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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-06-2012 @ 9:01PM
Luke said...
Why give pointers on something players shouldn't be doing?
I can't tell if you're endorsing this behavior or not, there's no tone of sarcasm or indication that you're kidding. So this article seems disjointed. And potentially disastrous for people new to healing.
"Here's how you should compete with your healing team in raids, but don't do it okay?"
I stand by the fact that meters are only useful as tools, to find out who failed to heal their target, or to find out if you CAN'T put out enough healing for a particular encounter, so you can adjust your gear and play style accordingly. If you're raiding with a team, it's a team effort, not a competition.
Oh but if we're talking about LFR forget everything I just said and blow everyone else out of the water...
;)
Anyway I don't want to sound too harsh but the theme of this article, and articles similar to this bother me. Not to mention it almost seems as though you're suggesting shield spam, which may just because you weren't very clear in the article.
For example I use shields in three ways, preemptively when I know my target is about to take a hit, as a timed form of mana return (along side atonement / archangel), and as an emergency. I can tell you that I don't use it nearly as much as I do greater heal, prayer of mending or penance. My targets stay alive, I don't over-heal, and I rarely dip below 60 percent of my mana, even on fights that are taking longer than they should. And if needed can sustain healing when nearly topped out, but if you're working as a team, the latter will only happen if there's some catastrophic error on the part of the Tank or DPS or if you're working on progression.
Reply
2-06-2012 @ 11:36PM
Twill said...
"Why give pointers on something players shouldn't be doing?"
Because they should be doing it. There is a difference between heal sniping, and being a useless pile of crap that forces other healers to carry you.
This article is phrased awkwardly, but it's speaking to the latter.
2-07-2012 @ 5:46AM
Luke said...
@Twill
I'm not sure we're talking about the same article.
"Anyway, it should be noted that I don't really encourage you doing this, I'm just telling you how to do it. Everyone shuns it, I shun it"
Yes there's a huge difference between heal sniping and being useless, but neither of these are good play styles. There's also a huge difference between healing as a member of a team, and (to borrow a sports metaphor) trying to be the star baller who never passes.
To try and say this article is aimed at improving bad / lazy players is rather silly. The article starts with a letter from a player who is worried more about the numbers than they are actual performance. Dawn goes on to say:
"Aggressive healing, I told her, was playing to produce high output. It's sniping heals out from other healers; it's making sure no one else has a chance to get a heal in."
Is there a form of aggressive healing that doesn't include sniping heals? Yes, but that's not the message of this article. This article is about increasing your numbers on meters. You can be an aggressive healer by learning what's coming and when, and to her credit Dawn does give this as advise. I agree with a few of her pointers, including this, but I disagree with snipe healing. And I don't think that articles like this do very well to improve the community or even individual performance because it encourages a model of healing that leads to poor team work. Dawn even says as much above.
I get that this article was intended to be much longer and that she's under certain word count limitations but that still doesn't change the fact that this is encouraging bad healing habits, teen sex talks not withstanding.