raiders:)
You’re making me want to write a tanking version of this. Stop it, I’m supposed to be working on a post about the attack table!
Also, speaking as a tank, we ❤ you. Thanks for keeping us up and covering our asses when we make our constant, idiot mistakes. Sorry for moving out of range sometimes.
Last night we were working on H Prof 10 and had two healers down from stupid mistakes and bad luck. (Someone passed our tree the plague when he had already had it, and the hpriest was targeted by green ooze when he had plague on him). I hadn't realized the second healer had gone down and called out "Out of cooldowns" when I saw the slime was about to hit the fan. When I inevitably dropped, the one remaining healer (disco) [i]apologized to me[/i] for not keeping me up. While one-healing H Prof with an ooze out. What?
Tl;dr: It's not your fault we died, so stop beating yourselves up about it!
I think it’s a reflection of personality or psychology that I don’t understand. But I do understand there are people that measure success by individual performance (DPS meters) and then there are those that measure it by group success (tanks and healers). You have to be pretty unselfish to be a healer.
And you have to be an outstanding healer to heal through stupid. Also, I can’t wait to whisper you when Elgar and Analogue heal together. OMG, PW: Barrier with Efflorescence under it?!?!?
That’s going to be so awesome – until they refuse to stand in it! Venn Diagram of Life FTW!
I know, I have seen tanks actually run OUT of PW:B before. I’m like, seriously? I think they fear it’s an anti-magic shell. You would think they know by now the Black Knight does not have anti-magic shell! Ha!
by that logic you’d have to be masochistic to be a tank… getting bashed in the head whilst fighting for threat against your supposed comrades… Does that mean I’m not right in the head for doing it? 😛
I’ve mostly DPSed, but I healed a priest to a GS of 5K in heroics, and now I’m finally tanking heroics.
Judging others is absolutely inherent in healing.
DPS, I really have no idea what anyone but possibly the tank is doing. With an assist macro I can keep on the tank’s target without watching. I’m watching the baddies.
Tanking I’m only watching the healer between pulls to monitor their mana. The rest of the time I’m focused on the baddies ahead, or what could be coming up from behind, and most importantly what the boss is going to do next. Unless they are pulling or dead, I don’t notice the DPS at all.
Healing, however, you are completely focused on everyone else all the time. I don’t know how many times I died at first because I wasn’t aware of my own healthbar or where I was standing. It’s quite intense most of the time compared to other roles. And lazy, inattentive players can and do make easy encounters intense for the healer.
Thus the idiot-meter in you gets finely tuned.
“I don’t know how many times I died at first because I wasn’t aware of my own healthbar or where I was standing.”
Amen to that; it’s probably only secondary to complete wipes as reason for me dieing as healer. It’s just that everyone else’s health bar is so much better visible… >_<
And here i thought it was only me who could ignore my own health to heal everything else
Naxx
Explaining Venn diagrams… 🙂
PW:B ^ Eff = empty set
Death and Decay ^ Whirlwind = H
H = { h element H : where h is hunter spec’ed as BM or SV}
Ha ha ha, nice. That whole Venn Diagrams conversation was epic.
“I’m terrified that every wipe in Cataclysm will be twice my fault – once because I let people die, once because I ran out of mana.”
This. Oh, so much this.
Yes, yes and yes to all of the above. I know not every healer is just like us, but damn, you’re just like me! All of it, the guilt for deaths regardless of reason, the inferiority complex being the reason for not speaking out in raids. You’re definitely not alone. Us healers sure are insane, yes we are.
I was healing for a group just last night that was attempting to 5-man Naxx (so over-geared group that 10-manning it would just be boring) and the first time we wiped I was still apologizing profusely. They were all, oh don’t be sorry! We’re just doing this silly thing and it’s no big deal at all! But I still felt bad, like yeah, maybe it wasn’t my fault but surely if I was really on top of things I could have saved the group anyway. (We did end up finishing it, yay us!)
I have a lot of respect for healers (I’ve never had the courage to heal for very long at level 80), and I have even more respect for those who will be healing in Cataclysm. Healing has its own challenges in the current content,whether it’s faceroll content or not, but the new content will present even more of them.
On the other hand, the new content will supposedly require more careful play: more strategy, teamwork, standing in the good and not the bad, CC… Damage classes in particular will be more responsible for their own lives. As such, DPS will be forced to not view how “awesome” they are by how they top the meter anymore, but instead will have to make group success the number one priority.
