Still sane, but looking for a bit of helpFollow

After 4 years of playing wow, I decided to roll a holy priest, and since I'm lazy I've levelled to 64 more or less by using the random dungeon finder all day long. I've enjoyed it alot more than I thought I would, if we don't count the times I've wanted to scream and pull my hair out in frustration when a whole room of mobs is pulled right after I've announced a mana break. Oh well.

Overall, the whole healing thing's been going fine, but I get these paranoid thoughts from time to time that I'm the worst healer ever. Other times I think I'm ok, but I'd like to improve and would really appreciate some tips.

My usual routine is to keep renew on the tank, flash or shield+flash on squishies, renew on the locks at all times, and primarily gheal the tanks. All goes out the window when everyone but the tank is tanking though, but my priority list is tank -> me -> dps, no matter how much whining that can lead too.

I think there's definitely a strong use for gheal for a holy priest below 80. I'd be doing pretty much what you're doing. You can always read the sticky for further tips. Circle of Healing for AOE damage, of course, or CoH+Prayer of Healing for serious AOE damage. If you don't have CoH yet you should soon.

Pretty soon you'll also get Prayer of Mending, also known as the big happy ball of healy goodness. Be sure to keep it on cooldown.

I can appreciate getting a complex because of poor dps behavior, especially if this is his first healy toon, as it appears.

Don't let them get into your head. If everyone lived, you did good. If dps pull and you manage to keep them alive, you did great. Same scenario...they die...it's their fault (don't let them tell you otherwise...dps are infamous for not watching their aggro like they are supposed to).

If the tank dies, that's your fault. If the healer dies, it's usually the tank's fault...unless you forget to heal yourself.

I imagine that a lot of the tanks you're running into already have 80s and are making a tank alt. They are used to running dungeons at 80 where most healers have good enough mana regen to never drink. This, and the general attitude of ignoring the healer until something goes wrong, is why you're running into ppl pulling the whole room while you're drinking.

If it were me, and assuming I (you) told them I was (you were) drinking w/ enough warning, I'd save em once...remind the tank to watch your mana...and the second time I'd let em wipe.

Thanks for your replies. I think my problem is that I just feel a bit guilty when an overaggroing dps dies. Which is strange, because I always knew it was my own goddamn fault when I played my lock or rogue and overaggroed like hell and went *splat*, usually because I was drunk.

TDSunryzeX, you've just given me something to not look forward to. I'll bring a glass of wine with me.

All in all though, I love healing, I just never understood just how frustrating it can be at times.

Edited, Mar 12th 2010 10:50am by Cookiethief

rez plz
plz rez
cn i get a rez?????
rez plz!!!

I like you Sarcin.

I yell at stupid, after I've healed them. It would have to be an extreme case of repeated stupid for me to deliberately let them die.

Hey, I don't mind letting you die as long as you don't mind. I mean, if I can react fast enough, I even Shield-PoM-Penance you sometimes, and that's ok because then you're not doing your optimal rotation anymore anyway and Aeth has grabbed aggro again, etc.

Plus you know what you're doing, the tank knows, the healer knows, all is well. And you do awesome DPS.

Sometimes I just don't bother to pick the mobs off of Moz anymore, he's not going to stop bothering me until he's eating dust anyway.

Edit: of course, I'll say something like "taunt on cooldown" on skype so he doesn't know that I'm letting him die.

Edited, Mar 15th 2010 2:58pm by Aethien

I don't even yell at them. I heal them if I can. If they're stupid more than once, I make polite suggestions and requests. After that, I will get harsher. But I do think there has been a cultural shift in WoW toward being way overly harsh on people making mistakes. If you don't have the patience to play with human error, then don't play with humans. There is plenty of perfectly nice computer-generated content for your misanthropic enjoyment.

However, under the following conditions, my peace love and cookies give way to GDIAF:

1. They try to blame me for the stupid.
2. They refuse to learn from their mistakes and/or act entitled to make them, or similarly fly in the face of common courtesy.
3. They use z's where s's should go. I'm sorry, what were you asking for? I don't have anything called "healz."

I should note that I usually save stupid once or twice before letting them die a miserable death.
But when say... you're in heroic Halls of Lightning, you know the debuff that causes damage when you move?
I shield people who get that debuff so they can move a bit if needed.
If you start running around with that on and get yourself to 5% hp after burning through a shield and then, miraculously, stop moving once you get down low enough that it could kill you I'm not healing you.
And yes, that happened.
I told the hunter to eat as I don't heal stupid.
That particular event went quite out of control because there were 2 guildies of said hunter in the group protecting the behaviour and calling me a noob for not healing her.
Add that to the fact that they all spoke in leetspeak and the only reason I stayed was that I needed two more emblems for my heirloom.

In general a stupid name, leetspeak and begging for heals tend to bring the point of "No I'm not healing you, can't you see I'm busy dpsing?" a lot closer.
I'm usually willing to heal stupid indefinitely if the person committing the stupid is showing that he or she is trying, is capable of typing in English and tries to learn.

Maybe I'd be somewhat inclined to believe that if it wasn't a hunter.
Who was running and jumping around.
During a fight.
With zero reason whatsoever to move, even without the debuff.


And honestly... Is it that hard to figure out?
I mean, you start taking damage once you move.
Take a step, hey the lightning follows me and I got hurt.
Take another step, hey the lightning is hurting me when I move.
It might take a few steps more for some people, but almost 25k health worth of ticks?