Raid Rx: 7 pet peeves of healers
by Matt Low 
Jan 21st 2011 at 9:00AM
Healers, you get to take the week off from reading Raid Rx. Instead, I'm going to encourage you to send this link to DPS players or tanks you know.
As a healer, there are these little things that really annoy us. Now granted, they are little. They don't bother us healers all that much individually -- hey, we have to wear our big healer pants sometimes. Now the problem occurs when these little things all add up. That's when we have a problem, because then it makes our life that much more difficult. If our life becomes more difficult, dungeon runs become brutal.
It's in the best interests of everyone to just slow it down.
Curious about the title image? Consider it a subtle reminder to get to work cracking on those Therazane deals and representing.
1. Not standing in beneficial circles
I can't count the amount of times I've seen this happen in either dungeons or raids. We drop a circle like Holy Word: Sanctuary. There's a player just to the left who is wounded. That player is about two steps away from it, yet he refuses to shuffle in and stand on it. It could be a byproduct of conditioning after all these years. Rest assured that your healers are trying to place circles in a tactically beneficial area. We want to make sure that the use of those spells are maximized. It doesn't help when you move out of them.
2. Not using the Lightwell
Can you do the priests a favor and simply click on it? Clicking it gives you candy! But seriously, there is nothing that disappoints a priest more than an unused Lightwell.
3. Expecting to simply brute-force encounters
You know, I expect to see a day when we won't have to use any crowd control. I expect to see a day when the heroics and raids have been nerfed to the point where everyone can enjoy and experience them. For now, though, that isn't quite possible unless you run with the best players. They might be on your friends list or even in your guild list. But jumping into the dungeon finder and watching helplessly as the tank just lights up the whole room with AoEs and taunts is enough to for me to grow additional white hairs. I hate seeing healers get beat up on this because the rest of the group relies on one person to bail them out. I ran some heroics the other night, and we were doing it on our alts. We were struggling big-time in Stonecore. We managed to persevere and tough it out; it just took longer than usual.
4. Failing to refresh crowd control
In line with the previous peeve: players who have agreed to shut down and shut out select mobs. What I've seen happen before is that a CC ability that gets used initially on the pull. After many seconds, things go to hell because the players who need to crowd control forget to continue to crowd control. I know when I'm on my DPS characters, I'll let my tanks get the first crack at trash before pulling off my own CC. When in doubt, just crowd control later. You can always break certain CCs if they go up. I think it's better to errr on the side of conversation.
5. Pulling with little or no mana at all
This is just plain dumb. A tank pulled a set of trash mobs. Not a problem at all. Then he pulled a second set with my mana pool down at the single digit percentage. I lit up Guardian Spirit and used a Hymn of Hope coupled with a Shadowfiend to get mana back. While I used my cooldowns to make the best out of a terrible, avoidable situation, it should not have happened anyway. It's nice knowing that your healers have the confidence to pull off something like that, but you should not ever rely on them to pull that off all the time.
6. Non-spirit users rolling on our gear
This is more for the players who don't benefit from healing who straight up roll on gear with spirit. That just makes me mad. I can understand if an elemental shaman or a balance druid want to roll on spirit rings. I know there are talents that essentially convert spirit into hit. But really, a mage rolling on an intellect trinket with a healing bonus (example of such a trinket: Fall of Mortality)? Well, hey, hold on a sec ... I could just be a bad player. After all, I've been playing a healing class virtually the entire time I've been playing the game. Is there a reason why a DPS caster would want that trinket other than the fact that the trinkets they're using are completely outshadowed by a Fall of Mortality? I'm sure they are. If I can think of a few, I know you can.
Still, it brings a tear to my eye.
7. Players with unaugmented gear
I don't know where to begin here. But players who don't even use green-quality gems or cheap enchants on their 333 item level blues? You have to be kidding me. Unless you're getting a piece within the next several hours or days, just burn some enchanting mats or gold on it.
Those are the big peeves that are on my list. They're the problems that truly make my blood boil (slightly).
Now, it wouldn't be fair of me to lay out what irks us healers without offering you a chance to do the same thing. I'd like to invite you now to list what healer habits annoy you and what you'd like to see different from us.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 15)
Bert Jan 21st 2011 9:10AM
You forgot the biggest pet peeve... Undergeared DPS players pulling aggro from the tank and taking tremendous amounts of damage without even considering using an aggro-drop. I don't know how many times I've become so frustrated with this and simply let the DPS player die just to teach them a lesson on aggro management. A healer should be healing a DPS player through un-avoidable hits... not as a second main tank!