As a kitty whose predominant function was to provide DPS in ICC (etc), I’m looking forward to using/broadening my skills in the new, more challenging environments. Hopefully, this will all result in more players of damage classes looking at “group success = my succcess,” like healers and tanks do, rather than “I did 80K on that trash pull = ipwned.”
Hopefully, in the end, we’ll see more people willing to help their healers out in these ways. If these changes end up separating the successful damage dealers who play correctly from the number-happy, tunnel-vision ones, perhaps the judging habits of healers won’t be as much of an issue. Perhaps I’m totally wrong, though. We’ll see! 🙂
Very enjoyable read, thanks! And pretty accurate too, at least as far as this healer goes.
Some of the toughest moments for me are when a wipe is called — you know you’re going to wipe, there’s no point in continuing as you’re just wasting time — but you just can’t stop healing.
I feel guilty when the hunter’s pet dies … or even the DK’s ghoul … and then I think I shouldn’t feel bad but it doesn’t help, I still do.
Check … check … check … check …
I shall join the generalisation club!
Actually, I’ve sort of painfully trained myself out of guilt over a long period of time in LFG. I don’t feel guilty about letting an idiot die but sometimes I can’t bring myself to endanger a raid, even by 0.000001%. In 5-man, pug, certainly – you can usually lose a DPS and there’s no problem at all but I wouldn’t dare pull that kind of nonsense in a serious raid. The only exception is that the arseholes will slip down the priority list – if it came to the crunch and everything else was equal, it was the lovely ele shaman versus the dickhead rogue (why is it always a rogue) then the rogue would likely be the first to die. Of course all things are *never* equal – I mean what about the value of bloodlust, is the rogue really doing that much more DPS than the shaman…. healing is never simple is it 🙂 Perhaps that’s why we love it so.
And I don’t think I’m a gossipy healer … but maybe that’s because I’m always the one other other healers are gossiping about. Eeeek! Maybe they’re rofling at my gem choices even now… on the shame!
LOVED the post.
Thanks!
Maybe your runs are so brilliantly professional, everyone is in awe at your amazing heals and there’s nothing to gossip about?
“I’m terrified that every wipe in Cataclysm will be twice my fault – once because I let people die, once because I ran out of mana.”
^ Thankfully not always this. So far one of my favorite parts about healing 5 mans in beta is that the player skill and situational awareness / tatics /strategies are so much more important than dps/hps/gearscore/etc…. The person standing in fire over there and not moving, accidental double (triple etc) pull, lack of knowledge of the mechanics, tank failing to establish agro on secondary targets and them subsequently finding the healer tasty 30s in, cc snafu/lack of cc.. at least at the ilvl 333 / 346 gear level there is no (consistently) healing people through stupid (except maybe the priest Life Grip).
Yes, running out of mana is a concern and yes some mistakes are healable. But more often than not, wipes are because of ‘stupid’ not because I ran out of mana. I’ve seen a non-pre made healer in leveling blues and greens (with a crap mana pool) be able to heal a semi inteligent group through heroic instances, yet a decked pre-made group epically fail because they tried to aoe fest/tank and spank it. While the raid healer inside me rejoices at more focus being put on the situational awareness vs the epeen meter, it can also make for some extremely frustrating LFD PuGs.
~Kara
after recently levelling my 3rd healer (a shaman, i have a druid and a priest already), i’ve finally realised what it is i like about healing.. apart from being more than a little OCD about green bars (must…have…all…bars….greeeen), i find healing is like a dance. i live for those times when you’re healing the equivalent of the amazingly controlled tango, or the crazy throws, kicks and spins of 1950s rock and roll.
In a way, I feel sorry for the tanks and dps who dont get to experience this. sure tanks get to feel good once or twice during a fight when they might make a save or two, and dps usually have to wait for the end of a fight before getting the glow of topping the charts, but we healers get to feel this way for the whole dance.
and gossip? sure there’s some dance hall chatter, but all too often we’re so busy stepping to the groove that we dont want to spare the key clicks.
