It is always the healer's fault

| Friday, January 23, 2009
It's true and this is one of the biggest problems with healing.

To start off, there are obvious times when it is the healer's fault and there's no denial. Sudden AFKs, being undergeared, whatever, obviously those are all the fault of the healer. That's really nothing special.

The bad part of healing is that everything else also becomes your fault.

DPS and how it is your fault
DPS is low so the fight takes too long so you go OOM: Get better gear or heal more efficiently.
DPS pulls aggro and dies: Heal them, shield them, bubble them, there are ways to save them.
DPS dies in a fire (don't we all wish?): Heal them, shield them, save them.

Tanks and how it is your fault
The tank can't hold aggro, DPS dies: See earlier case of DPS and aggro.
The tank is undergeared, takes too much DPS, and dies: Get better gear or spam more and he'd live.
The tank is undergeared, takes too much damage over the fight, so you go OOM and he dies: Heal more efficiently or get better gear.

As a general rule, death is caused by a lack of health and healers are the best at increasing health, and therefore preventing death. Ultimately just about any death can be blamed on a healer.

I don't intend to blame healers for everything, but instead just to point out that the mistakes of others are passed by the game onto the the healers. Every 'challenge' in the game tends to involve either someone taking extra damage or dying, and except for a very few strict DPS-limited fights (Thaddius is the only that I can think of, even Gruul could potentially be solved with better healing), all fights ultimately shift all burdens to the healers.

2 comments:

Kiryn said...

Hmm, most raids/heroics I've ever been in have been pretty good at NOT automatically blaming the healer when things go wrong, but I've got a sneaking suspicion I play on a magical fairyland server where things are always rainbows and butterflies.

Most people I know follow the following mantra:
If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
If the DPS dies, it's their own damn fault.

Captain The First said...

Oddly enough blaming the healer for anything may result in an untimely death due to lack of heals.

But yeah, it's that mentality of 'the healer did it' either said out loud or thought of that keeps me from healing, tanking or doing anything productive.

There's no requirements on DPS even though there probably should be. As it is I am not appreciated any more or less whether I put out 1k dps or 3k dps so DPS is a good place to be in

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