So my guild is suffering big-time due to burnout, SWTOR, and a lack of diversity. We are 5/8 in Dragon Soul and won’t advance unless we get another tank — for the second time we had a MT either gquit or real-life-break — we get another healer, and a DPS that isn’t a hunter, ’cause we have two of those already. This means I only get to play BigRedKitty for Looking For Raid joy and valor point farming.
In the meantime, my spriest gets leveled. There have been three problems with this:
Hunter-noobs. The never-ending parade of “incorrect’ pets. Not using pets at all. Walking into extra trash. I mean, I have seen hunters just prance into a second group of mobs more than any other class. Not using anything but Autoshot; my shadowfiend has out-dps’d some hunters. Just awful stuff.
Tanks who think ever pack must be destroyed. Yes we clear instances pretty quick, ignoring most boss-mechanics, but do they have to clear the ENTIRE instance?
When the healer drops and people think the spriest can heal.
/gulp
First off, I never switch to my Discipline spec because, frankly, I never remember to. I go OOM faster than any healer in the history of WoW as a result.
Second, I have no idea what any of those Disc spells do. I need a d@mn training dummy for healing.
I “healed” all of Botanica, except the final boss, with only two DPS. I haven’t sweated that much since downing Rags in Firelands for the first time.
BRK: AAUUUGGGH! THE TANK HAS 80% HEALTH!
Brain: Just throw a Flash Heal on him.
BRK: WHERE’S THE BUTTON?! WHERE’S THE BUTTON?!
Brain: Same place it is when you’re dps’ing; you didn’t let me change specs.
BRK: HE’S HEALED?! IS IT OVER?!
Brain: Yes, the four mobs are dead.
BRK: HE’S MOVING TO HE NEXT PACK AND I’M AT 80% MANA!! /OOM D@MN YOU!
Brain: You don’t need to drink. You have plenty of mana for these trash pulls.
BRK: IF THE TANK DIES I’M GONNA PASS OUT!
Brain: Shield him; throw a HoT, then standby with a Flash Heal. He’s a Paladin; he’ll be fine.
BRK: IF I SHIELD HIM HE WON’T GENERATE RAGE AND HE’LL FREAK OUT!
Brain: He’s a Paladin; he doesn’t use rage.
BRK: THE HUNTER JUST WALKED INTO ANOTHER PACK!! HE’S TAKING DAMAGE!
Brain: Target the hunter using your Party plates, hit Flash Heal, retarget the tank.
BRK: THE PARTY PLATES ARE WAAAAAY OVER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN!! I’LL NEVER MAKE IT! I NEED MACROS!
Brain: The hunter is a noob; let him die. Keep that rogue alive.
BRK: THE ROGUE?! WE HAVE A ROGUE?! CHRIST ON A POGO STICK WHERE?!
Brain: It doesn’t matter “where”; just target him and throw a Flash…
BRK: THE ROGUE AND THE TANK TOOK DAMAGE AT THE SAME TIME!! AUUUGGHH!
Brain: You really do need to change specs someday.
BRK: I JUST SHIELDED MYSELF!
Brain: Why?
BRK: BECAUSE MY MACRO SHIELDS ME IF I DON’T HAVE A TARGET! I THINK I HIT THE ESC KEY WHILE I FLAILED!
Brain: Tell the party to wait while you drink.
BRK: /p DPS LIKE YOUR MOTHERS’ LIVES DEPEND UPON IT! I MIGHT SHIELD THE BOSS OR SOME STUPID CRAP! I NEED MANA POTS! I NEED TO DRINK!
Brain: Calm in the face of danger, I see.
BRK: THE ROGUE IS IN PRISON AND I CAN’T HEAL HIM! /slam slam slam slam
Brain: Heal. The tank.
BRK: LOOK LOOK LOOK I FLASH HEALED THE ROGUE!
Brain: You’re a god among men.
“Holyhanna has joined the party.”