[…] Do You Know I Feel This Way? – Analogue over at Looking For More has let us into her deepest and darkest secrets about being a healer. She says early on that she’s going to make some sweeping generalizations in her post and she does, but look beyond those and it’s a thoughtful read for any healer out there. She’s looking at how she feels about healing in general, and her apprehensions going into Cataclysm – are you feeling the same as Analogue? […]
[…] always had a special sense of community — our companions may fight a boss and his minions, but we fight death itself. Terms Defined PoM : Prayer of Mending PoH : Prayer of Healing CoH : Circle of Healing BT: […]
[…] always had a special sense of community — our companions may fight a boss and his minions, but we fight death itself. Terms Defined PoM : Prayer of Mending PoH : Prayer of Healing CoH : Circle of Healing BT: […]
Love this post. I feel the same in almost every way. This may be a little sadistic, but I enjoy healing the most when things are most chaotic. It’s those times when a pull goes wrong or a boss aggros while still clearing trash. Those times that a wipe is nigh guaranteed, mobs running loose, dps fragmented and no hope in sight. Then, when the dust settles, all souls are accounted for and the only one marked by death is the boss. That’s when I sit back in my chair and say “Holy @#$% that was awesome”. I’m hoping to have many of these moments (victory by a thread) in Cata. Cheers to all preservers of life!
Really enjoyed that read, I haven’t healed in a raid since Pre-Sunwell nerf, but its good to know the things that used to play on my mind then are still on individuals minds now. Considering making a comeback with a Discipline Priest as the mechanics of them intrigue me greatly in PvE; I am curious about the whole “not full hp bars in cataclysm” thing.. what is that all about? I keep seeing it mentioned but with no explanation!
Again, really enjoyed the read and when reading your points I could think of many flashbacks to encounters where I felt those same things. (On a daily / weekly basis)
I feel your pain, but I love it just like it seems you do.
@Andy
Mana for healers has become a primary element of gameplay again. Meaning we may not have enough of it for a fight. The damage is (in theory less spikey) and more consitstent. This means that one of our primary focuses is mana efficiency. Therefore if someone is not in danger of dying, and I’m busy on a more critical task, then it’s better to let them sit at 80% or whatever until I have time for a slow cast efficent heal rather than using one of my fast cast less efficient heals. Or may wait until other people have taken damage as well to use highly efficient aoe heals.
Over healing is going to be a big deal againg. Your not going to want to “top people off” unless the majority of that heal is actual hp and not overheal. Which, in that case, causes you to wait till their hp is low enough for them to get the full benefit of the heal.
I haven’t even hit level cap with my priest and I feel these things with my healer (save for the 10/25m content). I came from a mage where it was all about the pew-pew. CC didn’t even matter in Wrath content, because if something was marked (rare if it was) someone would break the CC any way.
I feel that everyone should at least try to level a healer. It opens your eyes to so many more things such as, “The healer won’t mind if I stand in the fire a second longer to pew-pew. A HoT will fix it, and we’ll be fine.” Yes, in the sense that I didn’t die, it is fine. In the OCD, green-all-around sense, it kills us. Now I sacrifice that 2 seconds of DPS just to help my fellow healer.
Yes, a million times yes. Your words fit me to a T. Thank you so much<3
Ive been healing since the beginning of BC and and i used to love it but i felt trapped. Once you are pegged as a good healer people take you for granted. You are right though when people would die i felt guilty. The first time we downed the lich king and he does that instant kill all i was out of mana, when we died i almost pulled my hair out because i thought it was my fault. Alot of people dont understand the pressure that healers go through and they say things like “this is going to be a healing intensive fight” like all the other fights already arnt and we dont already know that.
I have been a healer since Kunark EQ days. Now I know that a cleric from there is more like a healadin here, but I chose priest because of the holy spec, you know, boom-de-ya-ta healing. (And I’m glad because I LOVE shadow pvp!) I have always felt this way about healing, be it a group or a raid. I enjoy having the Alton Brown arsenal of heals and tricks to use depending on the situation, and I like to learn how they all work and how to use different combos for the situation. But you can’t fix stupid, no matter how hard you try or how good you heal. Sometimes we save them, and we get to hear, “OMG you rock!”, and sometimes we die and hear, “WTF noob!!! whars mah healz?!?!” And I know that the raid leader occasionally calls for a wipe, but there’s always that .01% chance that the remaining 5 people will roflstomp the mob, and that keeps us going (that and all the armor repair bills that haunt our dreams at night.) One thing I have noticed is that threats work (even if you won’t follow through with them). “If you stand in the firey drool, you WILL die because I’m too busy healing the people who have a chance at living” Pretty much anymore all dps have to do is watch their aggro and their surroundings, I have to save them, and it’s the hardest and most challenging thing in the game to do (and the most fun!)
