The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Healers are Like Sports Bars
by Vonya
…That’s “sports bars”, not “sports bras”.
No, I don’t want to hear about how it’s all about the support. *glares at Aensu pointedly before continuing*
Right, so it occurred to me the other day that healing classes are a lot like sports bars in different cities.
See, all the healing classes play the same game, and they’re constantly pitted against each other in order to determine who is the “best.”
The answer fluctuates year to year, as Blizz makes tweaks and implements changes to better balance the teams (trading players and drafting new ones).
But every year, all the sports fans (healers) gather and play, cheering and rooting for their favorite team (class).
We like to hang out at the same sports bars, so we can talk about how great or crappy our team is this year. Woe unto anyone who isn’t a fan of our team who starts talking about its flaws and downfalls, though - that’s liable to earn you a broken nose, a black eye, and a hasty exit through the door, regardless of whether said door happens to be open at the time.
The rivalries run deep, and for some it’s more than just lighthearted fun - they can become rabid evangelists for their team of choice, to the point of alienating even the fans for the same team.
And most of the time a dangerous silence fills the room when a fan of another team walks through the door and orders a drink, proudly sporting their team’s colors and jersey, like waving a flag in front of an angry bull.
Most of the time it’s all in good fun though. We’re fans. We enjoy following our favorite team through the ups and downs, to watch and discuss in minute detail every aspect of every change that happens through the year. Or maybe just to sit back and enjoy a few cold ones while we listen to the sportscasters (bloggers) go on about the teams.
At the end of the day, though, we’re all still fans of the same game. We all deal with the same problems and approach them with different strengths and weaknesses. We share common ground in our hatred of bad calls by the ref (changes to Lifebloom for Druids ring any bells?), in situations where the odds are stacked against us (I don’t know any healers that are fond of Mortal Strike, Silences, Kicks, Counterspells…) and in how much we enjoy the game and art of healing.
So this is me, sitting on my comfy barstool at the local priest watering hole, the Tipsy Frisbee, tipping my hat and raising my tankard for the other healing teams out there. This game wouldn’t be half as much fun without you guys in it.
June 24th, 2008
NORM!
>.>
June 24th, 2008
Haha…This made me think about some things I’ve seen while playing and raiding…the classes tend to hang out in their own little class channels, more likely than not, cracking jokes and critically analyzing the performance of the other classes in similar roles (ie, locks will be laughing at mages, mages will be cursing locks) and it got me thinking.
I’ve been in raids where the hunters form a group of sorts and take money under the table to randomly misdirect one person over the course of the night until they eventually die and then they collect.
This is more likely to happen when said class has been bothering them about something.
How do you figure that the healers work out their aggressions to the ‘opposing teams’?
I mean…do you priests ever suddenly decide that no druid is going to get frisbees for the night or something? Haha.
June 24th, 2008
Being a healer for one set of raids and a dps class for another set of raids I really do see different things.
My hunter has over 10k health unbuffed and when the elephant squats in front of that fan she is usually the last one standing. I used to attribute that to the 10k health, and I’m sure that has something to do with it, but I think there’s a different reason. I’m beginning to believe that it’s my willingness to pull mobs off the healers when other classes can’t that is the deciding factor.
When Im healing with my druid, I seem to always have the same healing partner in a raid. Having 2 resto druids makes for odd healing since we are more about preventive maintenance than we are fixing a problem. I’m geared towards lower +heal but more mana regen and more +spirit (for the buff). Because of that Im usually group heals and then tank heals, the other resto goes the other way priority wise
. When one of the other classes *cough* warlocks *cough* fury warriors *cough* starts acting up it doesn’t take long before “Can I let him die?” to start floating back and forth
Personally the only people Im ever tempted to let parish are the plate wearers, since they learn the object lesson real quick once they have to repair…
Woe be it to the other team’s if your shadow crosses my path, lest you find yourself spending hard earned gold at the repair shop!
June 24th, 2008
lolz.
I have a firm…..No Comment.
June 24th, 2008
When I got my best friend hooked on the crack, she rolled a druid. I then proceeded to train her to heal rogues first.
She’s learned better since then, but still heals rogues over other classes when she’s not main healer…
Yes, I am evil.
