What? This is bullshit.
You are insinuating that performing at peak ability is what -causes- people to be lazy? Why in your writing would you try to vilify those that strain to get us our purples every week? How about less call for the heroes to 'step down', and more for the others to step up their games and be heroes. Calling for those around them to 'report' X for struggling to... it's just.. Crazy. Seriously. Wow. I am really beginning to see what's wrong with the standard mentality of players.

@Timir

The biggest issue with being the "hero" healer is that for them to reach that status of "Oooh, look at how much healing he did!" That healer usually has to be stopping their focus on their target to heal someone elses', which causes overhealing to be done and potentially their own target to drop dead from lack of attention. It doesn't happen a lot, and that's why when they step on the other 2-5 healers toes they happen to look good even though they're just trying to inflate their e-penis.

The most important part to healing is to keep your own target(s) alive more than anything else, and to TRUST the other healers to do their own jobs. If another healer is struggling and you have the time and mana to help them then that's great, but if you're just doing it to inflate your numbers then you should step-off. If the other healer in question has a consistent problem needing help keeping their assignments alive, then they need to be replaced, not strain the healers around them.

@ Timir

I don't think the point was to imply that people who play really well should stop playing well. The point was that you're going to run into those players who play really well but, make a point of belittling players who may not. They adopt this ego-maniacal attitude where they think they are *the* best and the success of the entire raid rests solely on their ability to perform at their best. Nobody is this important - yes, you may be top DPS/heals every single night and outperforming other healers by a mile but, that doesn't mean the world is going to implode if you miss one night. The raid will find a competent player to fill their spot and everything will be well. The point is, many don't realize this.

If a person plays any class well, they shouldn't start pointing fingers about who sucks and begin to list the 10 reasons why. If you really think you can play better than anyone else while doing a handstand blindfolded with the other hand behind your back, you are sorely mistaken. We all have areas to improve upon and these "hero players", shouldn't be mocking others, they should be speaking to them before and after raids, offering some 'imho' advice about their classes and how they can maybe improve a little - so long as you do it in a respectable and helpful manner.

PS - I went off on a tangent but, points still stand.

@Timir,

Good points. I don't think it's just about players belittling others for their failures (real or imagined) however. We have a guy in our guild who used to play a druid as his main. Back then (Ulduar 25) he was constantly running out of mana, using his innervate 1/4 of the into the fight, begging/borrowing/stealing every innervate he could as the fight progressed. One night after a raid, he was wondering why he was sucking through mana. *I* knew why, but waited until he made the discovery on his own and then we talked it over a bit. He basically had no faith in the other healers. He believed that if he didn't heal everyone, they would die, because most of the healers weren't up to snuff (in his view). He wasn't flaunting meters, or telling everyone they sucked, but his lack of faith in the healing team impacted the raid for sure.

One of the hardest things to do as a healer is to let someone else take care of that rapidly-dropping green bar, but it's essential.

@jeffo
"One of the hardest things to do as a healer is to let someone else take care of that rapidly-dropping green bar, but it's essential."

That was probably the smartest bit of advice in this entire post. I still have problems following this myself. You have to trust your other healers to do their jobs and focus on their healing assignments. When you jump over to snipe in a heal you're risking your assigned targets' survivability and reducing your healing efficiency.