Trippy Jan 21st 2011 9:26AM
Undergeared DPS pulling agro from tank, this can be viewed in two ways imo:
1) Crap DPS doesn't only have crap gear, but also craps glasses because he can't follow kill order or use agro dumps.
2) Crap tank that can't hold agro even against undergeared DPS.
Yes there are a lot of #1's but don't blame it all on that, there's a good share of #2's as well these days.
As far as what annoys me about healers:
1) The "GOGOGO-Healer" that thinks he can heal the whole place on 10% mana and then let's DPS die because he can barely keep tank alive because of low mana. (And to add to that: any GOGOGO-player is annoying tbh.)
2) Not healing DPS because "they should take care of it themselfs".
3) Healers rolling on Hit rating gear.
matt Jan 21st 2011 9:32AM
At this point, it seems like dps can take a hit or two without going down thanks to the giant health pools we all have now. That said, don't expect me to heal you until you've lost aggro to the tank. Its just not worth dumping the mana into you unless you know how to get out of trouble. If you don't think fast enough, or have the awareness to clean up your little mess, I'll scrape you up when we are done.
Thomas Prescott Jan 21st 2011 9:55AM
This can happen if a DPS is hitting something other then the kill target.
Trippy Jan 21st 2011 10:28AM
@ Matt, I agree. My #2 peeve with healers is not as black and white as it might seem in my earlier post. But I've encountered a fair share of healers that refuses to heal unavoidable damage or thinks that a lightwell or green/white/blue circle on the floor is enough.
Faith Trust Jan 21st 2011 10:45AM
I've run into many tanks more recently than in Wrath, that cant even hold aggro on a boss fight without adds, let alone trash pulls
eleyond Jan 21st 2011 10:45AM
Even if the tank can't keep agro from an "undergeared" dps, it is still the dps's fault if they pull agro. A dps's job is to kill the target without pulling agro from the tank. Most dps classes have an agro dump, and if its on cd then dps can always stop dpsing to let tank get agro back.
Faith Trust Jan 21st 2011 10:47AM
Yeah, I agree, in those cases use aggro dump on cd, and hope the boss doesn't have an enrage timer, or vote kick the tank
Ellóren Jan 21st 2011 11:53AM
Yes, it's ALWAYS the dps's fault when we pull aggro.
When I get aggro on my dps warrior, I do what I can to "hand the mob back to the tank". I also apologise, and if I received any heals I didn't deserve I say something like "thanks for the heals. I'll be more careful next time". It's not that hard to be friendly and appreciative.
My main is a healer so I know what it's like :-)
naughtyzoot Jan 21st 2011 11:55AM
I can understand healers not healing DPS for taking a few smacks, getting hit by a random ability of the mob once, etc. I don't need to be full health to pew pew. No problems.
My issues are with the healers who don't help the DPS during AoE-damage in fights. We failed the other day on heroic Rajh because the healer *refused* to heal DPS during the AoE phase and told us to heal ourselves. So DPS kept dying and then the tank and healer died since they were all alone. Over and over and over again, until the healer called the group fail and /ragequit. Um, as a lock, sure, I got a Healthstone and Drain Life to help a bit. Bandages are useless, they break on the AoE damage. If I was on my mage, wth was I supposed to do to heal myself now, especially if Evocation was on cd??
And yeah, next healer came in, healed the group and didn't just keep the tank topped off while everyone else died during AoE phase, and we downed it. Shocking ;)
DaShiVa01 Jan 21st 2011 12:19PM
I'm a fire mage, I share pretty much all of the posted peeves. Then again, I used to lead 40 man raids, and my old main was a healer, but any player worth their salt should know the basics of stuff fits together.
On a side note, if I pull aggro, I don't want heals. It's my problem, I'll deal with it.
Once I get the mob either back to the tank or dead or controlled, if it's an encounter with area-wide damage that I'd usually require healing in, sure, top me up a bit, but the healers who say "DPS should take care of themselves" are 100% right, with the caveat of when dps cannot avoid taking a certain amount of damage, that needs to be healed.
Even when there is a certain amount of unavoidable damage, most DPS can still mitigate some of it in a mana/energy/whatever efficient way, and should do their best to help out.
