Healers Always Get the Blame…

So the other day I went to heal a Heroic Gun’Drak. After gearing up in Naxx, I thought “Good, a relaxing instance run…this should be cake! It’s just a heroic!” Oh boy, was I wrong.

The first pull, one of the warriors pulled aggro off of the tank, and all three mobs hit him at once. I’m not sure even a God could have saved him. By the time I realized why he was taking 70% health per second, he was dead. And by that, I mean it took me 2 seconds to realize that he was taking VASTLY more damage than the tank (usually dps doesn’t take too much, so a Holy Shock or a Flash of Light is good enough) and he was down. Ok…whatever, it’s one glitch. Then the warrior tank goes afk. So the warrior DPS starts tanking. Alright…no shield? No defense rating? No problem. Right? So that sort of failed, and one of the dps went down…but whatever. Then the tank came back, we killed the first boss, but the poison nova killed me and 2 more DPS…whatever. I mean, if the tank isn’t going to move him away from us, or get in an area where everyone isn’t LoS’ed from my heals, or the Shaman won’t drop a cleanse totem, then that’s NOT my fault.

Then things got interesting. We come back, we jump down into the water, I heal everyone up like a good healer…and the tank immediately pulls. While I have 12% mana. Not smart. Whatever, we barely make it through that pull–what the hell? You’re pulling? Again? Really? Aw, dammit, look what you’ve–huh? The DPS warrior stole aggro again? Buddy, you need to–WHY ARE YOU PULLING WHEN I HAVE NO MANA YOU STUPID–dead DPS warrior? Really? Really, sir?

So finally, I say “Are you using Vigilance on the warrior? Because he needs it.”

To which the tank replies “Don’t tell me what to do. Why don’t you do your job and I’ll do mine :)”

To which I reply “Well, you’re obviously not doing your job if you keep losing aggro and you keep pulling when I have no mana.”

To which he replies “Well you’re obviously undergeared and suck at healing.”

Then he pulls the second boss. I have to tell you, I almost bubble-hearthed out of there. But, being the kind, patient person that I am, I decided to stick around. I healed them through that fight, no problem. No one died. No one got even close. I still had 70% mana. Because I suck and can’t heal.

But honestly, I wanted to punch him. See, with Xperl, a nice UI addon that I’m in love with, not only can I see the target of my target, but I can see the target of my target’s target. And let me tell you…whenever the tank was targeting a mob, the mob was only targeting him about 2/3 of the time. THAT’S A PROBLEM! But see, whenever I had at least 25% mana, I could heal us through an entire fight no problems. Too bad healers need mana to heal. How silly of me to want my tank to give me 10 seconds to get more of it.

Then, of course, a tanking piece drops, one that I want/need. So I say “Anyone mind if I need?” And there was no response. Finally, I go “Fuck it. If he kicks me, good riddance, he’s a jackass anyway.” And they go “Why’d you need?” And I go “I asked if anyone minded, no one said anything. So it’s for my offset.”

The rest of the instance goes without incident, until the final boss. I heal the other bosses flawlessly, but Mr. Rhino who likes to impale was cruel. The first time, he completely 1-shotted a DPS. There was literaly no hope for him. Then he impaled the other DPS, who I healed through it…then he charged me. And I died because I hadn’t had a chance to heal myself. Whatever, final bosses on some heroics are still not the easiest thing in the world. So we come back, and do it again. I heal them all the way through until the boss had about 15% left…then he impales me. And I get no heals from the Shaman. None. He just lets me die. Whatever. Epic tanking gloves drop and I say “Can I need for offspec?” The DK goes “Sure.” The warrior DPS goes “IDC.” The Shaman goes “W/e, take ‘em.” The tank?

“You should roll on more healing gear.”

At this point, if I had all the powers of a GM, I would have banned his character, his account, his IP address, and his computer from WoW. Forever. First of all, no healing gear dropped the entire instance. Second, I just fucking healed your ass through that heroic and all you can think to do is be snide at me, when you didn’t even spec into fucking Vigilance and can’t hold aggro from your DPS, none of who are doing over 2.2k dps in a HEROIC?!?

/ignore

Later, however, I get messaged from someone who goes “Do you remember me?” I thought I did, but I was wrong. However, it turns out that they *liked* how I healed, even though the last time I healed them was through Heroic UtK and I was in mostly greens and panicking the entire time. She said “Yeah, I added you because of your awesome heals, wanna come to H-DtK with us?”

