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All the World Loves a Healer...
Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009
The unfortunate problem is that this is a terribly sharp double-edged sword. It's true, in that one healer can turn the tide of battle in an MMO PvP setting, and with the "holy trinity" set-up most MMO's favour, you can't succeed under normal circumstances without some healing abilities present. There's nothing more gratifying than being recognized as a good healer, receiving thanks, or surviving a MAJOR fight and realizing that your team still has the most standing. That's when people treat you like your presence is the second coming.
The other sharp side of that blade involves abuse and lack of responsibility in other classes. People get wiped on a raid, healer's fault. We're losing a BG, it's because "no one's healing me". I cannot tell you how many games I have played in where I have s**t-listed someone for yelling at me (or teammates), and they will NEVER receive another heal from me. Ever. You don't treat your waiter like crap if you don't want them spitting in your food, and abusing a healer is just a bad idea. There are likely crappy healers out there, but some people are just playing outside of the "accepted" healBot build and are actually DPSing or doing other things as well as healing.
So my original WoW "main" was a hunter, after which I levelled an enhancement shaman. Then a friend and I got the idea in our heads of making a priest/mage team and levelling them together to eventually have a great 2 person arena team. That last part never happened, but I am now the proud owner of a level 80 blood elf Discipline Priest (whose trademark feature is his hair, but that's another post) who has a decent set of PvP gear and raid gear. I LOVE playing him, even though I am distracted sometimes by wanting to punish Alliance trangressors. In WAR I tried a few healing characters, and enjoyed playing them. Except the abuse of healers there was WAY worse than in WoW or any of the other games I have played. Matticus posted a great guest-article on his site along these lines also, but I have found that I truly enjoy playing the healer.
But I am a vengeful god. If you yell at me, I won't heal you. If you do something stupid, I will watch you die and maybe rez you later. Conversely, if you protect me, or peel the Death Knight pwning me while I'm trying to heal off, I will follow you around and keep you alive. This was a big one in WAR, where the tanks ALL had an ability to share healer damage/aggro. If you put it on me, you had a pocket healer. I will bestow my healing powers upon you, until you screw me over. Everyone knows Bloodsun's motto is "I didn't forget to heal you. I watched you die."
I tried to find links to any of the original posts I laughed over in regard to "why I didn't heal you." I couldn't find any of them, so I'm going to do my own "Top Ten" list. I apologize if any of these are repeats, but these are how myself or my Guildies have looked at it. Enjoy!
"WHY YOU DIDN'T GET ANY HEALS"
10. You had a really stupid name. Like one that made me roll my eyes or sneer in disgust. Sorry "Gunnaganku" but you're on your own.
9. You're a BG or chat channel troll. If I have put you on ignore at any time, OR you have offended me to the point where out of hundreds/thousands of players YOUR NAME STICKS OUT, I will continue to ignore you.
8. You're telling me I have specced wrong or my gear sucks. OK, then even if it's true you clearly don't want my s**tty mediocre heals anyhow.
7. On the same token, yelling at me for being a Disc priest (or any class "not best" at healing) without understanding how hard it is to keep your dumb ass alive. By the way, my specialty as Disc is INSTANT shields and last minute saves. No Soup For YOU!
6. DEMANDS for heals. "HEAL ME NOW N00B". Right. You can bounce up and down in front of me all you want. It is NOT going to make me heal you. Welcome to /ignore or AssHat.
5. Not releasing after you have died and waiting for the healers to run back, get mana, and then rez you. You will either stay dead a LOOONG time, or learn what the term I coined means when I say "redeadification." You're gonna be a corpse again REAL quick.
4. You start off in any BG yelling "LET'S TAKE STABLES" or ignoring the goal of the fight/scenario. I will be healing the flag carrier, the one carrying the artifact, defending, etc. I will not be following your bitch DPS ass around while you GY camp the other side.
3. Likewise, you complain in main chat that we're losing because "no one is getting any healz." Look at the list. We're already at half a million in heals. You're a punk that's trying to take the stables again while the healers are all defending nodes. We're NOWHERE NEAR YOU. See next reason...
2. You're not protecting the healers. If you want me to heal you, get the GODDAM DEATH KNIGHT or WHITE LION that is ripping my hair out by the ROOTS off of me! Otherwise I am going to be healing myself and trying to kill them, as opposed to worrying about your personal status.
1. Honestly, this comes to the top of the list partly because of the nature of our site, but also because it royally pisses me off and I WILL stop everything in the middle of a BG or raid to report you. If something is "gay" or we or the other team are "fagz" or "faggots" or you use any offensive slur or denigrating term, you will be asked to stop in main chat, reported, and then you will never, ever be healed/rezzed/buffed or otherwise assisted by me or ANY ONE ELSE IN MY GUILD EVER EVER EVER AGAIN.
I have many other ones I could add, but I'll leave it up to you guys to post your favourites. Hope some of these at least made you smile, nod, or think!
Comments
Posts
I left out one main obvious one. You did something stupid like standing in the dragon fire, void zone of death, or a DK's death and decay. I'm not even going to answer why I let you die at that point. L2P nub.
OMG, what about warlocks that life tap without telling the priest what is happening!!
I had to pull an alliance warband leader (a tank) aside last night. He didn't consider that spending time rezzing reckless mdps who venture off to the next zip code means I can't heal. Fortunately he's smart and understood right away. I plan to figure out which shamans are not heal-specced and asking one of them to be the designated rezzer.
We used to have a socially challenged, dumb mdps in the guild who'd obnoxiously bray, "Can I get a rez?!?" into vent as soon as he died. He never understood why I made him wait so long, frantically trying to keep people alive. I had a talk with him too. He left the guild. I may have had something to do with that. Aion was also a factor.
Thanks for linking back to my guest post over at WoM. I'm really glad you enjoyed it and it sparked a post like this. :D Always nice to know people actually read the stuff.
I can't find a thing wrong with your list, and I wholeheartedly agree with your number 1. I'm not gay, but seeing people use any kind of derogatory language in chat like that irks me and immediately makes me go into the Report Spam button at the very least. If it's bad, it's a GM report. I ran into the unfortunate situation today in one of my classes where a student had to call something he didn't like gay, and I had to spend a great deal of time telling them why that's never appropriate for a classroom setting. He's such a nice kid, generally, too.
I tend to agree with number 10 a lot, too. I love funny names. If a player's name is stupid and funny, then I'm all about it and go out of my way to keep them alive. However, if a player has something like "Stabzorizor" for a Rogue...well, he or she is on their own.
I have never had someone irritate me enough that I cut off healing to them (I "threaten" to do that to my gaming buddies approximately daily though) but I could see it happening.
Every once in a while I want to pull my hair out at people (not always in heal related matters. Some people seem to actively try to counteract their contributions) but I usually just nod, smile, and move on.