Healing != DPS

Chaahnee, introduced in my prior post, is a Discipline specced priest that I am leveling as and play as a healer. Having only DPS'd in the past, this is a refreshing break from the end-game raiding I do on Ayonel, which, while enjoyable, requires a lot of concentration and focus.

But casual healing turns out to be more like raiding than it is like casual dps. A casual dps run requires you to do as much dps as possible without pulling aggro, and to stay out of fire or whatever boss gimmick/mechanic there may be. With healing, you have to keep a group of people, who may or may not be any good at their role, alive. If a crappy dps is crappy, it doesn't matter much. But if the healer isn't up to it, or the party members won't let the tank hold aggro, everybody dies, and it's your fault. Sounds like fun, huh? Now you know why good healers are hard to come by.

I have to say, while it was slow starting, I am really enjoying playing my priest now, and have had some fun(if exasperating) instance runs. Unfortunately, as more experienced healers have told me, no matter how good a healer you are, there are some parties that you just can't heal. Whether you take this as a sign of failure depends on you, but is no less frustrating, and still feels like failure to me.

The motivation for writing this is the juxtaposition of my raiding/instancing experience on my geared high-end guild warlock, versus my pugs on low level characters. On Ayonel, almost everything is easy because the people she plays with are all highly experienced, well-geared, knowledgeable players who focus on the game's most difficult content. Consequently, everything else is easy. On Chaahnee, I often find tanks who can't get, or hold aggro, dps who manage to pull aggro but do poor dps, or generally ignorant players. By ignorant, I mean to say only that they do not know the correct way to play their class(yes, there is a correct way.)

I have seen very little in-between. Either my runs on Chaahnee go very well, or they don't go well at all. While I think that she is doing pretty well, and that I know how to play her(how else to explain all the elites I can solo when focused on keeping myself alive), I still find it to be maddening to heal instances, except when it isn't.



Hopefully in another week or two, she'll be at 80, and then the real fun begins.