Warning: Incoming tree rant
Yesterday I spent some time participating in the new Love is in the Air holiday event and found myself running around figuring it all out. So I learn that I need to get Lovely Charms to turn into a Charm Bracelet, to turn in for daily quests or for Love Tokens. Well besides taking part in this holiday, I also spent some time doing what I typically do on any other day, which included a number of battleground runs and the daily heroic.
Im sitting there in my first AB of the day and notice and hear all these little dings with people creating the charms. What? Oh, so you can also get them for getting the killing blows? Seriously? The first thought that came across my head and which I shared in gchat:
Bullshit.
Actually it was more like this:
TOTAL BULLSHIT.
Now don't even tell me that I could have hurricaned near a flag in this AB. Why? Why should I have to dps? I am there to heal. In fact, with my 1230 resilienced ass self (tree rawr), I healed in this AB more than anyone even did damage. In fact 100,000+ more. But I came out with nothing.
I then did the daily heroic with two guildies and was taunted by the fact that they were getting charms in there too. Sure sure, it was an easy Gundrak run and I definitely could have dpsed. But again. Why should I have to?
At this point, my guildies had heard plenty of it from me in guild chat. Guildies and friends were trying to be nice and understanding and telling me that I should go do the bombing quest in Icecrown (which wasn't available to me because I guess I haven't done the prequests), or grind Frenzyheart mobs in Sholazar Basin, or go kill mobs before Flame Leviatian in Ulduar. My response in guild chat? It's the principle!!! Sure, of course I can get them these other ways. But why should I have to?
Also, I think this screws healers even more at the lower levels. Yes, K has pretty decent gear now and it wasn't that bad to hurricane the mobs in Sholazar Basin. But for a lower level or less geared healer? With less armor, less spell power, less mana regen? Not so easy. Yeah, yeah other folks were saying I could switch specs. But hello, not everyone has a second dps spec. Mine is tanking, but for a long long time my second spec was an alternate healing spec.
Later we were able to pull a group together to go into Icecrown, and yep, guildies are getting charms from trash pulls. Poor Darcness didn't know what was going on and was asking what these charms were for. Poor Darc didn't know what he was getting himself into. It was actually pretty funny because everyone else was like:
Darc! Shhh! Don't get K started! Didn't you feel the white hot rage when you came in?
Sammy even made a charm bracelet for me from the charms he got and tried to trade it to me, which I shut down faster than, well... fast. Sweet as it was, I don't want your mercy charm bracelets. Again, its the principle.
What I found even more irritating was not only that you can see that all these other folks are getting the charms, but that you hear it just in case you didn't see it. Ding! Ding! Ding! Charms! Charms! Charms! Screw you healers! No charms for you!
As my irritation was building, I went online to try to find some more information around this and came across this forum thread. I was very glad to see other healers expressing dismay. And I wasn't surprised to see the typical Stop the QQ, go do the quests... go farm these mobs... blah blah blah. Like Keeva, I was disappointed to see Blizz's response that its not a big deal because healers can get them other ways.
Ok, so I get that this game is set up in a way where the focus is on killing stuff. I get that. Kill the bad guys. But why is that? Why isn't there more of an appreciation for healing? Yeah, I know that Dreamwalker in ICC is a healer's fight. And yes, I am very much looking forward to seeing her. But why isn't there more of this in this game? Why can't there be more things in game where the objective, or the purpose is to heal things?
I'm talking beyond raid bosses now, though more raid bosses like Dreamwalker would be awesome. How about quests? Could some of the new quests when Cataclysm comes out incorporate something of a healing mindset? Remember that quest we had to do in Theramore to get some level of first aid? The one where we had to heal and bandage a bunch of soldiers? Could there be more quests like this? Either specific quests or dailies? Folks could either do them as healers, or on some sort of vehicle that Blizz loves so much. Come on Blizz, lets get creative here and think beyond the "kill this" mindset.
Isn't there that saying in game "Kill shit, don't die?" Where do folks think the don't die comes from? /sigh. I think I will create a new signature or tag:
Healers: Keeping your ass alive to tank or dps since, well... forever.
