After capping my rogue

[Bolty]

For healers other than the main tank healers it's the reverse - instead of only needing to watch five health bars they now need to track forty. So healing in raids is relatively harder than the other roles. Healing errors are also more serious - a healer taking ten seconds to say Hi to their family can cause three people to die, a DPSer doing the same means the boss takes an extra fraction of a second to take down.[right][snapback]104118[/snapback][/right]

This is indeed something I neglected to mention originally.

Healing in 40-man raids is very stressful; by comparison, 5-player groups are a cakewalk. One of the big problems with healing is that you CANNOT take a break. You can't stop to answer the phone. You can't stop if the doorbell rings. You can't stop to get a drink, or to take a bite to eat. Just a few seconds away from your computer and people die. You, as a healer, are always required to be ready and up for every pull, or else you get the usual "I didn't get a heal, WTF."

Part of the problem is that healing is reactionary. While mob behavior is predictable and recognizable, player behavior is not. A healer never knows when someone might decide to do something crazy, yet they're expected to compensate for it and react quickly enough to save the day. This creates a constant feeling of tension.

It's possible that this is another large cause of burnout. I know on some of our early MC attempts when we'd be in there 5+ hours just getting to Domo, by the end of the night I was pretty frazzled. Not necessarily unhappy, just frazzled. Tired. Beat. The constant concentration wears on you.

I've heard the stories - Hunter players just switching on autoattack and walking off to take care of something; Rogues and Warriors doing similar things. Healers can't do that. If a DPS player wants a nice, relaxing night, it takes 5% longer to kill something. If a healer wants to take a little break, spot heal here and there, etc, it doesn't work. People go splat.

Also mentioned in this thread is that healing has a cap on your abilities - you are there to heal people who get hurt. The damage people take is your cap. Whereas with a DPS class, there's always ways to get better gear and do MORE damage and be more useful, healers have a cap on their usefulness based on the incoming damage to the group. Then you get in a situation where the group doesn't need much healing or action on your part for a stretch of 30 minutes...and then all of a sudden crap happens and you have to ramp it up like crazy. Some people can't just ramp up like that right away after 30 minutes of tedium. In short, you could be a fantastic healing player but you don't get to do what you're good at a lot of the time. This reduces the satisfaction level.

There's a reason why I encourage people to:
A) go faster
B) be a monkey

It's because it lets me do what I'm good at. Non-healers may not understand that. I don't get to do what I'm good at unless the group is pushing the envelope. I don't get the satisfaction that a DPS player would get WTFPWNing everything unless I'm being pushed to my limits. The fun factor isn't there. This ties in to what I wrote originally, that healers are generally not noticed unless they make a mistake; there's just a general sense of the party that "man, this is a good run" and "hey, this is a great group." The healer knows it's going well because of his/her work, but it's often transparent to most other players.

This isn't unique to WoW, it exists in most every MMORPG, from what I hear. Just read through the thread linked in the original post.

-Bolty