The whispering part during raids? All true, being a healer always means griping about everything the tank and dps is doing, when we should actually be saying “Wow, the tank trusts ME enough to take extra stacks because he KNOWS I can heal him through it”.
As healers however, we don’t want other healers to think we’re bad, so if things looked grim, we say to each other what the tanks/dps was doing “wrong”, what another healer was doing “wrong”.
IF you’ve raided like that enough, when your just in a 5-man healing, you’ll find yourself STILL doing it, just with yourself, “I TOLD the druid to decurse during pistol barrage, otherwise we WIPE!”
Ya your not the only who who spends a good deal of time talking with other healers talking about the mistakes of others. In part its because were generally annoyed with their stupidity and their inability to do such simple jobs when were stuck with the ever difficult task of keepin their sorry a$$es alive.
As for the feeling guilty when someone dies i can understand i feel the same way at times, although less so when they die from standing in fire or something that its obvious they should be avoiding :p
And like you from the moment i started healing i knew nothing else in the game could compare, it was the only thing i was really meant to do. But with the changes in cata, including Blizzar===D’s wonderful idea of destroying our beloved tree form, druid healing in itself these days is a ever constant ever changing battle. Now we are forced to use spells with a very low “Amount Healed : Mana Cost” ratio, give up the ability to heal more and focus on mana regen, heal through absurd amounts of damage, and watch our mana closer then we watch those blue bars were tryin to keep full… er i mean our group members… But these days you can feel better about one thing… 80% of the time a wipe is the fault of a tank breaking CC, dps not keeping their CC up, or the general WotLK mentality that so many are unable to break free from.
And on that note honestally im not sure how i ended up here, random words in a elitist jerks thread were hyperlinked to this for some odd reason, but back to learnin how to heal on one of my other healers. Best of luck to you and take care
Tai’Shar Manetheren!
Mat Cauthon
Prince of Ravens
Commander of The Band of the Red Hand
~Bladefist~
It is all so true. Every word like taken from my own mind, and as mike I feel bad when hunter’s pet dies, good that i don’t follow pets in raids much. And i also love my little squares in Grid, and I start to miss them when I don’t play.
i do play dps sometimes, or tank, but i cant help it – i get bored pretty fast, forgive me for that, I know that tank’s job and dps is not simple, but healing is just my thing and its my challenge.
Its some sort of own drug suitable only for some.
Nights spend on calculating and testing for best healing output, making healing dummies from friends, not been able to react right away on *Wipe it* call, and not been able to let that jerk who stands in fire die, knowing by instinct what spell in what point to throw from my holy toolkit. And i love my spells, love sound of PoM, now in Cata have to learn not to hate Lightwell.
Thank you for writing this and letting others know what is going on in behind green bars.
Wish you best of luck and patience.
Milady
Aye…
“When you die, I feel guilty – no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Main reason why I failed a group on LK was because even though the guys didn’t run to the add tank fast enough when they had the disease, even when they stood there while the area was collapsing, even when the big black void zone and DMB screaming SHOULD have hinted that they’re doing something wrong… Every death I felt was my fault, and that guilt was just taking its toll on my ability to keep them up.
Eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, and the group was nice enough to let me go Shadow and they brought in another healer, all the while telling me “It’s OK, it’s OK… You did fine, no worries… *gently pats the priest*”
Didn’t go nearly as far into the fight after that, but the guilt wasn’t mine! ^_^
But as far as not ever letting people die… I do that sometimes. Namely when everyone’s taking damage, I can’t keep everyone topped off, and the Warlock of all people is screaming at me for a heal. A little arguing later, she decides to try to tank the place and promptly dies. Amazingly, she tried to kick me from the group. Failed, kicked her, and the group had a good laugh about a lock that didn’t use Drain Life despite being low on health and pissing off the healer.
But mostly, the sure way for me to let you die is to yell at me and try to tell me how to do a job I’m already doing well in an “l2p nub” manner. Constructive criticism I can take, after all there is always room for improvement, and will try to better myself based on that. “FFS l2heal” will convince me that you know enough on the subject to keep yourself alive while I worry about the people who appreciate what I do for the group.
As somebody that played a priest since wow beta, and been in top end raiding the past 6 years, i must say, what u wrote here are just exactly what i felt all the time, it sum up what i trying to share with new generation healers who QQ and wondery why im excited of the changes.