On a final note: If there is a mage in your group, the first thing they should be doing is making a mage table. If they're not, ask them to (And make sure a couple of you help summon it). Then stack up 80 slices of cake. After any encounter where you've taken damage, EAT SOME CAKE! Sure, the healer can top everyone off, but give that healer time to eat their own cake for mana, loot their corpses, etc. Healers only need to heal during those times you can't eat cake.
Of course, if there's no mage, well, whatever.
Angus Jan 21st 2011 1:36PM
I had an elemental shaman pull off me last night. It took me 3 pulls to figure out why.
After that a skull went up every pull and suddenly, no issues. I don't blame the shaman, I blame the moron tank (me) that forgot a skull is helpful and not everyone knows to just assist me to get their target. (I'm getting spoiled by guildies)
Even with that DPS pulling, the tank can do something effective. Taunting the mob, stunning them and then nailing them with a big hit to cement them there is a good out.
When I see a mob that isn't skull go flying at a DPS, then I get annoyed. I've told the healer to let them die and a couple times the DPS got "creatively sat on" to point out how dumb they were. "I will do this to your corpse every time you pull, douchenozzle. Tank takes hits, you kill what tank is killing. Got it?"
Twill Jan 21st 2011 2:25PM
My biggest pet Peeve is going from my warlock to my moonkin (when im not holy paladin healing/resto druid healing :D)
I need soulburn!
elustree Jan 21st 2011 2:54PM
Amen
Scorfula Jan 21st 2011 4:28PM
Regarding not healing the DPS; The guildies that I run with know that I have a strict priority list when it comes to healing (Tank=Myself>Anyone CCing a mob or playing a vital role in an encounter>Top DPS>Lowest DPS), and expect that if I'm cutting it fine and more than one person is close to death, they can either pull out of the fray and self heal, or die and live with it (Ahem).
Sometimes it's because I made a mistake, sometimes it's because they made a mistake, it doesn't really matter, the point is, if you have self healing abilities or damage reduction cooldowns then please please use them, but don't panic and hit them all or complain if you're staying on low health. If I know there's no immediate risk of your dying, I won't waste my mana healing you up.
I admit that in Wrath it was downright insulting to me to have a DPSer start healing either themselves or others. Really. I would becoming indignant that someone would think I didn't have everything under control. How the tide has turned. Now I'm insulted if you don't do everything in your power to contribute to group success.
And for the love of God please don't ever, ever call out for healing, like I was intentionally skipping over you until you asked nicely, I assure you I wasn't and yes, you are on my healing list, you're just not my top priority at that particular moment. That is far and away my biggest pet peeve.
One last thing, do eat after a pull if you have low health. If I'm drinking anyway it's the same amount of time spent before the next pull. Don't make me have to heal you up after I just drank, it kind of negates the whole drinking thing in the first place.
Kunikiko Jan 21st 2011 7:10PM
I have to take issue with Trippy's #2 peeve. If a DPS takes aggro it's the DPS's fault, period. No matter how bad your tank is, you do not pull aggro. That's what I learned as a Rogue raiding from Vanilla to Wrath and that's what I enforce when I tank.
The Giant Jan 21st 2011 7:21PM
Have to agree with the last post here.
If I sit to drink, YOU sit to eat. If you're at 80% when I'm done, and you haven't eaten, you're staying at 80% or lower for the next 10 minutes. I'd rather give you a repair bill for being sloppy than save your ass over and over.
'Heal me', 'heal plz' and any other variation means you just lost ALL heals for an extended period of time. If you then take damage, I will res you every time you die until you leave the instance.
dcbrent Jan 26th 2011 4:35AM
My peeve on top of those listed are those ppl who will not use their damage mitigation abilities. In once instance where there was a lot of spell damage I asked the DK tank why they never used their anti-magic shell. The reply was, "It only last 4 secs so it's not worth popping."
My reply to that is, 'What is the difference between me healing you for 30K incurred damage and you mitigating 30K damage? The answer is that they are the same difference but one costs me a bucketful of mana, which you may need down the line!'
Elvgren Jan 26th 2011 4:28PM
The biggest pet peeve ...
How people are so obsessed with placing blame rather than accept the fact, especially in PUGs, folks have different levels of experience, different levels of hardware, different levels of awareness, and need different levels of support. aka ... lighten up. You are not perfect no matter what you might think your gearscore says.
Sturmovic Jan 21st 2011 9:14AM
I say let natural selection take its toll. Let the morons die, they can't be contributing much to the fight if they ignore the fundamentals of running heroics-mana management and crowd control.
In my day the DPS showed some respect, the grass was greener, and the lava redder.