To heal or not to heal…..
I returned recently to the MMORPG fold by playing Warhammer Online. In pretty much every MMORPG that I have played (Too many to count), I normally play a support class. I decided on my return to WAR to play something I had never tried before…..a Healer. (A Zealot to be exact).
My reason for this stemmed from my first month playing WAR when the game released. I played as an engineer and saw the complete lack of healers as a major problem. I also figured playing a healer would be a low stress way to blow off some steam after a hard day at the office. Boy was I wrong……..the amount of abuse healers take from the other players is amazing!
So that got me to thinking, maybe I can help shed some light on the whole situation from an unbiased view. So here are 5 reasons your are/aren’t being healed.
1) My first priority is keeping myself alive
Surprisingly a dead healer really will not help the group. So if I am being assaulted by assassins, thieves, and mages….I AM GOING TO HEAL MYSELF! If you help me remove the threat to me, I will be more than happy to heal or rez you.
2) My second priority is to my party
A good party has a mix of talents. My job as a healer is to insure those guys stay alive. If you are not part of my group, I might not even notice that you are taking damage let alone die. Playing a healer is like playing Wack-A-Mole, you smack….er heal the characters when you see the life bar move. The hard part is juggling multiple characters while trying to keep an eye out for danger. Add into this more players and the job gets even harder.
3) Don’t go running off and get mad when you die
Nothing is more frustrating than seeing (or not seeing) your wall of tanks disperse around corners. Unless you have a heal ability that does not require line-of-sight, you can not heal. Stick together….running off just makes you an easy target and I am not running off to find and rez you….sorry. It is not worth a run back from thewar camp/city/graveyard for me.
4) Don’t get mad when you die and blame the healer
I know it is frustrating when a healer “misses” and you die. The first response I got when a party member dies is “%*)#@$() HEALERS! WTF! WHY ARE YOU NOT HEALING!”. First….we are healing….just maybe not you. Second…..we are probably healing someone more important to our survival. Third….you might want to take responsibility for your own actions. If I had a dollar for every time I would see an armored up tank go running head-long into a massive group of enemies and then get upset that he dies in about 1.5 seconds….I would have at least $15 dollars. Please understand that we do our best to help but we are not miracle makers.
5) Sometimes we want to do something different
One of the reasons I chose a Zealot in WAR was that it actually could do a little ranged damage. If everyone in my group is healed up, I like to contribute a bit of damage to the fight. What is frustrating is when I hear (more like read) angry players telling me to quit attacking and start healing. I know that is my JOB but the last time I checked…this is a GAME! If I wanted to sit around and see how fast I can push buttons over and over again, I would take a typing test.
Hopefully this will help shed some light on the Healer class and why we do what we do.
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Thanks!
