Raid Rx: 7 pet peeves of healers

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community and the new healing, raiding and guild management podcast Matticast.

Healers, you get to take the week off from reading Raid Rx. Instead, I'm going to encourage you to send this link to DPS players or tanks you know.

As a healer, there are these little things that really annoy us. Now granted, they are little. They don't bother us healers all that much individually -- hey, we have to wear our big healer pants sometimes. Now the problem occurs when these little things all add up. That's when we have a problem, because then it makes our life that much more difficult. If our life becomes more difficult, dungeon runs become brutal.

It's in the best interests of everyone to just slow it down.

Curious about the title image? Consider it a subtle reminder to get to work cracking on those Therazane deals and representing.

1. Not standing in beneficial circles

I can't count the amount of times I've seen this happen in either dungeons or raids. We drop a circle like Holy Word: Sanctuary. There's a player just to the left who is wounded. That player is about two steps away from it, yet he refuses to shuffle in and stand on it. It could be a byproduct of conditioning after all these years. Rest assured that your healers are trying to place circles in a tactically beneficial area. We want to make sure that the use of those spells are maximized. It doesn't help when you move out of them.

2. Not using the Lightwell

Can you do the priests a favor and simply click on it? Clicking it gives you candy! But seriously, there is nothing that disappoints a priest more than an unused Lightwell.

3. Expecting to simply brute-force encounters

You know, I expect to see a day when we won't have to use any crowd control. I expect to see a day when the heroics and raids have been nerfed to the point where everyone can enjoy and experience them. For now, though, that isn't quite possible unless you run with the best players. They might be on your friends list or even in your guild list. But jumping into the dungeon finder and watching helplessly as the tank just lights up the whole room with AoEs and taunts is enough to for me to grow additional white hairs. I hate seeing healers get beat up on this because the rest of the group relies on one person to bail them out. I ran some heroics the other night, and we were doing it on our alts. We were struggling big-time in Stonecore. We managed to persevere and tough it out; it just took longer than usual.

4. Failing to refresh crowd control

In line with the previous peeve: players who have agreed to shut down and shut out select mobs. What I've seen happen before is that a CC ability that gets used initially on the pull. After many seconds, things go to hell because the players who need to crowd control forget to continue to crowd control. I know when I'm on my DPS characters, I'll let my tanks get the first crack at trash before pulling off my own CC. When in doubt, just crowd control later. You can always break certain CCs if they go up. I think it's better to errr on the side of conversation.

5. Pulling with little or no mana at all

This is just plain dumb. A tank pulled a set of trash mobs. Not a problem at all. Then he pulled a second set with my mana pool down at the single digit percentage. I lit up Guardian Spirit and used a Hymn of Hope coupled with a Shadowfiend to get mana back. While I used my cooldowns to make the best out of a terrible, avoidable situation, it should not have happened anyway. It's nice knowing that your healers have the confidence to pull off something like that, but you should not ever rely on them to pull that off all the time.

6. Non-spirit users rolling on our gear

This is more for the players who don't benefit from healing who straight up roll on gear with spirit. That just makes me mad. I can understand if an elemental shaman or a balance druid want to roll on spirit rings. I know there are talents that essentially convert spirit into hit. But really, a mage rolling on an intellect trinket with a healing bonus (example of such a trinket: Fall of Mortality)? Well, hey, hold on a sec ... I could just be a bad player. After all, I've been playing a healing class virtually the entire time I've been playing the game. Is there a reason why a DPS caster would want that trinket other than the fact that the trinkets they're using are completely outshadowed by a Fall of Mortality? I'm sure they are. If I can think of a few, I know you can.

Still, it brings a tear to my eye.

7. Players with unaugmented gear

I don't know where to begin here. But players who don't even use green-quality gems or cheap enchants on their 333 item level blues? You have to be kidding me. Unless you're getting a piece within the next several hours or days, just burn some enchanting mats or gold on it.

Those are the big peeves that are on my list. They're the problems that truly make my blood boil (slightly).

Now, it wouldn't be fair of me to lay out what irks us healers without offering you a chance to do the same thing. I'd like to invite you now to list what healer habits annoy you and what you'd like to see different from us.

Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.