End tree rant.
I went out to gather charms with my hubby, an arcane mage. In my holy spec, we ran around blowing things up with arcane explosion and holy nova. Guess who got more charms?
ReplyDeleteHe was snickering under his breath the whole time.
My response to the "Stop the QQ, go farm these mobs" crowd would be worded something like this:
ReplyDeleteAs it stands, tanks/DPS get to farm charms in instances while leeching MY HEALING (which they do not get if they farmed mobs "in the wild"). Then, as a bonus, I get to do EXTRA work farming my own mobs to obtain the same charms while the idiots I just healed get to sit back in the inn and relax? "Equitable" does not exist.
Solution: Turn off charm creation in any instance. Then we're all on a level playing field.
While it is no solution, I would suggest dropping in to Ulduar for some dwarf slaughter. When you can blow up 2-5 every couple seconds, it's fast. That's what I did despite having a usable DPS secondary.
ReplyDelete@Forreststump: "I can't have it so you can't either" is hardly a good solution. How about just making them a round-robin emblem, so they get distributed through the party evenly, regardless of killing blows?
@Shawndra: Omg! Bad hubby!
ReplyDelete@Forreststump: I know. The stop the QQ, go farm crowd is quite large. I don't understand how they can't see that healers have to go out of their way to get charms on their own time, while other folks are getting them from the trash in raids and dungeons that we are healing.
@Klep: I agree that making it a round robin system drop would be fair.
Really, for a much more reasonable and well thoughtout and written explanation on why this is unfair to healers, folks should go see Keeva's post. Mine is a bit more rawr! tree rage!
Bah Humbug!
ReplyDeleteThat's it, I'm boycotting this dumb holiday. Not that I was planning to do it anyway... but now I'm not doing it ON PURPOSE for a CAUSE.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, I hadn't been paying much attention to the holiday stuff, and I saw a shadow priest last night during the raid get a lucky charm and I'm thinking "No time for crafting charms! We're killing trash!" But apparently he got it for the killing blow. I feel so educated now.
i think for the duration of this holiday, healers should not be available. if asked why we're busy, say it's because we're too busy trying to get enough charms for the achievement.
ReplyDeleteI am not healing any instances during this holiday. Period. Full stop. Don't ask, your ears will bleed from the answer.
ReplyDelete@crankyhealer: It was funny because when my guildies were mocking my irritation more than symphathizing, the first thing I thought was "Y'all suck. The crankyhealer would understand".
ReplyDelete@Adeanna: Haha. Really, the worst inequity for me I think is when I'm in a battleground, where folks can get 50-60-70 HKs while I'm healing their asses off.
@Alsarus: Hmmm I don't want to know, eh?
No you really don't. Only level 42 Druid and I'm sick of LFD. Argh. Last instance I ran, first thing in party chat tank says, "Healer, don't suck". Ok, I edited that for gentler ears. So, I add him to my ignore list, and proceed to not suck. Now the tank, he SUCKED. Couldn't keep aggro off me, the warlock or the ret pally. But I did my job and no one died.
ReplyDeleteNow, on top of the rude tanks and dps, I don't get freaking charms for healing instances? I don't toss out any dps cause I don't have an infinite mana pool (still trying to get used to Innervate and how best to time usage) and except when I have a pally tank, I have to deal with non-stop pulls and my mana pool usually cannot keep up without sitting for a cool drink.
So, I'm not healing instances until after this holiday. Heck, I might just respec dps instead.
I think BG's and Heroics are the worst way to get charms. I went and did the tourney daily today and got them so much faster.
ReplyDeleteHowever I do agree it's BS that they made it on killing blows. Totally unfair to Heals and a little unfair to tanks since they are usually not top DPS.
P.S. Pop that druid insta-chain jump lightning thing when a big pull is almost done and you will probably get a lot of charms.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see one of the changes they've made was that it doesn't go to the killing blow in 5 mans. I got a number of these charms last night in our daily!
ReplyDeleteBut they do also seem to have made it harder to farm these charms via other methods. Boo. My point was to never nerf these other ways, but to just make it fairer for healers.