Yes, i would love to get my face smacked instead of facerolling because i love to see u red. 😀
I like hearing from older healers about this. I started healing in BC, did most of my healing in Wrath and while Cataclysm took some adjustment I’m rolling with it and having fun. I’m more annoyed by particular mechanics than by the system as a whole.
I must agree with this. My very first character (though everyone has them) was a paladin, I played ret until 50, then moved on to protection. However I just couldn’t be satisfied with that. So I explored holy, and it opened up a whole new playing style for me. Even before cataclysm I was always worrying about my mana. When to go into a dump phase and spam holy light, or when to pop my trinks and spam flash.
Which target I wanted divine shield on at the time, worrying about keeping beacon of light up the whole time.
Keeping an eye on my mana and because I just couldn’t let anyone die, the whole raid as well, even though it wasn’t my job. I had to learn when to time my cooldowns, when to pop divine plea, should I use avenging wrath on cool down, and what about divine illumination.
With the introduction of holy power, the playstyle of paladin had changed quite a bit. It wasn’t to my liking, however I adapted, and with the guardian spirit cd available, it made things a bit more interesting. Paladin had always been my favorite healing class…until I discovered discipline priests.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not 85 on my priest yet, or even 80 for that matter. I am taking my time learning the class and exploring when to pop what, just like I did with my paladin. (And hopefully I will learn before I am in a solo healing saurfang with three marks up position, being forced to learn my cd’s)
I am sitting comfortably at level 40 at the moment, and because I healed on my paladin I just cant let anything die. Even if its just a stranger that I happened to run past on a quest. This couldn’t have been a truer testament to the state of mind a healer with experience is in. Stupidity doesn’t change the fact that I like to keep people topped off, and even if I am sitting at 50% mana on my disc priest in scholomance I will keep bubbling and casting renew. If I am getting too low I will pop lifeblood and power infusion and spam heal to conserver mana while keeping everyone topped off.
On a side note, you are not the only one who whisper spams. And though I may not do it to the other healers, I have friends on my server who I complain too, and they just happen to be in the same raiding guild as myself. I remember back in wrath, when I was doing naxxramas, I was complaining about the dps not dumping their threat on hatefuls. But I ran with it, and we managed to get a full clear that same night. Was a good feeling being able to be a part of that.
I agree with all of this. Except the gossip, but only because I haven’t played any raids yet.
I started playing around the end of November last year, and my first character was a Warlock. I liked playing him, it was fun, but for some reason I never measured up to everyone else, and I never really cared to. As long as the group was successful, I was happy. The friend who got me into WoW kept giving me a lot of flak about my performance as a warlock, too.
Eventually I got sick of it and decided to try something different. I decided to be a healer because my friend said it was too difficult and I would not be able to do it. I read up on healing classes and specs, and eventually settled on being a holy priest, because it seemed to me to be the class most focused on taking care of everyone else and not giving as much attention to themselves.
I worked hard, by myself, to get my priest up to level 85. I took it as a challenge to learn how to play without any of my friends trying to hold my hand through it. Now I feel confident in saying that I am a good healer, and my friends even say that it’s a lot better playing with me now.
I have seen my fair share of idiot players and assholes, and I have definitely seen my share of wipes because of them. I still feel guilty every time someone dies, every time there is a wipe, and especially every time I am accused of being the reason for a wipe. Even when I know it’s not my fault, and the tank is just being a dick to take attention off their own bad tanking, I still feel like I should have been better and I should have been able to save the group.
Just a note to any tanks who may read this, by the way: I love it when a tank is worried about how difficult they are to heal. It means they are a good tank, and they care about every player in the group being able to keep up. A lot of tanks I’ve played with in pick up groups only seem to care about themselves. They’ll refuse to use cool downs and get angry if I can’t keep them up, they’ll leave the instance if the item they wanted didn’t drop (especially on heroics), and they are always the first to call someone out as a bad player. But every time I see a tank ask me if they are too difficult to heal, it makes me smile to think that they are not all selfish jerks.
[…] The Cataclysm has altered not just our world, but our tools and and the very way we look at healing itself. None of us know how these changes will play out in practice, and at this point, poised on the edge of the expansion, we don’t have answers to all the questions. Here are presented our best theories and hard-won knowledge; we will learn together how to handle the changes the Cataclysm has brought. Healers have always had a special sense of community — our companions may fight a boss and his minions, but we fight death itself. […]
(Someone please tell me this is really universal. It has to be, right? I’m not always the first one to start whispering…)
In my old guild (which raided from vanilla to BC) we had our very own channel /AMheal (AM being short for aftermath, the guildname) where we did all kind of talk ;P
Think im gonna do that with my new guild as well when we start raiding in cata.
