Healing, the extreme sport

Subtitle: The Most Excitement you can legally have in WoW

Took me a few days after that wipefest in Forge of Souls, but I got up the guts to heal a heroic again last night.

Obviously, I'm starting to "get it." No wipes. Not even really any deaths. Well, the warlock died once, but warlocks don't count. Besides, he got impaled on the last boss of Gundrak, and I wasn't quite ready for the OhMyGod Thatsalotta Damage time.

In some ways, I envy those who started the game back in "Vanilla WoW" (never did understand that term...) as healers. They've progressed through healing such epic instances as Wailing Caverns and Blackrock Depths, and by the time they got to heroics in Wrath, I can only assume they were pretty well experts at their trade. Me? Only healing I ever did was last summer on Ahune; a group of guildies got together, and I, in a half-drunken state, agreed to take my level 60-ish Byornfree, decked out in Feral spec and gear, in to heal the 80's as they killed the midsummer boss. Boy, was that a waste...but I got a pretty new ring for my troubles that I wasn't able to wear till recently.

Anyway, healing, I've found, is such a radically different way of playing the game than DPSing or tanking. DPSing from a range, which is how most of my 80's play, is...I'm not going to say easier, but it's definitely clearer as to what all is going on. The trick is to stand back away from the battle a bit, select targets intelligently, and then manage your spells/shots and cooldowns to maximize the damage you cause while regulating the threat you generate. Sounds complex...and it is...but it's absolutely not like healing. DPSing from melee distance, and tanking, are both very similar in that you're right up in the fray, selecting your targets intelligently, and smacking them in a certain way in order to either maximize your damage done or your threat, depending on which role you're playing. It also is complex...but absolutely not like healing.

Learning to heal involves stringing together a whole bunch of little panic attacks. At first, I was in the habit from long years of DPSing of watching the bad guys and where they were, but I also looked at the tank's health bar and pumped some spells in to keep him alive. Took me a little bit to figure out the proper order of spell pumping, of course. Once I figured it out, though, I had yet another lesson to learn: IGNORE THE BAD GUYS.

Now, that's hard to do after years of conditioning. I still find myself occasionally targetting a boss while headed in to that fight. But the problem is, different mobs and bosses do different types of damage. Some do lots of damage to the tank in large chunks. Some do gradual damage to the tanks that adds up to a lot. Some do damage to everybody in the group that has the healer facerolling the keyboard something serious. Some do random damage; you never know who's suddenly going to pop down to half health and then die, just like the warlock did last night...but as I said before, that was OK. It was just a warlock.

Keep in mind that a human being is like a lion in some ways. Specifically, I've heard the explanation of why they use a chair to "tame" a lion...and it makes sense. The lion sees four posts coming at it instead of one, and is unable to focus on all four at once. Truth? Dunno, but it does ring well. I know I sure can't focus on four things at once, much less five. So, as a healer, I've had to learn to constantly scan health bars, picking up any changes as quickly as possible and targetting for heals. At first, it was only four health bars I was worrying about, but then somebody along the way gave me the good advice: "Hey, dummy, you've got to heal yourself too." OK, that wasn't really a direct quote, but this is a family-friendly channel.

Oh, yeah...and then there's the mana issue. My gear being only fairly mediocre, my mana regeneration isn't what you'd call awesome. There's nothing like hitting the button to heal the tank and not seeing anything happen. Then..."Oh, hmm, I'm out of mana. Hope nobody dies while I remember where my potion button is." Add to that the evident, current desire by most tanks in the game to outrun their entire group (OK, I admit to doing that too while I'm on my tank) so that everybody in the group is managing spells and mana regen at a frenetic pace.

It's like the time at the West Point theater when I did lead spotlights for Chicago (the band). There's a certain point at which you really don't CARE what song they're playing any more; all you're trying, hoping, and praying to do is keep up with cues. At least there, everything was on a script, and MOST of the show went according to plan; while you're healing, there's no script. You can only run behind the tank, try to keep up, and focus on health bars. No looking at scenery. No looking at mobs. No wondering what the DPS is doing to get them down. Your entire GAME is a set of green bars.

And that's just party healing. Can't wait to try out raid healing, with 10 or even 25 bars!

Those of you who've Healed for a long time...my hat's off to you. And to every healer who's ever freaked out because my warlock used to hit his Life Tap button frequently and at irregular intervals...I'm so, so, so sorry. Let him die from now on. :-)