Power gaming guild buying up the healers

[Brista]

On my server the strongest guild seems to be buying up all the over 50s healers. I was grouped with the Guildmaster of a medium sized guild and he told me he has lost several healers to a top guild called Dusk. Dusk has been offering them fat bribes to switch guild. While we were grouped he lost another one. Later on that night we had a group of 4 from my guild plus a mage from this Dusk guild. After the instance our healer left our guild. I spoke to him about it and he said he was going to try out another guild. Dusk of course, the mage must have been working on him during the instance run. No wonder he wanted mana breaks all the time. I took a bit of petty revenge by telling the healer he could wangle a fat bribe out of the situation, he hadn't realised or been offered this.

I'm at a bit of a loss how to combat this. On the one hand I guess it could be seen as a weeding out process where all the lame healers get siphoned off leaving us with the more sensible ones. On the other hand there's a chronic lack of available healers over 50 and it seems to be getting worse

Has anyone any experience with guilds doing this? I'm quite tempted to power up my own priest, join this guild for a vast bribe and spend two weeks spreading as much carefully considered malice as possible. I could just concentrate on my under 50s alts and hope that the problem goes away, with luck the guild might implode. I suspect though that the bonds that keep high level people in power-gaming guilds (a chance at MC drops) are stronger than the forces that divide them (they're horrible people)

Unfortunately any kind of guild sanctions probably won't be effective. The server has a low population of healers and this power-gaming guild has a decent healer base which is of course growing. It isn't really much of a sanction to say our hunters mages and shammies won't group with you since most of us play the more superfluous classes. Still I certainly won't be having any non-healers from Dusk in my groups again

My last thought is just how viable is it to 5 man end game instances with no priest but a Restoration specced shaman? Is it possible to do Blackrock Depths Scholomance and Stratholme like that or is it unthinkable?

[Brother Laz]

The funny thing about this is that it is caused directly by the fact that those people who are soon going to complain about the lack of healers [on the Blizzard forums. 50 times.] are the ones who refuse to actually make a healer themselves.

If you believe in the free market, the problem will soon fix itself because people will mass build priests just to get the bribe or be able to get into instances once in a while. In real life, however, people will complain endlessly instead of making a priest and doing the healing themselves, because everybody wants to actually fight instead of play 'health bar whack-a-mole' while other people pwn stuff.

I don't play WoW, I just watch from the sideline and laugh at the absurdities. People don't actually want to cooperate in any game, except if it allows them to be the hero. Ergo, the kiddies won't make a healer.

I blame Blizzard for not thinking of this themselves and making the class that is least appealing to b.net kiddies mandatory for high level content. I also blame the players for screaming nerf whenever any other class comes slightly close to priests in healing power. [there was a time when druids and then shamans were better healers than priests!]

Simple solution: powerful direct damage spells for solo'ing. Turn the priest into another druid or shaman. Bring back fist of heavens and bone spirit, give people something to blow stuff up with.

[Arnulf]

'health bar whack-a-mole'
[right][snapback]82575[/snapback][/right]

Wonderful, just wonderful. I've never seen a more fitting yet at the same such a funny description of this process anywhere else. :lol:

-Arnulf

[Drasca]

Build good relationships with your guild players. Other than that, there's little you can do because the first guild to reach critical mass will start rolling through larger raid instance first.

However, there's a limit to how much buying power they have and how much they need. In practical terms, they cannot grow forever. . . maybe. Its possible they might monopolize, as free markets (left unchecked) turn into capitalist monopolies soon enough until there's someone else big enough to compete.

One restoration shammy? Probably not. Two? Probably, but I've never tried it. Shammy + Druid? Definitely.

Oh, btw, I have almost 300 in shadow damage items now.

[lfd]

health bar whack-a-mole
...
I don't play WoW
[right][snapback]82575[/snapback][/right]

That much is clear from the hilarious yet inaccurate soundbite ;-)

I don't know how much of a cross-server issue this is, but there really _does_ seem to be a problem in the small-to-medium guilds where there are a bunch of 60s, a bunch of 50s and then The Rest of the guild. Often the 60s are too busy running the time-consuming end-game instances to help out their 50-57s; unless you're the kind of person that is happy to solo or run in pick-up groups, guilds can be very frustrating places for the not-quite-capped.

My priest got annoyed round about level 50 due to the lack of willingness of higher-level guildmates wanting to waste time helping me complete instances of that level; nobody wanted to do sunken temple, nobody wanted to do blackrock depths despite trying to organise a group for about a week - until the day when a capped guildmate was supposed to be going to Molten Core, but hadn't done the attunement quest. There were no shortage of whispers asking - begging - me to join his group to heal him then.

