I was flying around Wintergrasp last night, farming a few eternals and trying half heartedly to get into a 25 man VoA group. Every now and then I'd remind those in /1 that I was a healer, lfg. There was a Death Knight following the same strategy, and I noted that both of us were in the LFG channel as well. This carried on for nearly an hour, as it appeared that no one wanted to make the effort to actually assemble the 25 man group, although there were plenty of people who wanted to run it.

Finally, I suppose the DK decided he would step forth, and he invited me to a group. Within 5 minutes he had a full 25 people heading into VoA. As we were clearing trash, we were having a conversation about dual boxing, and one of the other priests mentioned that it wasn't that hard to do: after all, Holy Priests only needed to use 2 spells to heal anyway.

Now, I'm not trying to be one of those people with nose in the air, claiming that MY class is extraordinairly difficult to play (I have a much more difficult time on my Pally, despite silly claims that Pallies are two-heal spammers), and if you find it so simple, you're obviously just doing it wrong. But... really? You feel Holy Priests ought to only use two spells?

"Wow. That's amazing. When I'm running holy, I'm using about 7 or 8 different spells," I comment. Another healer in the group seems to feel similarly, and mentions specific spells to figure out if this Obviously Superior Because I Only Need Two Spells To Heal Priest uses them. Renew? "Utterly useless, by the time it finishes healing the target, someone else has already healed them up." And so forth. This is the sort of thing I call Missing The Point. Miss Priesty Pants does not seem to understand the purpose of a HoT, I suppose. All you healing Druids, haven't you heard? You're utterly useless! That's why no one wants a Druid in their raid, after all, right?

I decided to just let it go. If she finds herself to be performing just fine with only two heals, well... more power to her. I don't really care how you heal, as long as you get your job done - and you don't give others crap for how they choose to get the very same job done. So go ahead and Flash Heal + Circle of Healing away. In a pugged VoA run it really doesn't matter much anyway.

But she really started to annoy me later.

After we finished off Koralon and began to make our way to Emalon, the same Priest made a comment in party chat (group 5, all healers!) along the lines of "Ugh, how pathetic. Our raid leader's dps is only 1500 lol". So I returned with "Well, this isn't exactly ToGC25." "Yeah but I mean, cmon. 1500? Really? The raid leader?" This is, of course, coming from the very same priest who insisted that her class only needs to use 2 spells to heal in a raid.

You ever have those moments when you wish that you'd been a bit ballisier, and said what you really want to say? Like...

"Well then you should kick him out. Oh wait. You can't. Because you weren't the one who took the time and made the effort to put together this run - he did. He sat around for an hour waiting for someone to do it, no one did it, so because he wanted to do VoA badly enough, most likely in order to improve his gear, experience, and therefore DPS, HE was the one who assembled the raid. He hasn't been bossing anyone around, or insulting anyone, or kicking anyone. All he's done is assembled enough people and taken on the PitA task of distributing the loot properly and fairly. In case you hadn't noticed, his weak DPS does not seem to have caused any problems for us. So, if you feel that any pugged raid assembled by someone with obviously inferior damage output is unworthy of your presence, don't let the door kick you on the way out."

But, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, I did not come forth and defend the DK raid leader. I went with the philosophy that arguing 7x4 is 28 against someone who insists it's 27 would instead make me the idiot.

Instead I did the following things:

• Laughed rudely when afore mentioned priest spent most of the Emalon fight struggling to stay alive (I guess Binding Heal is not one of those 2 spells a Holy Priest needs?)
• Sent a tell to the DK after we finished the raid, thanking him for organizing the group for the rest of us lazy bums, and to feel free to send me a tell if he ever needs a healer for something
• Wrote up a post on my blog in pure passive-aggressive fashion.

And here is the moral of this story. There are certain instances that people PuG because they are easy and quick and they just want to do it for badges and a small chance at some good gear. It's an easy raid lockout to clear every week, and the assumption is that everyone knows the fights. You usually don't need a raid leader for these fights - you just need someone to organize it. The person who is leading it does not need to be the best player in the raid - he or she is just the one who was willing to make the effort to put it together. So be thankful someone was less lazy than yourself and willing to do it - and don't expect them to be the meter-topper. This is one of the many reasons why so many people don't like to throw together a quickie pugged raid.

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