Thursday, December 17, 2009

Be kind to your healer

First of all I must apologize for publishing this post now. I wrote it before 3.3 hit the streets but a couple of factors made me leave it "in the fridge". Then patch came and non-stop grinding sessions almost made me forget about it. Still what I wrote it's still true, maybe even more now that a lot of people is pugging like mad. Here it is.
Thanks to Miss Medicina's post about the healers I've seen that what ticks me off is very common among healers. I don't consider myself a pure healer, I play all classes (and during old WoW and part of TBC I only played dps specs). So back to the common answer, one of the worst thing for healers is people asking for heals, most of times not in a very polite way. While she thinks usually is caused by a natural reaction I believe it's lack of knowledge. Knowledge of the healer's class, of course. And I say this because in the beginning I was a bit like this. Never yelled for a heal, but it buggered me when I wasn't receiving heals or even worse, I died, specially when I was offtanking some add in Molten Core. And then my thoughts targeted the healer of my group with a "dude, we're my heals?" flashing in bright red.
So, yelling at us demanding heals is one of the worst things you can do. About 90% of the time I'm looking at the raidUI or group healthbars. Unless there's some boss attack that requires my attention so I have to move out of fire or hide behind some wall I'm not checking what's going on. Sometimes I find myself thinking the boss is taking ages to die while other times I feel he bites the dust in a blink. All I see are green bars going up and down and also getting a funky coloration when someone gets a debuff that must be removed asap. I say this so you know I'm VERY AWARE that you're taking damage and your hitpoints are migrating to Tombsville. But you should know that If I'm not healing you is because either someone else needs the heal with more urgency (tank gets top priority always) or there's something preventing me to heal: I'm feared, silenced, running out of fire or I have that funny necrotic aura from Loatheb that prevents all kind of healing.
Of course if yelling for heals is bad, yelling at the healer/s after a wipe is even worse. I think there's no need to go futher that way. If it's my fault I'll apologize and next time I'll try by all means not to fuck it up. And if you're getting healed by somebody new to the healing business give him some credit before opening the can of worms.
Another thing it ticks healers off is players getting damage when they shouldn't, mostly aggro-monkeys who go trigger happy stealing aggro from the tank or fucktards who stand in fire thinking it's our obligation to keep them alive. Sorry mister, I don't care if your dps will be reduced if you have to move, but Blizzard made these attacks powerful enough so trying to overheal that damage is futile. Also this clashes with the healing priority mentioned before. People, specially dps, should carve this in their foreheads with a rusty knife:
Healing Priority
1. Tank
2. Healer
3. Dps
A group or raid can survive if a dps goes down. We can bring you back with a battleress if needed, like bosses with enrage timers, or you can walk back inside the dungeon (like ToC), so in most cases get this very clear: you're the last in line to get our attention. So if you're getting hit and you're not the tank then surely you're doing something wrong (except it's some aoe damage that hits everybody). If you get aggro use your aggro-dropping skills: vanish, iceblock... whatever. And run to the tank so he can snap that pesky mob off you more easily.
If you're standing in fire, gas, poison cloud, blizzard or cyclone area it's simple: MOVE OUT! And quickly. If your dps numbers are lowered then just suck it up and deal with it. Do you prefer a lower dps because you have to move just some steps or do you prefer to die and see your position in Recount plummet? I think the decission is quite simple.
So, after venting some frustration (feeling much better, thank you), just remember that healing usually it's a very stressing role, putting a lot of responsability on you. Adding more stress with bad tempered attitude is the last thing we healers need.

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