Let me tell you, the difference a competent tank makes is priceless. Combine that with a group of good humored people, and we finished that run before the first round of blessings expired, even though on King Dred, the fear LoS’ed me from the tank and he died and I had to heal both the Druid and the two DKs who all decided that they would tank him at the same time.

Sorry Morso, but lrn2play before you blame it on the healer. I’m not responsible for your fail-tanking. I don’t care what your 2400 gear rating says–anytime I can cast a heal and generate more threat than you, you have done something horribly, horribly wrong. A good tank is nice and understanding and respects mana costs. A good tank can help an undergeared single-target healer solo heal a fight most raid healers can’t do. GG!

Naxxramas is Serious Business

I was never under the impression that I would be anything more than an off-healer, which as a paladin is totally possible (and really fun) if you love spamming Flash of Light and Holy Shock on raid members, while keeping Beacon of Light up at all times on…you know, someone else, like the tank. It’s sort of like whack-a-mole. See someone dying? WHAM! Flash of Light! What? Stupid ret paladin keeps pulling aggro because they turned on Righteous Defense with Pally Power? BOOM! Holy Shock (yes, a crit!) Aw, poor mage has no stamina…KAPOW! Instant Flash of Light! And look, my tank is still alive–just how I like it.

Well, we decided to do a Naxx 10 run with a bunch of alts of guild members. Boy were we pleasantly surprised to find ourselves having a few problems…by wiping on Anub. Don’t laugh. Try as we might, we just couldn’t get past him. OF course, most of us needed to gear up in Naxx 10, so the first wipe wasn’t totally unexpected. The third…you know what? No comment.

Turns out Unholy DK’s just don’t quite have the damage mitigation needed for that fight as well as other classes…instead, every time Locus Swarm came out, Anub (>0< spider power!) would get really hungry and gobble up our tank for dinner. In 2 hits. Without giving me time to do more than Holy Shock and Flash of Light…once.  So the ret pally switched to heals as well and had to crit our tank for like, 18k heals or something ridiculous so he could survive. Anyway, we made it through Anub…

To fight the poison bitch. And man, was she a bitch. Tonight was like something got stuck somewhere it shouldn’t and she was taking her rage out on us. It took our DPS DK (not the tank) bringing in his Warrior tank, our DK tank switching to DPS, and our warlock (who was rather undergeared, unfortunately) to bring in her Retadin (who did nice dps, but died easily >.<) for us to even contemplate surviving. But eventually, we made it through her…and then went on to Maexxna.

This fight was a lot smoother. In fact, we one shot her. I was standing there, Sacred Shielding the tank, keeping up Beacon of Light, and just healing my ass off generally. But I kept watching people get healed and thinking “Man, that other healer is outhealing me bad. I feel useless.” We lost two people due to being webbed on the wall, but it couldn’t be helped. I was out of range and I assumed the other healer was too.

Then someone posted the DPS charts. And I noticed that the “other healers” were in fact close to the top of the DPS charts. So I asked in vent “How the hell did you do so much dps while healing?” and they went “I wasn’t healing.” So I paused for a second and tried to figure it out–it was confuzzling. Well, the guild leader, Purgeron (a paladin who was building his tank set, but is holy and healing 25-man Ulduar) goes “Let me check the healing meters then.” I hear him click. I hear his mic go off, then back on. I hear him go “Well, this is surprising. Congrats, Ten. You just solo healed Maexx. Even I’ve never done that before.”

Lol wut?

I sat there, stupified, and checked my own meters. Sure, the ret pally had healed herself a ton during that fight with her and my judgements of light and keeping Seal of Light up (she knew she died easily) but that accounted for less than 20% of the healing. The rest were my pitiful Holy Shocks and Flash of Lights that I kept tossing around in a frenzy. I’m not a bragger, and I know that if I’d known I was the only healer, I’d *never* have been able to do it, but it was nice to know that, after needing a little help on Grand Widow and Anub, it wasn’t all totally my fault. I’m sure plenty of people have solo healed Maexx before. In mostly blues, a few greens, and the epic sword I picked up off of Grand Widow though? I dunno. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again. But for that one fight, man was that cool.

Now to fix my spec a bit (I don’t mind cookie cutter healing specs–if it helps people stay alive, I’m game) so I have more crit. And maybe one day I’ll be able to do it on my own, again. Maybe. For now? Back to the gear grind.