i will never heal dickheads again

Over the weekend I virtually re-connected with an old friend who’s been on a bit of a hiatus from WoW. He’s one of the movers and shakers in the server’s leading progression guild and, although I hesitate to term him a failfriend, I think we’ve got ourselves into an unfortunate psychological deadlock. It reminds of a situation I had with another friend after we’d both finished our undergraduate degrees. His first move was rush off to London and turn into Patrick Bateman become a headhunter. And mine was stay exactly where I was, doing what I’ve always done, seeking the elusive epic drop of happiness in between making ice-cream and messing about with Restoration literature. From this point on, our friendship basically stalled because neither of us could respect what the other had chosen to do with his life. I thought him soul-less, materialistic and selfish. He thought me frivolous, romantic and clueless. I kept trying to convince him to quit and do something that would make him happy. He kept trying to persuade me to become an accountant or a teacher, because it’s all over-educated people like me with no transferable skills are good for (naturally we cannot go out and become headhunters, oh no).

A very similar thing has happened in WoW with my Raider Friend. I think less of him because literally all he did this weekend was run heroic after heroic after heroic, in order to gear up sufficiently to catch up with his guild. And he thinks less of me because all I did this weekend was piffle about having fun. A third party might criticise both us for spending our entire weekend playing WoW (although actually, for the record, I did take a break and I saw real live human beings not once but twice).

The problem is, very much like the situation with my header hunter friend, we’ve both forced the other into extreme positions I suspect we don’t actually believe and because of this, now neither of us can bring ourselves to admit the value in the choices and behaviour of the other. Ultimately the day might come when I’d like to take a shot at raiding, although, of course, he believes I’m far too frivolous, romantic and clueless (sound familiar?). And, when I’m talking to him, I make rather a big thing out of the fact I’m not interested in it, and feel nothing but disdain for people are. Although there’s an extent to which this is because he’s convinced I could never in a million years do it and also it’s completely untrue. Many of my blogging heroes are raiders, and none have them have ever for a moment suggested I couldn’t if I wanted to (although possibly this is just because they’re too nice).

This all culminated in one of the most miserable heroics I have ever run. I have occasionally PUGed with members of his guild in the past and, quite frankly, the sight of the name is enough to make my heart sink. They tend to be over-geared, over-confident and utter utter cockweasels. I’m not saying all of them, but a noticeable majority. Anyway, somehow he convinced me to heal UK heroic. “I’ve been trying to get a healer for 20 minutes,” he said. “We’re good to go and we’d really appreciate it.” I should have suspected something then and there – it’s absurd to think that the biggest progression guild on the server would be unable to find a Ulduar-geared healer just by whistling. But it soon became apparent that he didn’t need a favour from me, he’d decided to do a favour for me. I think he wanted to have his guild run me through a few heroics in order to get me geared but, knowing I am a proud man, he’d sold it to me by insisting that they really needed a healer.

Because obviously proud people just love it when you lie to them and patronise them.

The upshot was a situation in which everyone thought they were doing the other side a favour.

I am geared enough these days that I can heal a heroic if everyone behaves in a moderately sensible way. But of course they just wanted to blitz it through in their Ulduar-gear and I didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up. Which they made me feel low-key crap about the whole time I was there. If you go at that pace, and that recklessly, you will need a lot of healing, and if you need a lot of healing, your healer will need a lot of mana breaks. That’s kind of the way it works.

I can’t tell you how toe-curlingly bitter I am about people sneering at me when I take mana breaks. I can, of course, heal in a mana-efficient way but mana-efficiency-to-healing-efficacy is a sliding scale not a binary proposition. Usually one wants to be somewhere in the middle, not blowing all your mana pointlessly but feeling comfortable enough to spend it like water if it becomes necessary. You don’t need 100% mana to run through trash but, ultimately, there comes a point when it’s reassuring to be able to stop and top up.

The point is, if I go in at under 50% mana because I’m too self-conscious to ask for a mana break, I’ll only do it if I know I can handle the pull but the thing to bear in mind is that I can only heal it if nothing goes wrong. If I’m under 50% mana and you over-pull or the mage plays like a fool, then you’ve essentially gone in there – completely unnecessarily – having gimped your healer. And then you’ll have wiped. On trash. Think about it, dickhead.

Here comes the science:

So on it went, and I limped along behind, having a bloody awful time. I wish people would realise that ease of play for them usually means that someone else has to take the fallout. I don’t expect WoW to be easy – I like it when it’s challenging, in fact – but I hate it like I hate hell’s pains when somebody else makes my job far more difficult than it has to be, simply because they don’t give a fuck.

“Mana break, wots that, lol” said the Mage, literally every time I stopped.

My answer was always the same: “I could heal you less. That would probably help.”

And the highlight of the run was when the tank just couldn’t be bothered to wait for me and charged Prince Keseleth when I was on 30% mana. 30%! You fucker, you abject fucker, I hope you get rained on, and it’s that awful drizzle that gets you wet through no matter what you’re wearing. And then I hope you get eaten. By Jorumgar worms. Any number of them.

I somehow managed to heal through it, lost Stupid!Mage of course, but that was a given and I hated him so much by now that I could have been on 100% mana and I would have not healed him in Reno, just to watch him die.

Of course the tank didn’t even bother to say sorry, just accepted the fact that we didn’t wipe as testament to his awesome.

I think that was also part of the problem. Because I was in crafted epics and they were in Ulduar gear (and, of course, the top progression guild on the server, blah, blah) they thought they were too cool for school healing. I can tell you right now that this wasn’t true. I know I was just standing there at the back in a sissy robe but I was BUSY, I was damnably busy.

I wish I’d just sat there sipping honeymint tea and watched them wipe. I really really wish I had.

Of course, despite putting myself through that, I didn’t get a single drop. But I think that’s probably for the best. It would have been soiled by bad memories. And I’d have disenchanted it into bitter shards.

I talked about it with my friend afterwards, and explained how hard they had made it for me, and how angry I was at the way they played. He wasn’t especially sympathetic, or, actually, at all. The best he was willing to concede was that the mage had been a bit of dick. But apparently my expectations of civilised behaviour were out of whack with what it’s like if you want to run with the big boys. It was only later I realised that part of the reason I found it so agonising was that I didn’t want this guild to think I was shite – I have since jettisoned such concerns into a much healthier attitude of not caring. He did admit to feeling vaguely bad that I’d always had such bad experiences with members of his guild but ultimately maintaining their place at the top of the tree requires them to select by skill, and skill alone.

And again we hit deadlock.

Because that seems neither fun nor pleasant to me. I mean, maybe if you’re Ensidia. But these guys aren’t even Ensidia-lite.