The Priest

Figured, recently had a lot ranting posts and that has just got to change. Aye, it is a personal blog but in the end I write for two reason, the pleasure of writing and the pleasure of reading. For me, a writing only becomes meaningful when someone picks it up and reads it. So, to not utterly neglect my readers I am gonna jump into one of my recent passions; playing a priest.

Specifically, I enjoy my role as a healer and in a reasonably short time I have managed to raise my priest's level a notch of 13 levels. It is a complete role reversal for me, since I am, until now, mostly used to tanking on my death knight. This gives my priest a unique perspective because many do not get to look at it from both directions. Tanks have ideas about healers, and healers have plenty of ideas about tanks, at least as far as what they would hope for them to be.

It is a fascinating interaction between the two as they communicate, though the relationship is not always layered with roses. Tanks can often be fairly arrogant in terms of how they expect the group's healer to perform, while neglecting all the small things that they themselves could do to make the healer's job easier; like staying in range, do not break LOS, be reasonable in your pulls, use cooldowns to mitigate damage input, etc. I recently healed through Maraudon and a persisting annoyance was the tank, first pulling a bunch of flouric creatures and then turning a corner.

He did not do this out of spite of course, but simply did not understand the job of a healer, and I know personally I have been guilty of many such prejudices. The key is to make sure you both communicate properly and educate each other to learn how to play better. A good such example, for me, was in Halls of Lightning. We wiped once on General Bjarngrim while going for the achiement, Lightning Struck.

The simple reason was, with so much incoming damage, once I had to kite him during a whirlwind, I passed beyond our healer's range and it was all it took. He advanced and tried to save the moment, but though valiant, I died. Afterwards while buffing up at the entryway, we examined what went wrong and agreed that he would have to position himself closer, since I could not avoid running around the small space I have to kite the crazy goliath.

I believe this is one of the bigger lessons of the game, to learn how to communicate because the simple fact is, no matter how awesome you are, maybe above all of your peers in finesse and skill, truth remains that no man is an island and to succeed in World of Warcraft, you need team work - and never forget, you always need the team more than it needs you.