I recently started reading the Aggro Management blog, and I’m enjoying it immensely. Conceptually it’s a really good idea: one tank, one dps, one healer, who play together and blog together.
When you think about it, there’s so much potential: complaints about stupid dps and arrogant tanks should be tempered by a genuine understanding of what it’s like to play the other roles, how they’re played, how they *should* be played. It doesn’t hurt that protflashes, currently the most frequent poster, writes fluidly and well either.
Aaaanyway, this post on healing caught my eye in particular. Protflashes (from the about page: “More than 60% of the 2.5-servers-worth of characters played by Protflashes are specced for tanking.”) has been trying out her paladin healing offspec, and finding it tricky for a number of reasons. I read this, and spent a fair amount of time nodding.
I’ve not actually been brave enough to try healing a heroic yet — I’ve healed three or four regular dungeons through the dungeon finder, and that was plenty scary enough for me, for now. Healing is *very* different from my usual ret paladin zero responsibility faceroll. I think I like it, a bit, but I need some more practice before I’ll know for sure.
The biggest problem I’m having is the gap between knowing what to do, and actually doing it. I know, or at least think I know, the general healing paladin mechanics for 5 man content. Beacon and Sacred Shield the tank, bounce heals off anyone else. Use Holy Light when there’s lots of damage incoming, use Flash of Light for lightweight trash and low damage situations. Divine plea in the gaps, possibly in combination with Avenging Wrath to recover some of the throughput loss.
Where I’m struggling is with my cooldown abilities — the various hands and the like. In particular, when they’d be most useful (i.e. when everything’s going a bit sideways) I’m generally to busy frantically whacking the Holy Light button and hoping the beacon is still active to use the abilities that would probably be a big help.
This is, I suspect, the gap between “having a healing spec” and “being a healer”, and thus far I’m most definitely the former. Perhaps once I’ve configured healbot I can move a few abilities around on my bars to give me shortcut access to the various — that might help — but where I’m going to get the brainpower to use them at the right time I’m not sure. Watch this space, I suppose.
I’ll close with a quote from Protflashes:
And to every fucker who ever told me healing was easy and healing heroics a cake walk – die in a fucking fire (couldn’t save you if I wanted to).
Indeed.