Part of the annoyance is that I knew full well back then that when I eventually crawled up by myself to a high enough level, there would be no shortage of requests from guildies to come heal them. I'm already being proven right. While I'm irritated by this, what can I do? I'd still much rather run the instances - for the first few times at least - with people I know who won't deluge me in abuse when/if things go wrong.

Poaching healers in the 50+ level range is a shrewd move, and one that's totally unsurprising to me. Most of them will be utterly underappreciated, and would happily move even without the bribe.

[Bolty]

My priest got annoyed round about level 50 due to the lack of willingness of higher-level guildmates wanting to waste time helping me complete instances of that level; nobody wanted to do sunken temple, nobody wanted to do blackrock depths despite trying to organise a group for about a week - until the day when a capped guildmate was supposed to be going to Molten Core, but hadn't done the attunement quest.  There were no shortage of whispers asking - begging - me to join his group to heal him then.[right][snapback]82581[/snapback][/right]

No, this is pretty much cross-server and applies to all guilds. Boltress was under the same scenario in the Lurkers guild during her 50's as a leveling Priest. Our guild had a squad of 60's already, along with a few 50's who, as far as I know, were not joined by the already 60's-squad in instances until we were level 58-59. This was despite getting requests by some of the 60's to "hurry up" and get to 60 faster so I could heal end-game instances. It kind of led to my lack of desire to run such instances when I capped, and why, even though she's retired, she's come out to do the occasional BRD run for those in their 50's but still hasn't set foot in Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS, etc. But I digress, and I don't want to hijack the thread with my whining.

During my 50's I wound up doing lots of pickup groups for places like Maraudon and Sunken Temple, and in *every one* of those groups I was asked to leave my guild and join another. Nobody ever offered me bribes though, but I do remember seeing in IF general chat once that a group was willing to pay a priest 10 gold just for running them through Maraudon. Yikes. But I still have members of two guilds on Stormrage who ask me from time to time if I've changed my mind about switching. This Dusk guild is very aggressive and will likely implode. It's the inevitable result of populating a guild full of people who will abandon their guilds they've leveled up in so they can get "uber lewtz" from the "l337 g4merz" who don't realize there's more to the game than having the Sword of Uberness +7 instead of the Sword of Uberness +6. Damn, there I go again on a rant. :) Anyhow, the law of averages or whatever-you-call-it will likely lead to Dusk breaking up into 2 or more guilds eventually because of differences of opinion, or simply because if 75% of the healers on the server are in the guild, there's less loot for those healers than if they joined another guild where they'd be one of the few there. After all, these are players who hopped guilds for loot, so they'd do it again!

I'm still not sure why people don't like to play healers - it can be very fun and demanding, and perhaps the myth that all they do is stare at health bars turns people away. I've read in general forums that people say they tried playing a Priest and found it too stressful. Or, there's the stigma that a healer is somehow the "b**ch" of the party and lives to serve them - that is, until you annoy them and they leave the group and the group is screwed.

-Bolty

[Brista]

Thanks for your replies everyone

My main question though is not "why does this happen?" but "how can I win?"

My thoughts at the moment are

1) I have to set aside my love of alts and get serious with my level 33 priest. I'm a pretty fast leveller, and I'm not dismayed by the prospect. It's a challenge I'll quite enjoy

2) Rather than work on a huge bribe from DUSK I've had a subtler thought. I'm going to start charging them and them only for healing. 20gp for a 50s instance run or 50gp for a 60s run should be fine. If they get shirty, I'll brag how effective I am, my Holy/Disc spec, I always bring mana pots and drinks and how if they just want any old priest and don't mind wiping they can get an (inferior) free one. It's main purpose is to aggravate them which I hope will turn into internal friction within their guild but if they want to make our guild funds grow then that's fine. Of course everyone else will get it free unless they invite someone from DUSK at which point I'll insist on being paid because "DUSK pay other healers"

3) We could try to get our 4 level 60s to work more with us. Problem with this is our highest warriors are 54 and 55 and they're ok but not great tanks. Arms Fury of course. This means that even BRD is too tough and I doubt our level 60 mages or our level 60 priest would solve this. If the tank ain't keeping aggro the rest is kind of moot. We did Sunken Temple and it felt like cake with a mid 50s group. By and large the same group that got shredded in BRD.

