This is in response to http://fallingleavesandwings.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/do-healers-have-a-bad-attitude/
To preface, I've started leveling up a healer with my girlfriend playing on her warlock. We try to maintain the same level so we can queue together and party together. The first 15 levels were a bit trying as she was just starting off learning the dps class. although the warlock can be simply played, the learning curve is a bit steep. once they get it though, they get it. that’s the same with me. it took me several deaths and many many self-contemplating moments running back to my body to actually devise solutions to my deaths.
To be honest (and when have I not been honest? =p ) I have been having issues with healing as of late. actually I've been to several groups from RFC to Stocks/BFD. I do have a priest already named Aquilla, healing as discipline spec (I just ran another AN instance on her and everyone rocks, no AN fails like before!!! woot!!) but my younger, level 23 self is having issues healing. I do have an idea of why this is the case but I cant really say for certain. I mean it could be that I suck. but lets look at the scenarios.
Scenario 1: SFK, druid tank, some dps and me. When we zone in, the worgen aggros on us immediately (bad fucking design blizz? please fix) and we're off fending off crap as best we can. then we buff up, heal, drink, etc. only problem is the tank decided to run off after he got his buff and forgot that I had just used up all my mana healing people (who should be eating anyway) and buffing people. I ran to the jail room and found that the tank had pulled the mobs on the loft and has jumped down to take out the lower level mobs and, by default, the boss. I spent the whole time playing catchup. we barely made it out with me having zero mana left. while the guy was opening the door, I had plenty of time to drink (but of course, this was the only time since it was a forced wait).
Then, Bear pulls half the courtyard. Misses a wolf or two who decides to run to me because I put shield on the bear. Bad Bear. mass pull but don’t know the basics of aggro or… if I pull too much I need to get healed NOW instead of when I stop to finally get everyone together. so he's down to 50% health. of course, I can heal him easily, but not with two other mobs attacking me. Whats bad is he didn’t notice to pull them off of me. I even jumped down from the stairs to run to him (as any good healer would do when they pull aggro) but time spent running is time spent NOT casting. see the problem? so the tank dies because he left some mobs for me to deal with, figured he can pull half the courtyard (which he could, but at the expense of me healing him, and only him, nonstop) and still be okay.
We wipe and he decides to pull more judiciously. Good stuff right? for a while. im usually on half my mana bar when he pulls more. ugh. sure. thanks. we kill the butcher then kill the baron. it was quite annoying. then we go upstairs and kill things along the way to the captain's room. sure, it was going ok. I was having mana issues because the tank needed nonstop healing. I couldn’t stop for a second, and this guy kept pulling like healers didn’t need mana. I did get to mana up before the pull in the captain's room. so off he went and pull most of the room, besides the boss. I can heal through this, sure. I'll be OOM by the time the fight is over, and that's only if the dps is able to kill everything before I go OOM. what happened was…. I got silenced. so any time the healer gets silenced, sleeped, or whatever other spell that puts me out of healing for more than 3 seconds, the tank will die. he will. just because he pulled way too much. And he did die and we did wipe. We rezed and argued for a few minutes before the tank decided to drop group and wished everyone luck with "the awesome heals". After he left, I get a few comments from the dps about how the tank should have pulled less. well then speak up will ya? thanks for backing up the healer, btw /sarcasm.
To be honest, I could have just not healed him constantly, pretend to not know my healing spells, and then maybe that would have caused him to slow down. but it wouldn’t help the next group since he probably would just think that this current run has a newb healer and so he should slow down, but for subsequent runs, he'll continue to pull the same "mass pull the Hobbs way" stunts. in a way, my healing encourages him on and informally states that its ok to do mass pulls. after all, no one is dying if all things go well. but in every case of mass pullage, nothing goes as intended. usually, a dps will be disoriented or a healer is silenced. then we die. that’s basically it. they leave zero room contingencies when contingencies happens quite often. So I'll be damned if I tell him to slow down and I'll be damned if I don’t.
End result, he left and we got a fairly decent druid tank. he waited for me and asked questions. he stopped to make sure all mobs were in front of him (per my suggestion) and made sure to use swipe a lot (per my suggestion also). We got through the instance with zero wipe. Thanks for being the tank that's actually careful and don’t assume we overgear everything. good luck with everything!
