I’m a healer and I let people die

[Deleted]

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum and others about the lack of healers and the difficulty of Cata Heroics. The link is obvious and the reasons have been discussed many times over so I’ll not revisit it.

I’m a holy priest pugging heroics in ilvl 333-359 gear and after doing a handful of heroics I almost quit healing. People were dying and I just couldn’t keep them alive. Part of it was a l2play issue (new spells, mana management) but the rest was the fact that some group members were taking too much damage, too much avoidable damage. Healing in TBC and Wrath hard wired into me that a player dying was bad and I was a bad healer if I let it happen. My thinking has now changed. I've decided it's OK to let people die...

I’m a healer and I let people die

That seems counter intuitive to my role and before I get raged on let me explain myself. I don’t just let anybody die, to let myself or the tank die would also be silly, but I will sacrifice bad players for the good of the group. I mainly sacrifice bad dps players and when I say bad dps I don’t mean those who put out low dps, I mean those who constantly take avoidable damage, refuse to use lightwell (yes I went there, I believe it’s worth using now but that’s for another thread) and generally refuse to learn and adapt. I'll top you up twice, maybe three times if I think you were unlucky, but after that you're on your own. It costs me less mana to res you at the end of a fight than it does to keep you alive. This doesn’t happen on every boss fight or trash pull or even every Heroic but if I get a bad player they might die a couple of times in a heroic.

Now I don’t do this to be an ass, I do it because bad players need to learn. Everybody makes mistakes and I account for that a few times and I certainly won’t let players die the first time they mess up on a mechanic. However my priority is to kill the boss, I do this be keeping the tank and myself alive, and if applicable enough dps to beat an enrage timer or a certain mechanic. If a bad player unnecessarily reduces my ability to keep the tank alive, through me having less mana or having to redirect numerous heals, I will let them die. If they are constantly, over the course of a fight, unnecessarily taking avoidable damage I will sacrifice them.

I’d like to know how other feel about this. Would you run with a healer who you knew would let bad players die?

[Deleted]

I mean no offense, but I don't think your approach is right. It looks like you are halfway between "I am the righteous guy who can't succeed because of others", and "I am going to teach these fools how to not stand in the fire".

Both are terrible approaches who will only result in you feeling angry whenever you play. My advice: seek a group of people with a level of skill you are comfortable with. Play with them only for a while.

[Deleted]

I remember the days when people actually bandaged on boss fights so the healer could work on keeping the tank up. I did this yesterday in HoO hc on the first boss after doing the snakes/switches, I got to the top and stopped on the bridge and bandaged.

We wiped on the next snake phase, and the healer blamed me (jokingly) due to him having a heart attack after seeing my mage bandage.

In fact, I remember back in the days bandaging the healer, so he wouldn't have to switch target and keep the near dead tank up. Saved quite a few wipes back in those days.

[Deleted]

I support your thinking whole hearted. I'm a tank and I let dps who don't dps marked targets(In the obvious Skull>Cross order), Or people so fixated on numbers they can't be arsed watching their threat. Because it's not fun having to work not one extra mile, but a whole 10 extra miles just to keep some loony up. So you got my blessing to keep doing what you do.

[cyqu]

whats the point in slowing down your torture even more?

just keep the bad up and get it done faster, they wont learn. so stop trying.

[Deleted]

i agree with not healing someone who's not moving from something that kills him, when for example i am healing someone that stands in a that poison goo on the floor in throne of the tides i will heal at first untill i notice that person isnt moving at all after 5 seconds, if you cant be bothered to move i cant be bothered to waste mana, i only do this to the ones who dont use anything to prevent themselves from dying

[Deleted]

Haven't really read the topic properly but this is replying to the title, when I started heroics in i333-346 gear I found myself always letting a melee die if there was 2 melee DPS in the group, I found it stupidly hard to keep up 2 melee DPS & the tank (their HP seems to drop at the exact same time for the exact same damage as the tank is taking). The main reason those 2 melee DPS took so much damage was because they couldn't or.. wouldn't move from certain things. So I basically took on the mindset that, if the DPS won't do their job properly, I won't do my job 'properly' either . Shame I still have to heal the failing DPS in raids though -.- that can get frustrating at times.

