(Warning: This is Warcraft post. You have been warned.)

I play a priest. As the name suggests, it is known primarily as a healing class in the game. The class is capable of some serious damage, thanks to changes to the damage spec after the release of the first expansion to the game, but for the most part priest = healer.

I hate healing. Absolutely despise it. The only reason I play this class is because my friends told me when I started that the class was in ‘high demand’. To that I say ‘BULLSHIT’. It was only in demand at the level cap (60 at the time) and it took FOREVER to get to the level cap, due to the fact that I could only wear cloth armor and was no good against multiple enemy targets. By that time I did reach the level cap, most of them had moved onto another guild, and were so far ahead of me content wise that I had no hope of catching up.

So I joined a series of ‘second string’ guilds. Basically those guilds that were one or two progression steps behind the cutting edge guilds on the server. And I got pigeon-holed as a healer. But I wasn’t alone, misery LOVES company and I suffered through it with others. This due to the fact that the old style 40 man raids required multiple healers, sometimes as many as 6-8 of them. So I was part of a mixed team of healers that assisted the entire raid. And it was fun. I got some gear, I stayed up late, I saw the content.

By the time the first expansion hit (The Burning Crusade), I had stumbled onto another server and started playing with colleagues from my job at that time. There I was still a priest, but a damage dealing priest….a Shadow Priest! (spooooky!) I HAD A BLAST!! Aside from the occasional ‘we need help healing, don’t do damage’, I got to kill things. Oh how glorious it was! I had two things to worry about; myself and the target. No one blaming me for wiping the group, no one complaining that I did not heal enough, just me and the target. I continued that course all the way through the beginning content of that expansion and into the content of the newest expansion (Wrath of the Lich King). More fun was had, more late nights (by this point I was playing on a server based in the Mountain Time Zone), more gear won, more content seen.

That brings us to now. I have a decently geared priest. My priest has the ability, thanks to an in game mechanic, to quickly change between damage and healing specs. I also have the gear that benefits both specs, so that I can be geared correctly for each. Thus making me more versatile, and truly in demand. Unless of course one hates healing, which I do.

Last evening, while online with a friend, we got pulled into a 10 man raid. If you look at it this way, a 10 man raid is essentially a tier 2 raid (out of 3). So it is middle of the road, hard enough that you cannot sleep through it, but not so hard that you spend six hours banging your head against the keyboard fighting one guy.

We had some hiccups, we died a few times. And of course, I and the one other healer get the blame. Not the tank that couldn’t keep the target focused on him, not the DPS (straight damage folks) that couldn’t pump out enough damage to kill the guy quickly. Nope, the healers…one charged with keeping the tank alive, and the other (me) charged with keeping the OTHER 9 players alive. The only reason I didn’t tell the douche bag that was leading the group and calling me out for not healing enough to go have intercourse with the closest four legged creature was my friend telling me to just stick it out.

The little shit also had the nerve to post Over-healing numbers to try and prove his point. Basically, over-healing is just that, healing targets that don’t need it, thus wasting resources. So the LESS the you over-heal, the MORE EFFICIENT you actually heal. This jackass had it backwards and was praising the guy healing just the main tank and blaming me, the guy who was in charge of everyone else, for all of us dying. I’d also like to mention that even AFTER the main tank died, I continued to heal the next target in line to try and take the guy down…while this little shit ran for the door.

We did eventually pull through, only AFTER a new tank that actually KNEW how to tank came on board.

This isn’t unheard of in the game, and this is one of the reasons why there is such a high demand for priests…no one wants to play them because it is ALWAYS their fault if the shit hits the fan. No one enjoys being the whipping boy.

I am not saying that I am the best healer, I know that there are better ones out there. Situations like this don’t make me WANT to become better at it though. Why waste my time, if no matter what, I will either always be at fault or never even acknowledged. Rarely if ever do you hear “hey so and so, great healing there!”. Nope, you get reamed if everyone dies or ignored if everything goes well. All this does is make me not want to do it at all and tell folks that ask if I heal that I only DPS (deal damage).

You may ask why I am even bitching about this. It’s a game. It’s little pixels transferred over the internet. The fact of the matter is that I do this to relax and for my enjoyment, and to have some random shit break my balls using incorrect data and no understanding of what my class does pisses me off. So I needed to rant and get it off my chest.

It’s also part of my writing plan, and I warned you didn’t I. 😉