Sorry I didn't reply sooner, but I've been catching up on some much needed sleep for the past several hours. Got woken up unexpectedly this morning to go rescue someone locked out of their car.

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 (I'm surprised no one has really considered the paragraph where I talk about even if you do it well you won't have any extra mana for anything outside of ideal circumstances) but it doesn't change that people do this and that many people want to do this. If you're going to do it, here's my advice on how to do it effectively. I'm guess that makes me the sorta "bad parent" who tells their kid what sex is when they ask, instead of letting them get knocked up at 15.

And unfortunately, some of the additional writing I included in this article where I really talk about how you don't need to do this were cut this morning due to length. Articles are supposed to be 1500 words long, mine was 1900. The following is the first part of the post script of the article that is missing, in which I basically explain how I don't do this and that I'm still good.

"Earlier I mentioned that the priest's e-mail struck a chord with me, and the reason for that is that I also don't produce very much output as a healer. I can, mind you, but I choose not to. Instead, I focus on keeping my targets alive, and also keep an eye out for players who truly need my heals. Often I'm the lowest in my raid on effective healing, but I am always the lowest player on the meters when it comes to the percentage of overhealing done.

Like the reader who wrote me, my lower numbers have caused me some stress over the years. In the wrong guilds I'd been harassed and belittled endlessly, repeatedly benched for trial members, and generally assumed useless to the success of the raid. No one in those guilds ever seemed to notice that when I was actually in the raid for progression, things generally went smoother. In the right guilds, however, I'm always considered the most trusted and reliable healer by raid leaders, tanks, and healing leads. When assigned to a player who needs to be healed through this ability or that debuff, I never hear any complaints that I'm not doing my job. And when everything goes to hell, and I suddenly find myself holding everything together on my own through that last 1 or 2% before the kill, the right guild always notices and praises me accordingly. I can't use a meter to prove how skilled I am, and it's often hard to prove how good I am to a new group of people, but when I'm with the right guild I really prefer to heal the way that I do. It's up to you to decide what's best for you though."