I'm a healer and I used to let people die. ^^

[Spikeychris]

I refuse to heal people like that when we are out of combat in combat I will heal them but once we are out of combat if im drinking they should be eating imo. This was a big problem when starting heroics on crap gear (less of an issue now) why should I drink use half my mana healing up morons who can't not stand in the fire and then have to drink AGAIN by the next pull then get moaned at that its going too slowly.

[Newspaper]

I mean no offense, but I don't think your approach is right. It looks like you are halfway between "I am the righteous guy who can't succeed because of others", and "I am going to teach these fools how to not stand in the fire".

Both are terrible approaches who will only result in you feeling angry whenever you play. My advice: seek a group of people with a level of skill you are comfortable with. Play with them only for a while.

I beg to difer. Letting the retard die does not make me any angrier usually it is funny. But then again i also have them run back in until they get it.

On the other hand having a premade group always helps and i obviously have a more serious approach with people i can talk to on vent/skype and tell them that standing in the fire is bad (in all honesty i don't know people who ignore fire/cleaves/ww in hcs). But then again if you are standing in the fire the polite way does not work so i'm not gonna bother more than twice (tops). After that you corpse run as many times as you need to.

[Deleted]

Nodata, I can understand how you see that, but I don't see it as being righteous. I will try and keep people up the first few times but with the way mana management is now there is much more of an onus on people trying to stay alive. It's a choice we as healers now have to make, go oom keeping everyone alive and risk a wipe or let the mana drains die and succeed, albeit more slowly with less dps.

Mr Bull: I also remember those days, I carried and used stacks of bandages on my rogue

Lighteraser: That's the kind of thing I mean. I'll often pull them out with Leap of Faith or shout move and hope they get the point. If they do great! If they don't next time they stand in the fire / goo depending on my mana and the amount of damage my tank is taking they probably won't get a heal.

[Calenel]

whenever i can, if i see the healer in trouble (bad trash pull or whatever) ill wack a couple of healing surges on them so they can concentrate on the tank. ill also chain heal myself in between pulls to help out.

doing this, i tend to find i get some leeway when i herpa-derp into something stupid/firey

[blizzy]

If a bad player unnecessarily reduces my ability to keep the tank alive, through me having less mana or having to redirect numerous heals, I will let them die. If they are constantly, over the course of a fight, unnecessarily taking avoidable damage I will sacrifice them.

It's called triage, and I'm with you on this.

[Deleted]

I don't have guild, so pug and have give up healing until people learn the new mechanics, avoid damage, CC and and stop acting like douchebags. Level up some alts in the mean time.

[Deleted]

I'm totally with you, man.

While queueing on my holy priest with the LFD tool, I've found it to be necessary to toughen up - otherwise you're the one to be flamed. Some might call me an ass, but even throughout Wrath I would let people die if I found them "expendable".

This doesn't apply instantly ofcourse. I'm gonna tell you tacs beforehand if you ask me to, I might explain to you why you died after the fight, I might even Leap of Faith you if I know you're trying your best, but hell, if you screw up.......

I am insanely cruel. If I see a player constantly screwing up, refusing to follow orders or in any other way not doing the job they're there for, why should I? I'll gladly watch as the mage pathetically runs off after a failure attempt to sheep pull - I might even Leap of Faith him back just to watch him die. Randoms as guild members, none are spared from my wrath.

Some might say it's the healers responsibility to keep the group alive. I think the powers bestowed upon my class - my role - means I call shot of who gets to live and who ends up kissing the floor.

You might say this power has maddened me.

I wouldn't disagree.

[Oppose]

I support your thinking whole hearted. I'm a tank and I let dps who don't dps marked targets(In the obvious Skull>Cross order), Or people so fixated on numbers they can't be arsed watching their threat. Because it's not fun having to work not one extra mile, but a whole 10 extra miles just to keep some loony up. So you got my blessing to keep doing what you do.

You are the issue if people have to watch their threat all the time. I have been a tank for ages and I was like that before! But then I realised that I can actually do something about it, and just keep threat like crazy..

