The Lone Healer
After a week of completely purposeful and productive priest posting, I fully expect this week to be lazy posting days. First off, I am sick with my annual change-of-season flu, which means that I'm likely to be sleeping even MORE than normal (which is already a lot - I sleep when I get bored. I get bored a lot). Also, I'm really hoping that at some point this week, my bosses will decide to actually give me some work to do... at work. Crazy, right? Yeah I thought so.

I have actually been spending most of the past few weeks of wow time leveling up Kateranna, my forsaken priest, and pretty much ignoring Jessabelle, only logging on to raid. The truth is, I was suffering from major burn out. If you're a healer, and you have a lot of in-game friends, you may know what I'm talking about (might be similar for tanks too!). Everytime I'm logged in, I get requests to heal something - about every 5-10 minutes, depending on the time of day. From heroics to run throughs to raids... and while I used to make sure to use every raid lockout per week, I just don't feel like doing that anymore.

I've been wanting to work on my Loremaster/Seeker achievement for months, but especially since BobTurkey's post about his accomplishment of such a feat. But everytime I've logged in on Jbelle for the past month or two, I've been inundated with tells. To be fair, half of those tells are just friendly hellos - I'm a social kid. And it's not that I'm annoyed by people inviting me to join them on their raiding fun. It's actually that I feel BAD saying no, and I'm always saying no.

See, I have a laptop, and a desktop. Most of the time, I play on my laptop - it is a mac, and I do not use a usb mouse. I trackpad all the way baby - who needs a right click? The only time I use my desktop is for raiding. I prefer playing on my laptop when I'm not raiding because I can sit on the living room couch with the windows open, comfy. Can't do that down in the basement with the desktop.

So when people invite me to heal, most of the time I just don't want to have to get off one computer and get onto another - and I cannot heal very well on my laptop.

I have quite a few healing friends who have experienced similar burnout. See, it's not necessarily that we don't WANT to heal - it's more that we get asked so much, and we have other things we want to do with our in-game time in addition to healing - and we just start to feel guilty all the time.





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5 Responses
  1. Fuubaar Says:

    I'm actually looking forward to a week off of raiding. There are so many things, in the game, that I would really enjoy doing instead of tanking.

    I totally understand what you mean though regarding the whispers.

    -hey fuu, can you tank this heroic?
    -howdy fuu, can you help me out in this raid?
    -Hey Fuu, I see that you are not on Fuu but can you switch to fuu & tank?

    AHHHhhhHHHhhhhHHH!

    PS: Ful is trying to bring up my all time (INCOMING SARCASM!) "Favorite" arguement in WoW. Help me out here.

    Tanks & Healers are more important and upfront jobs than DPS are in a raid. If a healer or tank dies, the raid wipes, but if a DPS lolfails the raid goes on.

    We've all heard this argument, how do you feel?


  2. Fido Says:

    I know what you mean, just take it easy. Try a lolsmite spec on jess ;) It's a lot of fun in raids ^^ And can even make raiding fun again.

    cheers


  3. Anonymous Says:

    Good luck with the Loremastering. It's quite a change of pace and pocking around the old instances was interesting for a late starter such as myself.

    Hot tip - shadow spec, even in your healing gear makes the Old World effortless.

    Gobble gobble.


  4. @Fuu

    Most of the tells I get aren't even that friendly. They just say "Heal ToC10?" Sigh.

    In answer to your debate I have two responses. The first is an anecdote - I was with a group (can't remember who all was there...) and we were fighting that last boss (whom I hate) in heroic Halls of Lightning. Ten seconds into the fight, all three dps were dead. 7 minutes later, the boss was down. It may have taken forever, but the tank and I (the healer obviously) were able to do the fight with no dps at all.

    All players can do damage. Not all players can heal or TAKE sustainable amounts of damage.

    The truth is, it's actually more about supply and demand. Everyone wants to feel like a badass, and DPSing has an easily quantitative way to supply that badass feeling. While all the DPSers are trading the results from their penis exte... ooops, sorry, DAMAGE METERS back and forth, the tank and healer are actually responsible for taking care of the whole damn group. People don't want to take care of others, they just want to see big numbers - so DPS is a dime a dozen. Healers and tanks are in shorter supply because they don't get that instant gratification, so less people want to play those roles.

    How many times do you have to cancel a raid or a dungeon because you don't have a dps? How many times do you have to do the same because you can't find a tank or a healer?

    Ful is going to rip into me now, isn't he? <3 you Ful!


  5. @Fido

    I wonder if I would be allowed to get away with that... hmmm... :::mischeivous pondering:::

    @Bob

    Aye. I'm just running all the starter zones right now, so holy actually works just as well if not better ATM (holy nova ftw) but i will be switching to shadow for the higher level zones.


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