June 24th, 2008
@Snow: we left class channels for damage, tank and heal channels. It mostly works pretty well, although sfdamage can sometimes use a little stimulus because it’s so big, which makes people shy. And somehow the heal channel is full of *filth*!
@Weta: nonono! warlocks are your *friends*! We banish, we deathcoil, we stop. stuff. hitting. YOU! We clearly deserve teh healz. 12k hp take a lot of healing you know! ;D
@Ego: this is all true, apart from the shaman. Cheap, cheating, one-button spamming little swine. /afk for trash, *pout*
My druid is L61 now, looking forward to seeing another side of healing! The pally is 70 but prot… I tried healing a couple of times and it was potent alright, but not very varied.
The funny thing is, a priest in my comm rerolled shaman because he wanted more of a challenge… lawl XD
Didn’t exactly work out, of course, but he likes being able to grind legion hold
June 25th, 2008
Hehe, who would have guessed that the nice and shiny/pretty healers would be the dirty ones in the raid XD
June 25th, 2008
The sportswear for priests is almost a uniform: Primal mooncloth ‘dress’, shoulders, and belt. Yes, plenty of pre-T5/T6 priests don’t/havn’t put on the primal mooncloth set, but most do - I think healy priests have the most identifiable look going.
Maybe I’m biased since I don’t have a resto spec’d anything…
As for getting out of my own holy priest uniform, I have the shoulders and belt in the bank (belt socketed and the shoulders enchanted), all I need now is 14 more badges =D
June 26th, 2008
So, I had to come in and represent (Go Priests!!!)
But in response to Iratio, in my personal experience, although priests do tend to go through a certain few pieces of gear, almost like a rite of passage, they may not be the only class. My GM and I, through some random twist of fate have the same class/spec across all three of our mains, that being Prot Warr, Holy Priest, and BM Hunter, and at some point in time or another, each pair has looked almost exactly the same. Priest happened to hold the most different appearance because he rolled a Dwarf pre-bc, while I chose a much more effective priestly class, the Draenei. And although now, my priest has moved into higher content and no longer shares so many of the same pieces of gear as his, our hunters (who we both currently play the most) are almost strictly identical, both Dwarves with long red beards, both with the same model shoulders, and the same model helm. So I’ve started to believe that this rite of passage gear set seems to exist for all classes, it is just most prevalent in priests, where the crafted epics are slightly easier to obtain than the dungeon 3 set that most classes go for.
June 27th, 2008
While the shadow priests are next door at Felt Macers…
July 1st, 2008
I currently have as shadow priest at 64 and had the please of actually getting a run where my job wasn’t supposed to be healing. The run was 62, I just re-read this thread and thought about it
Its a safe bet that I spend way to much time lurking in the Tipsy Frisbee and it shows. Yes the run I was supposed to be melting faces turned out to be a hoot but also a lesson.
1. I out DPS’s everyone including the 65 hunter and the 63 enhancement shaman
2. More importantly on any given fight I could and did out heal the pally healer
Thank god that SP is easy and that at 62 most of your gear is +dmg +heal so I am not to far out of balance yet.
I want to think that over at the “Wiggle Me Fingers BELF” bar that WTB heals is their mantra until some level further down the road?
Being able to out dps someone 3 levels higher than you 25$
Keeping the party from wiping 50$
Feeding mana to the hunter and palidin 100$
Out healing he healidin PRICELE$$
I won’t say Im great, just because its true, but rather that there is more to your class at times than meets the eye. I have to wonder if at 65 my hunter was this bad, I’m inclined to say yes because I just didn’t get it back then and optimal gear is just impossible. For those healers out there, as you level don’t dump/sell dps based gear until you out grow it. For those of us who believe in faster is better don’t toss that healing gear out until you out grow it. I paid carefull attention to the loot and reward quests from 58 on and once it became apparent that I was going to be “all that” in this run I swapped out gear to balance heals and damage, shooting for the middle road.
Do I ever expect to have the stars align again like that run, no but what a rush it was while it lasted.
So hats off to the patrons of the Tipsy Frisbee for teaching me that well timed big heals rule and that there is no shame in a mana wasting fast heal when you just absolutely have to keep that tank alive (or save the hunter who just has to stand in that poison cloud:) ).