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Healing has been one of the biggest wake up calls in my WoW playing career. To call it an eye-opener would be an understatement of enormous proportions. Never before have I been so impressed with all of the quality healers I’ve played with in the past, so critical of my own play or so frustrated with players sleep walking through the game.

Before we get too deep into my personal healing insecurities and the failures of others, let me give a shout out to all of the wonderful healers who have time and again shown patience and restraint through countless dungeons and raids. The job of healing is both thankless and incredibly stressful. So in a word, Thanks to all of the fantastic healers I’ve played with in the past and continue to play with.

Now for my failings. How could all of my healer friends in WoW never have warned me about the trauma of healing? Letting a player die is one of the worst feelings I’ve ever experienced in WoW. Blizzard, in all of their devilish machinations, has made one of the most stressful and fun classes to play (or in my case, to learn to play…at the expense of countless unassuming tanks). Holding the health bars of other players in your hands is an extremely heavy burden.

And now for the failings of others. Christ almighty there are a lot of people who play this game with the same degree of intelligence as a canine. Even for under-geared players, there are tools at your disposal to handle any situation that comes up in a five man instance. The failure to complete instances is not a failure of gear; rather it is a failure of imagination and skill. The vast majority of the healing that I’ve done in game is for easily avoidable damage that players simply take inthe face.  I guess playing with quality players on a consistent basis just makes me all the more aware of the faults of others (aka, I’m spoiled).

All things considered, I am enjoying healing and looking forward to healing some raids!  Most of all, healing has been an exercise in patience (with both myself and other players) and priority (tank over DPS, always).