Now about healing… I always played a paladin, spamming flash heal ect, every raid i envied druids with their HoTs (now paladins have hots as well), so when i came back to WoW after 2 years i started a druid, and me gusta! I also have a 85 disc priest now, which i love as well. But the 12 seconds of immunity cannot be replaced.
I came into WoW as a mage, deep into the Wrath era. A month later, the world started changing for cata and I had to download patches every couple of days, changing the world as we all knew it. After shooting up to 85, getting ilevel 354 and taking part in all of the current cata raids, I found that it seemed like an empty achievement.
So, I made my priest. I started healing within an hour of purchasing dual spec and have not stopped since. I relate to almost everything in the article. I have not gotten to raid heal (yet), but I feel guilty every time we fail. The dps may stand in fire and the tank may ignore the adds while they rip the dps into shreds, but its my fault when people start dropping.
I joke about the “no heals for you” thing. Once, someone would not stop pulling before the tank got there and almost wiped us on 3 straight pulls. I let them get really low (15% hp) on purpose to scare them. They stopped, but I felt bad for failing to do my job fully.
I love my priest. I may know every dungeon by heart, but each battle is almost like new with healing. The dps’ers who brag about their 20k+ dps can keep it. In the end, they would not last a minute in a boss fight if I were not there to keep them alive.
Cant say I know too much about healing; hell not at all. My only two characters are a mage and a spriest. Its nice to read a healers perspective though and I gotta say I am really happy to see healers take healing so seriously. I could never play a heals one because I find it boring and two because even though I find it boring I would really suck at it. I tried holy out on my shadow priest for a while and I was in a panic mode the entire time. Blows my mind how heals can raid and do dungeons without ever exhausted. Not saying heals is a bad job as in my opinion I would think its probably the most essential, just saying its not for me and I’m hella happy to see there are people that heal because they like healing. (I know far too many people who say they only heal for this reason or that; mostly its demand)
All I can say is thank you for writing my thoughts and feelings so well, it saved me the trouble.
🙂
Rescue (pally)
ClanBC (Holy-Priest)
Draenor
I’d have to join this peculiar group here, because I feel much the same way about healing.
I started healing in TBC on my pally (holy paladins are so spoiled these days :P) and got addicted to healing. It was a nice ego boost when people were shocked no one died if the shit hit the fan in heroics. Healing through “stupid” and just plain accidents are key fun factors of healing, in my opinion. That’s a major draw to healing for me to this very day.
It’s because of fights like Heroic MgT that I have the healing inferiority complex (also, it’s why my resto druid is my main now). It was unspeakably frustrating floating around helplessly, wishing for more holy shocks, because stopping for even one FoL meant dying. But then again, maybe I just really sucked at healing that encounter.
As much as encounters can annoy me, I usually end up getting pissed at myself.
I love this post! Healing is the only thing about WoW I truly love. Most of the time I have the “can’t let people die” feeling, but I’m snarky and vindictive enough that if someone is repeatedly causing problems, I’ll let them die. It does make me kind of itchy when I’m doing it, though. Ha.
I think everyone should try healing or tanking or both just to see how it is. I have tanked quite a bit in my short wow career but realized that I get so nervous and tense that it very quickly feels like a job I should get paid fore. Super satisfying when it goes well, but will destroy a good night sleep if it goes wrong.
I am one of those tanks that always watch the healers mana, pull one group at the time and wait for the healer if he is far behind. Now I have started to play dps shaman a lott, I see it as my job to make everything easier for the tank and the healer. If the healer have little mana or the tank have forgotten to wait for the healer I heal the tank, I interrupt every spell-caster I can find, I get annoyed with myself if I take damage, I love the fact that with my totems I give more to the group than dps. I often put out a mana totem for the healer if he is running low and if I could put my mana shield on him I would. When someone die i try to res them instead of the healer since he has more important uses for his mana, which I don’t use that much of anyway. If there is a mob hitting the healer that the tank hasn’t seen I will aggro him off and pull him over to the tank. And if the tank dies I will do everything in my might to keep mobs of the healer. When some idiot blames death on the healer I will almost always side with the healer. I did that when I tanked as well, I will always say sorry and my bad when bad stuff happened.
You keep those good heals coming.