Scenario 2: Dead Mines, Druid tank. We started off doing okay, with some random mobs coming from all directions. However, it appears that the tank was in some kind of a hurry and left me behind to drink while he moved on. For some strange reason, he also required non-stop healing. we continue on to sneed and it was a mess. bear pulls, dps paladin pulls, I pull with my shields, hunter pet pulls, warlock pet pulls. I honestly had an easier time healing the rest of the group than the tank. imagine that. it was actually easier to heal the voidwalker and the cat pet who's tanking than heal the tank who's supposed to be tanking. after the fight, the tank missed sneed as well. he jumps off his shredder and the pets pick him up immediately.
Now after sneed/shredder is the forge. and we all love the forge. on our pulls down the forge, the tank does not know how to pull mobs BACK and forgot that the created robots should be given a nice swipe unless you want the healer to be running back and forth with aggro problems. the dps was having problems finishing off runners. Honestly, the dps was everywhere on this one too. one helping the tank but the others helping me because the tank couldn’t get the mobs off of me. I also non-stop healed in this case. the tank didn’t die but I took care of everyone. once I was out of combat (meaning, the battle was over), I sat down to drink. the tank, however, charged an unaggroed group. dumbass. the whole scenario happened again. robots were created and made a beeline for the healer. runners werent slowed/killed so they got some reinforcements (the tank could have pulled them all back to a safer area to avoid this, but no, we're leet or something and heals can heal while OOM just fine. OOM= Out of Mana).
So I called the tank out on why he pulled the next group while I was still drinking. We started arguing about a few things and he decided to leave and said "good luck with your awesome heals". that’s odd, last I remembered awesome heals usually means people stay. oh well. our next tank, also a druid, pulled slow. and although up the scaffolding to the top of the boat, someone pulled captain greenskin unintentionally (that meant about 10 mobs on the tank) I healed through that just fine. The new tank then said I was amazing heals. I had to chuckle at that point. but I did notice that the new tank, although a level lower than the previous, took a lot less damage than the one before. I had zero mana issues. and we ended the dungeon with no hiccups (except when the hunter, poor Manders, feel off the scaffolding and into the water, then proceeded to die).
Scenario 3: Stockades, or just Stocks for short. DRUID tank (do you see a pattern here??). Runs into the first room (yes, with the mobs in the hallway in tow, and decides to stand in the middle of the room (and yes, with mobs behind him stabbing at him) and therefore, takes a buttload of damage. I tried to heal but was out of LOS for a bit. also, tho his credit, there was a paladin who had righteous fury on and didn’t really know how to play (5/5 seals of the pure, 5/5 toughness, 1 pt in anticipation) dps too well. I had aggro, warlock had aggro, some other dps had aggro, and tank was in a room all by his lonesome.
So here there isnt much question as to the problem. DPS wasn’t focused, actually, dps sucked except for the warlock, who decided to go AFK after we rezed. The tank was ok pulling 1 room at a time. but just 1 room. he did ask me if it was that hard to heal him, and I listed the issues. yes tanks, you guys are supposed to analyze the situation and lead. but clearly, you're not. we're all somehow playing support roles to you. you're the star, of course, because the battle is between you and the mobs. after all, they're all focused on you, right? /sarcasm.
So we wait for a while to kick the AFK warlock. but to no avail. slowly but surely, everyone leaves. so I left and gave group leadership to the lock (which I probably shouldn’t have since he may have been able to queue and skip the line since he's already inside the instance). I queued up for another dungeon and got BFD. and no, sadly, this time it was with a paladin tank. OMG the joy. I was thrilled. it was soooooooooo easy. I barely had to heal him. it was Shields all the way. although I did have to heal the other dps at times (you know, the lifetapping lock and the melee taking collateral damage), healing that instance wasn’t a problem at all. we also had a great dps who kept kicking mobs that would cast mana burn or heals. I loved that rogue. top dps too. he made my healing days pretty easy and I made sure he was healed as much as the lock (since the lock soul stoned me on cooldown). The tank? Shield. maybe a flash heal here and there. and in big groups, I finally pulled out a big heal, maybe twice. and that's it. This is how healing/tanking should be. Thanks miss paladin for giving me hope in level 23 tanks.
Deductions:
So what exactly can I deduce from the three scenarios? That druid tanks suck. That tanks at level 20s suck. That people are just learning their class and they do suck. True dat.
But really, what I find most probable are two major things.
