A Healer's Thesis
Well, for those of you who are linked via Circle of Healers, you may have noticed an increase in your traffic this weekend, due to WoW.com's post about the DPS survey version that I am pretending doesn't exist, and absolutely refuse to link to.

DONT CLICK ME OR YOU SUPPORT MAGES

Pssst Hinen, how are you liking trying to keep up with all the responses?

Mike Schramm, who wrote the article, also noted: "it'd be good to see this put into a spreadsheet or graph, and maybe give us a more quantified look at what people think of their class."

That actually made me feel really bad, though I know that was not the intention. The schoolgirl side of me kicked in, and I've been spending most of the weekend assembling the data, which is a lot more involved than you might suspect.

I will no longer be adding responses to the list, though if you do respond, feel free to continue adding a comment with a link to your response! At some point I have to demarcate an end to the responses so that I can try to put everything together. I currently have over 100 survey responses I am translating from text (copied and pasted from websites, emails, and comments) into a spreadsheet format - and that does not necessarily include the people who made responses for several different healers in one survey, as that will require a bit more effort. I even tried to include people who had provided their survey responses in comments on OTHER people's posts.

19 Holy Priests.
18 Disc Priests.
19 Resto Shammies.
30 Resto Druids.
20 Holy Pallies.


That's a rough estimate of the number of responses for each class. I COULD be working on my thesis, eh? Yet, here I am, trying to figure out ways to convert anecdotal and multi-faceted answers into something that can be quantified. As much as part of me feels guilty for procrastinating assembling all this information, there is another part of me that is glad I didn't put it together earlier. As a person who deals with this kind of data quite a bit in real life, it is very easy for people to look at the graphs and charts put together at the end, and completely disregard the surveys themselves, which provide a LOT more information than the combined results ever will. The assembled final data will not be able to capture the myriad of different anecdotes given by players regarding the different things they love about their class, their habits, the things they hate, etc. I basically have to attempt to water everything down into the most easily quantifiable answers, which means I may misrepresent some people's intentions - especially since there were two questions on my survey that were poorly written, and I am still trying to figure out how to translate the answers to those questions.

Despite the fact that one person did offer to help me (thank you Saunder!), I have decided to put it all together myself in an effort to keep the methogology clean and consistent through all the questions and answers. There are approximately 300 pages spread through 6 different word documents full of responses. I have my work cut out for me!



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11 Responses
  1. Sephrenia Says:

    Am I too late to do one? I've written all my answers on a piece of paper but not got round to typing it in yet. Poorly children and Ulduar hard modes keep getting in the way.....


  2. @Seph

    You are never too late to do one, of course! But if you do want it in the survey results, would you mind shooting it to me via email so that I can add it on to my document? Comment on the Circle of Healers page when you post it on your blog, and I'll try to link to it as well, but if you could email it to me sometime in the next day or two, it would make things a lot easier for me!

    Just send it via email to missmedicina at gmail dot com

    Hope your kids are feeling better soon!


  3. Grimmtooth Says:

    Wow, considering the diverse responses it's gonna be hard to graph that out - props for giving it a go :)


  4. Anonymous Says:

    Miss Medicina ... the dog ate my healing questionaire...

    Honestly, I can't believe WoW insider gave you homework!


  5. M Says:

    Is it bad that I'm not a smoker and want to vape with you guys just because... well, vaping has such a cool sounding name to it. Right up there with lightsabering.

    Then again, I need another addiction like I need more really stellar console games to come out... whaaaa?


  6. LawGirl Says:

    I like mages... You have something against them?


  7. @Grimmtooth

    Yeah, just don't let my grad advisor know I'm working on this instead of like, my REAL thesis!

    @Tamarind

    INORITE. Honestly, I kinda gave it to myself. Sigh, I'm such an overachiever. This is proof that I am secretly the American version of Hermione Granger!

    @Ful

    Well... you can obviously vape sans nicotine but like, I don't think you'd actually like it anyway. Better stick to beer tasting, frat boy ;) OH PWNED

    @Kayllnn

    .... NO I LOVE MAGES /cower

    Actually, they bother me a lot less now that their mirror images don't scream in deathly agony upon despawning.


  8. Grimmtooth Says:

    @Miss Medicina

    OH GAWD THAT MIRROR IMAGE DEATH SCREAM!

    I flinched EACH AND EVERY TIME.

    I wanna buy a beer for whoever at Blizz fixed that.

    (And I wanna talk to whoever overlooked that about maybe trying a healer from time to time just to KEEP IN TOUCH)


  9. Fish Says:

    In the words of strongbad. . . "HOLY CRAP!" I even said that in a strongbad voice lol

    In seriousness, that seems about right. I have one each of Druid, Shammy and Disc Priest, although my shammy is the only one nearly level capped. The deciding factor was not healing effectiveness, as I prefer healing on the druid.


  10. LawGirl Says:

    I didn't even like that scream of my poor mirror image. I hated it when I was healing, plus I hated it on my mage, I felt guilty to pull them out just to have them murdered.

    That is why I don't play a lock, when I was leveling mine, my imp would insult me and ask me why I needed his help. Poor thing lol.


  11. drug Says:

    Sounds like a lot of work. Oh yeah, and I demand more resto shaman bloggers!


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