Originally Posted by
Castochi
And the OP's post exemplifies why I reached the conclusion that I was not meant to heal in World of Warcraft. I am a highly competitive person, and the moment I started playing the game back in WotLK and I found there was such a thing as Recount, Skada and the like, I began pursuing the maximization of my class/spec with the goal of performing better than my peers.
I started out as a healer. A Holy Priest to be exact. And I prided myself in topping the meters during Heroic Dungeons, but then I started entering the world of Normal Mode raiding more or less during the Argent Tournament patch. I discovered the concept of overhealing, and that represented a new challenge for me: Top the meters with the least amount of overhealing possible. I had a greater or lesser success, but that is not the point.
As you may very well imagine, this is by all means an extremely toxic playstyle in which for example, if I noticed the tank was about dead, but casting an AoE heal would benefit my Healing Done score more, I would opt to cast the AoE heal, let the tank die, and not feel any guilt about it because after all, I'm first in Healing Done and last in Overhealing Done.
Thankfully, I realized the error of my ways and at the same time concluded that I cannot change the kind of person I am. For me, meters matter. Sim DPS sheets and parses matter. I am now a proud Prot Paladin with perfect Hand usage, Active Mitigation and cooldown management, as well as a Heroic Raiding Shadow Priest (specs are Shadow/Shadow now, lol) who pumps out sick numbers while making as little rotation mistakes as possible, failing in as little mechanics as possible, and even contributing to the raid with life-saving Void Shifts and Leap of Faith, restoring healer mana with Hymn, and did I mention sick numbers?
Healing is definitely not for everyone. If you find yourself playing for the meters instead of for the heals, it is my opinion that you should definitely consider a different role more adequate to your playstyle, but that's just me.