1. Everyone thinks they're in Triumph Badge type gear doing heroics.
Let me explain this a little for those who don’t automatically understand. You see when Wrath of the Lich King first came out and people made it to level 80, they had the choice of playing regular instances at their level (there were four at 80) or do "Heroic" versions of all of the instances (these include all of the northrend level 68 to 80 instances, tuned for level 80s who want higher difficulty). And yes, it was difficult. Actually, it was so difficult that we spent a good 40 minutes in each instance each time we run a heroic. and what did we get? level 200 gear. this gear was considered better gear than what we got leveling.
to give you an idea, outland rewards start at roughly level 140 and end at around level 180. to get level 200 gear, you had to do heroics. even normal level 80 instances gave you level 185 gear. so doing heroics was necessary to get into raids. For raiding Naxxramas (THE raid at the time), people needed not only gear, but skill. it took 6 hours for my 10man group to finish naxx. it was rewarding nonetheless.
But as patches came out, and new raids were introduced, people got a "shortcut" to the latest raids. how? due to heroics dropping better tokens (basically money used to buy better gear). these tokens allowed for people who used to only be able to run heroics normally get better gear to help them gear up to do raids. Now, the problem happened when Blizz decided to add a third and fourth set of emblems to buy even better gear. now this gear rocks and is vastly superior to anything Naxx can drop.
Now the problem is this. They allowed heroic bosses to drop better tokens, but they never changed the difficulty of heroics. Not only that, they encouraged raiders to run heroics in order to get these updated tokens in order to fill buy gear they lacked. So when people slowly collected enough tokens to buy more gear and are "encouraged" to run low level content, they end up doing heroics in 15 minutes (as opposed to 40 minutes). All heroics become a cakewalk. Honestly, each time I step into a heroic, I feel that I outlevel the instance by 10 levels. TEN LEVELS. This is why my last three level 80s have zero triumph gear. they're all in dungeon gear. some are in the later ICC5 gear, which is kindof like cheating, but still, its useful for the content. and yes, only the three ICC instances and maybe the ONE, yes ONE ToC instance seem to be marginally difficult for people with decent gear.
But the point remains. These triumph emblem drops are casuing everyone to treat heroics with little regard. indeed, they make it really easy to farm tokens to turn in for gear. it is so easy in fact, that people have this mentality that if they have emblem vendor gear, they can walk through anything. This, coupled with the constant heroic run mindset, has cause their alts to think they also outgear the instance because 1) their mains can do it and 2) their gaer is vendor bought heirlooms.
This is a psychological issue here. We have come to the point where content is trivialized and nerfed enough to merit no consideration when it comes to leveling. Any dummy can level. no seriously. and im not trying to insult anyone. but it takes zero skill to level from 1 to 80. even if it takes someone 6 months to do it, they'll be able to do it. but when it comes to instances, where cooperation is required and planning is needed, people tend to fail at that more often than not.
2. out of instances, the druids are cats, the paladins are ret and the warriors are fury.
These are all DPS telent specs. but when they enter an instance, the druid turns from cat into bear the paladins put on a shield and the warrior does likewise. although they have zero talents to help them tank better, they think that adding a shield or going bearform will allow them to tank an instance with ease. okay, sure at this level they may be able to tank decently. but as the tanks level up, things will change. and especially when they are primarily dps with tanking form/stance (not even tanking spec), they think that somehow they're awesomer and run off into a group of mobs "mass pull the Hobbs way" and die (for Hobbs references, look on youtube and search wowhobbs).
For an opinon on doing multiple roles, please see http://redhawksgaze.blogspot.com/2010/08/rookie-druid-part-3-class-versus-player.html as well. The person here is talking about switching roles at level 80, but I also think it applies to leveling as well. especially with druids. On a tangent, I really don’t think someone should level as dps all the way to 80, then at 80, switch to healing because that was their whole reason to level up a paladin/druid/shaman/priest in the first place. if someone's going to learn to heal, at least start at level 60 and heal through all that. buy the dual talent specialization so you can have to specs to switch between. don’t level to 80 as a boomkin and switch to tanking or healing. there are certain skills that all healers should know about their class, and learning it at 80 isnt really the best way to do it.
I am starting to tire of writing this post, so the rest will be rushed together and ended. but you will get the jist of what im trying to convey.