[Deleted]

I gave up on healing a while back cuz I started to enjoy dpsing a bit more but I do agree with you. If I mess up on something avoidable then there is no need for you to "waste" your mana healing me and by doing so put the tank in danger as he isn't getting heals which you are using on me. But you can't go like "screw you, you are not getting any heals through the entire fight cuz you messed up on <insert avoidable dmg>" by that I mean if he screwed up then sure we all do that sometime but that doesn't mean that you don't have to heal him through the entire fight because of that.
I'm also going to say this:
A part of being a good dps is staying alive as long as possible. Dead dps = no dps

[Aknot]

I have a tank and I have a healer (not to mention a few others). The luck of it is both of those classes have an easy time in the Q. So after reminding people of various ways to help out the group as a whole and it falling on deaf ears I will leave the group.

I will apologies to others in the group and let them know why I am leaving. I will also (since it appears to work now) make sure I ignore those offending players so I wont have to deal with them again.

I do work with people if I see they are trying. You can tell when someone is attempting to play better or is at least making an effort. However there are those out there that will continue to stand in the fire and expect everything to be ok.

Once enough people in a certain Realm group start ignoring these people the less they will show up.

[DaigoroItsuno]

There are a lot of heroic bosses who have easily avoidable attacks that will one-shot DPS and if that happens it's certainly not on the healer. However, it is part of the healers job to heal everyone durinng unavoidable group damage attacks. If you can't keep up and need to choose between keeping the tank up or losing a DPS obviously you need to heal the tank but then you need to look at your healing effectiveness and figure out how to avoid those situations in the future.

[Deleted]

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum and others about the lack of healers and the difficulty of Cata Heroics. The link is obvious and the reasons have been discussed many times over so I’ll not revisit it.

I’m a holy priest pugging heroics in ilvl 333-359 gear and after doing a handful of heroics I almost quit healing. People were dying and I just couldn’t keep them alive. Part of it was a l2play issue (new spells, mana management) but the rest was the fact that some group members were taking too much damage, too much avoidable damage. Healing in TBC and Wrath hard wired into me that a player dying was bad and I was a bad healer if I let it happen. My thinking has now changed. I've decided it's OK to let people die...

I’m a healer and I let people die

That seems counter intuitive to my role and before I get raged on let me explain myself. I don’t just let anybody die, to let myself or the tank die would also be silly, but I will sacrifice bad players for the good of the group. I mainly sacrifice bad dps players and when I say bad dps I don’t mean those who put out low dps, I mean those who constantly take unavoidable damage, refuse to use lightwell (yes I went there, I believe it’s worth using now but that’s for another thread) and generally refuse to learn and adapt. I'll top you up twice, maybe three times if I think you were unlucky, but after that you're on your own. It costs me less mana to res you at the end of a fight than it does to keep you alive. This doesn’t happen on every boss fight or trash pull or even every Heroic but if I get a bad player they might die a couple of times in a heroic.

Now I don’t do this to be an ass, I do it because bad players need to learn. Everybody makes mistakes and I account for that a few times and I certainly won’t let players die the first time they mess up on a mechanic. However my priority is to kill the boss, I do this be keeping the tank and myself alive, and if applicable enough dps to beat an enrage timer or a certain mechanic. If a bad player unnecessarily reduces my ability to keep the tank alive, through me having less mana or having to redirect numerous heals, I will let them die. If they are constantly, over the course of a fight, unnecessarily taking avoidable damage I will sacrifice them.

I’d like to know how other feel about this. Would you run with a healer who you knew would let bad players die?

hmm what the problem if a dps constantly takin UNAVOIDABLE damage, sounds like its unavoidable.....

[Vudu]

The only person I'll ever blow mana to keep up is myself and the tank (or other tanks/healers in raids). DPS generally can avoid the incoming damage if they try (if it's unavoidable, I heal it of course), and if they take so much that I can't keep them up without flash spamming, I'll gladly let them die. I'll also point out why I let them die and ridicule them if they argue.

That said, I've been delightfully surprised at some heroic pug groups since cata launch, as many of them were way above what I expected.