BRK: I wanna go solo Dragon Soul; it’d be less stressful.
Brain: And quieter. Now go get me a Dr. Pepper. And a brownie. A small one.
That was some comedy gold BRK, I almost snorted coffee out my nose!
I have maybe once, *maybe* twice in all my years of playing WoW (like, a lot) seen Hunters who were as bad as the noobs you describe. Just terrible luck on your part? Weird. Sad, but weird.
Good luck on the heals, it sounds like you love it
So, I’m curious. Are you able to contain yourself when Imapewpew and his spore bat join the group and he disengages into that pack of mobs the tank said were there but the group wasn’t going to kill?
“Hi. Um…my main is BigRedKitty, a hunter. Maybe you’ve heard of me. Could I make a suggestion that would improve your dps just a bit and maybe make the game more fun?”
Hunt-ard looks sideways at the gnome. “You’re who?”
“BigRed…”
“Never heard of you and I don’t need advice from a gnome.”
THAT must be the sound I hear on the wind occasionally.
Good times, good times.
I’m a lowly keyboard turner (bad habit I can’t break) and I find the addon Healium to be excellent for 5 mans. 10 and 15 man raids and BGs are ok too, but 25 and up is too cluttered for me.
he he! Well done BRK
While some say it’s”boring,” I find healing stressful too. May I suggest fading onto the huntards, that way you don’t have to heal and it fulfills the Shadowpriest’s RDA of One Daily Evil.
Another suggestion might be to consider healing BG’s to get a sense of how to heal on the fly. Keep ‘em coming!
Brain! Also, this is the exact reason I switched to a healer back when I played. Stress = entertainment. DPS just got boring.
When I was playing I kept my shaman as a Healer and melee DPS to mix it up from my time as a hunter. I loved the stress of healing a group and keeping them alive.
Hello Brain! How I missed the BRK vs Brain talks
I can forgive the shadow priest leveling, but…
JUST SAY NO TO SMALL BROWNIES!
(looking forward to Julzie hitting 85, I can heal/tank some 5mans for you when that time comes)
The problem with healing is every time someone dies, it’s your fault.
It doesn’t matter if the Tank chain-pulled while you were OOM then broke LOS while you were drinking. He died because you weren’t healing him.
It doesn’t matter that the DPS blew every CD they have and ripped Aggro off the Tank and were subsequently one-shotted. It doesn’t matter that they wouldn’t move out of the red stuff. They died because you weren’t healing them.
I Tanked PUGs, which was fun, sort of, but also stressful, because just like Healing Tanks also get blamed for Wipes.
DPS get it easy. Just Pewpewpew. Oh, I pulled Aggro. No bother, Tank can pick it up. Oh, I’m taking damage? No bother, Healer will keep me alive. WTF? I died? Nub Tank! Nub Priest! L2Aggro! L2Healz! Geez!
If I still had a Blizz account (lost me to SWTOR) and I was on your server, I’d be tempted to tank for ya! I feel for ya buddy. Heck, I could even heal for ya (Bear/Tree spec) and let you go back to pwning Huntards!
It’s been a long time since I played my hunter, but your posts made me good at it, and I always enjoyed the comedy gold. Keep ‘em coming, man!
Good post I have played a hunter forever and had a pally tank as my main for a while. This is exactly how I was when I was told I needed to heal on my pally. I have yet to heal on anything at max level and not be stressed out.
Oh, I have missed these ‘discussions’, Daniel… Thanks for the laugh, it comes at a time I can really use it.
Daniel
I laughed so hard in my office, the HR department down the hall had to come check on me. Too funny (my main is a hunter and my alt is a shammy healer) healing is very stressful. Keep up the great blog posts, you are a blessing all of us.
Best
Just remember to tell the ungrateful s.o.b.’s “I didn’t forget to heal you. I wanted to watch you die!”
So THRILLED to see brain and BRK back at it!