3. Hierloom gear means they cant die.
A lot of people think that getting heirloom gear makes them uber. or at least, makes questing and stuff a whole lot easier. true, it does add a lot to solo play. but in groups, when roles are specific, espcially tanking, it does squat. Survival? whats that? I have leet dps as bear! Now my warrior has heirlooms and he tanks decently with them, but he only has two, yes two pieces of heirloom gear. the mass of mcgowan and the pvp shoulders. nothing too special about them at all. so when I see others with heirloom gear, I think to myself, they have an equivalent of the gear they want from the boss, and that’s it. when I see a bear cancel form and jump back into tauren form, I usually see them holding the heirloom gear with heirloom shoulders. I feel a little annoyed because I figured this is some guy who's been through this before, so how come he cant figure it out now?
4. They are the star.
The first two deductions are pretty logical. The third is quite an assumption. But this one is pretty stupid, I know. But what more can you do when the responses to wipes are, "heal?" "you should use greater heal to heal me" "am I that hard to heal?" This is basically their response. it wasn’t a matter of what happened, or how did this happen, but rather a matter of why didn’t the tank get healed enough.
So I consider myself a pretty intuitive kinda guy, and am able to cut through all the bullshit questions and cut straight to the point. because, after all, I know their motives and perspective based on just the response, "heal?" that tells me right there that they obviously know the problem. but it also tells me that they ignore everything else in their environment. tanks who do not have situational awareness should not be tanks. they need to know what happens and they also need to ask questions before jumping to conclusions. often, they're not even doing their job right in order for me to do my job right. going out of LOS, pulling too many that requires me to constantly heal them (constantly as in, not a single pause, im always flash healing, always refreshing shield and renew) and not having the ability to grab stray mobs so they don’t attack me. cos if they attack me, or any other party member, we're losing some dps, and we're gonna lose the party too if the dps cant handle killing the 15 mobs you just pulled. my mana bar is only so large at this level. So when I get a response like "heal??" I reply with "tank better."
And this will be my segway into relating this post with Beru's link above, in the beginning of the post. Here I will have to clarify that I am NOT a prissy healer. I am just a healer who's not gonna put up with bullshit. that's basically it. after several attempts to heal through what the tank (usually a druid, of course) thinks is appropriate, especially since they're in heirlooms and cannot err since they have other level 80s feeding them "on par" gear, I think I am not going to deal with this any more.
I don’t zone into an instance, check out the tank's gear and then leave if it doesn’t meet my standards. I zone into the instance, buff everyone up, then drink. I don’t want to deal with the tank's gear. why? because I have other and better things to deal with. I don’t need to be babysitting a tank and schooling him on his gear choices. then I will have to school him on his tanking performance. I do because I tanked on all four tanking classes already. I know the ins and outs of the druid, the deathknight and the pally the most. the warrior… not so much, but I have tanked half of outlands to know enough about warriors. but here, in a level 25 dungeon (which used to be 27-30, but nerfed to death so level 23's can run it easily), please know your role. please know your gearing choices and please know how to tank. I know we're all learning the class. but I have faith in tanks that they are able to read up on things before the decide to tank. they should also know that tanking isnt simply about them running into a whole room, pull everyone and then hope the healer can keep them alive. that's NOT tanking. that's Hobbs way of pulling. that's having gear 10 levels above heroic runs. but when they do that and they're on the same level with the mobs in the instance, it becomes obviously clear to everyone that the tank is stupid.
And again I say… I've had it. when things go wrong, im usually the first to point out shit. I will not be polite. this is my time they're wasting because they're stupid. and I cant really heal stupid. I try tho. but its difficult. and at least for the first 10 seconds, before my mana depletes, I can heal stupid just fine. but after that, they're on their own. I have no trouble dropping group if the tank pulls a room and decides to let half of the stab him in the back (you cannot dodge/block/parry attacks from behind, morons). I will not heal a tank if he decides to pull half a room and expects me to heal them through it while the dps is trying desparately to dps the mobs down before I go OOM. I will not heal a tank especially when, after a wipe, he decides to blame me for not keeping him up when he wasn’t doing his job to begin with. and if the tank cannot mind my mana. if im drinking and you're pulling? no. you're a dead tank. and when the tank fail to realize that the mobs can actually do other things besides attack, like silence, curse, disorient or whatevers… if the tank cant figure out that he's giving the healer absolutely ZERO leeway to deal with those things, then don’t tank. I'll drop group if you don’t drop group first. thanks. im not a prissy healer, mind you. im just a fed up healer.
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