I want to clarify that I have no problem healing a new tank….I never have. 23k health is no problem for me, since that was the standard when Wrath was released. My problem is DPS in DPS gear spec’ed as a tank, and queuing as a tank to bypass queue times. The DK was a nice player but she was in attack power trinkets and gems. Even if she was not defense capped but wearing tank gear, I wouldn’t have mentioned it. But this was her first tank run and she didn’t bother hitting the AH for some of the half-decent crafted plate. It reeked of laziness to me. But again, nice person, not geared to tank, but made for an exciting run…

Now what I don’t like, are the arrogant assholes and general douchebags you get stuck with. I was booted from a heroic CoS run for pointing out the rogue (same guild as two of the other members) had been on autofollow the entire run and not contributing. If this was a single person you could use the kick feature however those 3 characters posed a majority that us other two people were stuck with. Blizzard needs to fix this.

Enki, [A] Alleria

Gearing is different than it was in BC and Vanilla. Blizzard stated that heroics were going to be much easier in Wrath, and they are. Every patch, a new batch of upgraded gear is released while the difficulty of the instances stays the same. We’ve had 4 or 5 different ‘classes’ of gear. This means that raiders are steamrolling heroics while new players are generally frowned upon because they aren’t geared enough to wipe their ass with the place. They have to drink after fights, use cooldowns, buff, possibly CC, you know, stuff that was standard before Wrath.

It also means that new players or alts know that they can join the Dungeon Finder queue and will most likely be grouped with players that can carry them along to get geared.

The older Wrath heroics were meant to be completed in blues and iLevel 200 epics. They are all do-able to decent players in 200 gear. It can be stressful at times, but that’s the ‘heroic’ part of it. The problem is that Trial of the Champion and the new Icecrown instances were introduced, which weren’t meant to be completed by fresh level 80’s. And with the random dungeon feature pooling them all together, and 3 or 4 heroics being significantly more difficult than the older dungeons, it truly is rolling the dice.

I am perfectly fine with running H-HoS with a group of iLevel 187-213 (blues and epics) players. It’ll be a challenge but that’s the point. Steamrolling and chain-pulling wasn’t the intended purpose but as gear got more and more powerful people got use to walking in and out of a dungeon with four badges in fifteen minutes. My issue is that there’s a chance that I’ll get stuck in a H-HoR run with an iLevel 200 party, which is next to impossible to overcome, in my opinion.

You can blame the players because they could opt to not use the random feature and just sign up for dungeons that are of appropriate difficulty. But then they miss out of Emblems of Frost or extra Emblems of Triumph. So is it a faulty system? Should there be some sort of mechanic that looks at gear quality and knows to not group a player for the more difficult instances?

Sorry for the rant. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t feel discouraged as a healer. Some parties will fail and there’s nothing you (or another healer) could have done about it. Sometimes you’ll pull the group out of jam after jam and feel great. Other times you’ll be irrelevant because the tank has 50k health and could solo the place. Don’t let one experience bring you down.

First off great site. I have had an 80 alt doorf priest for some time now and started healing for the first time 3 weeks ago, so fine some of the thing you discuss very helpful.

I normally run with guild alts and as such have a laugh as they know I’m still learning to heal, as such most runs go really well, even managed my first H FoS last night with the only death being me…….still keep forgetting to heal myself.

My problems come when I hit the LFG on my own, without the normal tank I run with and end up with sub par dps and a tank that only dinged that day . Times like this make me think I have made a big mistake trying to heal, yet deep down I know its not me slacking its others not being prepared. I think the LFG system is great, especially for alts, but just wish people would get to a decent level before jumping straight in the HC’s and make me go grey quicker than I already am :p

@Halzakzul – I know what you mean about it always being the healer’s fault if the tank isn’t geared properly or the DPS stands in green stuff, but for some reason I still feel bad if I can’t pull the party out of the toilet against the odds. Ah, the conscience of a healer…

a DK trying to tank with absolutely no mitigation stats. Of course it’s MY fault as the healer that he gets one-shotted….

I had this happen with my Druid. I think she was 76 at the time, last boss in UK. OUr tank got DC’d, we picked up another tank. The DK tank got one-shotted. Initially I thought… well they aren’t used to the fight then I took a closer look at the DK’s gear. Let’s just say that explained everything!

Did you respond, when they asked how they did as a tank?

I really hate seeing people not ready to do heroics, at least meet the minimum before you try to roll up in there. I’ve had a few groups where DPS has either signed up as a tank or heals. Twice (before 80) when I sgined up as heals/DPS I got DPS. The ‘healers’ were higher levels than I so they got that role. No problems, it’s nice taking a break from Healing. but it was obvious that they signed up as heals just to make the queue go by faster. Guess who ended up healing? The last time the shaman made no attempt to heal. Guess who was booted out of that group? The Shaman. I stepped into the healing role (was doing that anyway) and we picked up another DPS.

I’ve had two groups where the DPS signed up as tanks and it was obvious they weren’t tanks. They got booted too. Personally, I think that is very selfish if you know you don’t meet the requirements to perform a role within an instance, don’t sign up for it.

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