When I want to get my kill on in that special, shadowy way enough to respec, reglyph, and wait through a DPS queue, I feel I am not obligated one bit to heal anyone other than the occasional self-shield.
Snort!
Welcome back Brain. Missed your talks with Daniel.
Shadowpriests are supposed to heal????
No way! Mindflay and have little purple balls floating around my middle makes me a kind of dark shammy doesn’t it?
I always liked a healing addon when healing above 5 mans, VuhDo was what I used when I played most recently, played healers almost exclusively a disc/holy priest though I must admit I loved disc, and holy pally < 2 holy specs one pvp, one pve, had a lock too but I prefer healing. VuhDo was excellent though because of its ability to configure alot of info into its unit frames, while still setting up macros, timers, use of trinkets etc.
Get Healbot. Even as dps it is very nice to manage buff’s and throw down quick spells when needed with out having to click their frames. You can asign spells based on spec or as heals. It makes healing a breaze as you just look at it and click bars.
You’re awesome, BRK, thanks for making me grin every time I visit your site.
I use grid for raid frames in healing spec and use macros on my f1 f2 f3 and 1,2,3 keys. Works really well. And I’m a 3 week resto Shammy.
I should say, mouseover macros.
Love the stories Daniel.
Btw, shielding the Tank (warrior / bear variety) makes no difference on rage generation.
They fixed that many moons ago.
I laughed so hard I snorted. I’m levelling a DiscoP at the moment (main is a Hunter ofc), you panicked me with the shield-rage thing but no, they fixed that as Temperancy has said. Phew. I’d never even heard of it
Healing is definitely way more stressful than DPS. I’m also levelling a pally tank and I tell you, you can’t win. “Pull moar…”, “Clear all, need xp….” “Why you go that way? Go this way, quicker…”
Every group wants something different and the fricking rogues steal your strength rings for the attack power.
And the huntards, oh god, the huntards. I used to whisper them, help them out, but I just can’t do it anymore. I need a fricking how to play macro for them. And apparently everything really is still Hunter Loot.
I used to heal in Wrath, priest heal and shaman heal. The sweat of terror poured off of me the entire time. Constant agonizing terror.
Wow. I haven’t been here in a while. I have to get used to the fact that you are posting more now…
Vuhdo, Vuhdo, Vuhdo.
Just get it. Very easy to set up and work with, and once you get used to your “click-casts” it’s super cool.
Whar he go?
MoP Alpha maybe? Or perhaps nothing interesting has happened in the last few months. Or he forgot his password. Lol I don’t know but I will still check this site everyday.
Alpha or not I still want stories, jokes, and recipes. Lol. Hope all is well, regardless.
BRK? You still out there? Everything ok?
OK brain where are you hiding BRK.
I need to remember not to read this stuff at work, nearly passed out trying not to laugh so loud that the people in the next building, half a mile down the road, could hear me. and you should still MD the healers…. its fun for the whole family.
BRK, the problem I seem to run into on my healer is the “IAMTANKTARD” syndrome, where a mail dps (at low levels) that can tank suddenly decides to TRY and tank, even though the tank is clearly not them. And then they throw a tantrum at me for shocker, not healing their idiot behinds when they pull aggro off the tank, or try and tank something else.
I just have gotten to the point where I refuse to heal idiots. Do something stupid once, Okay, everybody makes a mistake or two, forgiven. Repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Taunt off a pally tank? Die, please, here I’ll even help by NOT healing your idiot butt.
And? I don’t care if you have an 85 of such and such class. You are an idiot if you cannot play your role, and then try and tell me how to do mine by saying you have an 85 of some unrelated class. I know my job… keep the tank alive. Your job as DPS? Do not pull threat off the tank, and kill what the tank is trying to. Simple.
Jee… can you tell I had one of the above groups tonight?
I forgot to mention that as a tank i loved it when the healers were the ones who got MD’ed to…. to see/hear the pure horror on their face/ in their voice brought me great joy right before i taunted