4) We have one 60 priest, no other 51-60 priests or druids since last night's poaching and a handful of 40s priests and druids. I'm quite keen to discourage these last ones from leaving. I think it's a good point that priests are often undervalued, our 60 guy gets loads of pressure to join guild groups where he's always the first to die. I think we need to tighten up our gameplay - it's got to be more fun healing a great group than one that is merely just better than average pubbie

5) I think publicity helps us and harms DUSK. It is kind of lame to be poaching healers like this and sensible reasonable players who might be open to persuasion might become less so if they know about this kind of lameness


Our server is a newish one. There are about 60 level 60s and only 8% of the population are priests. Many of the players are extremely raw. Most MMO veterans and people who had looked forward to WOW got the game in Europe when it released in February. This server is people who bought the game when it was two months old plus a minority of veterans from other EU and US servers. Last night when I was looking for a healer there were about a dozen priests 51-60 online and 5 51-60 druids on. We did have 2 shamans, both Enhancement, neither wanted to be our healer. So you see it is quite possible that one or two guilds could monopolise all the 50+ healing power

Well at least this isn't a "what do I do now I've almost maxxed my Hunter?" post :)

[Concillian]

I think it's a good point that priests are often undervalued, our 60 guy gets loads of pressure to join guild groups where he's always the first to die. I think we need to tighten up our gameplay - it's got to be more fun healing a great group than one that is merely just better than average pubbie

Understatement of the year.

Healing a bad group is not fun for me. I am frustrated the whole run because the tank is NOT PLAYING HIS ROLE. Usually these result in wipes, or I let them result in wipes, because I won't be having fun if some dumbass 'leet' warrior can't hold aggro of more than one at a time.

I started a warrior partly because I saw the problem and wanted to see how difficult it was to hold aggro of 4-5 at a time. It's not easy, but it's not hard either. And while it's easier if you have certain talents, it's not THAT much more difficult without any talents at all in protection, which only proved my point that these people simply don't know how to tank.

Sorry for the rant, but I am always nervous about a tank I don't know and my list of bad 50+ tanks grows. Sometimes I can heal the group okay (usually when there are plenty of melee classes, shaman, rogues, warriors) but I just don't have a whole lot of fun doing it. Other times, I get with one of the few good warriors and I enjoy every minute of it.

Warrior quality has a great deal of effect on how happy I am when I am healing. The basic rule is if you notice your healer talking a lot, then your group has some aggro problems that are tied to someone's playstyle. If your healer is quite or his only comments are humorous ones, you are a great group. A healer will usually see aggro problems first, unfortunately they have the least ability to correct them.

[Bolty]

My main question though is not "why does this happen?" but "how can I win?"[right][snapback]82595[/snapback][/right]

Hmm, ok. To "win" and keep your healers, know this: there are basically three kinds of healer players:

1) Someone who simply enjoys the challenge of being the one responsible for keeping people alive in a group. Sure, everyone plays a role in that, really, but it's the healer that's ultimately the final line of defense and has the largest responsibility and pressure.

2) Someone who is playing a healer as an alt because their guild has a shortage of healers and may not be very into it. They prefer another class.

3) Someone who plays a healer because they like always being in demand and expect people to cater to them because they are a healer. This is the type that gets people riled up. :)

What you're going to have to figure out is, which of these categories do your guild's remaining healers fall in to? If they're types 2 or 3, you will have a hard time holding on to them.

Type 2 will think "why do *I* have to bust my butt to level a healer for my guild when nobody else is trying. Screw this, I'm taking up Dusk's offer."

Type 3 will think "well, these peons don't appreciate my work, I'll go to a guild that does appreciate healers and gives them gifts."

If you have Type 2's and 3's, you will simply have to cater to them in some way, whether it be constant praise of their efforts or material gifts. Otherwise, they're leaving. Keep in mind that level 60 healers generally get whispers to join groups every 30 seconds in IF. Yes, every 30 seconds. Maybe not on a lower pop server, but that's what I've found on Stormrage. And offers to switch guilds can come on a daily basis.

Your only other solution is to go out and recruit, which blows because the quality of your guild will suffer. Go and recruit healers and you'll wind up with all Type 2's and 3's and things won't be very fun.

Also, keep in mind that even Type 1's can jump ship if they are a heavy Achiever personality and feel that your guild just isn't leet enough.

It really bites about your tanks. As Concillian pointed out, the quality of your tanks has a huge effect on your enjoyment as a healer. Sometimes healing a bad group CAN be fun, but only if you're going in with the mindset that you're going to have to work your butt off for a bunch of people who may have absolutely no idea how much you're saving their rears. And just as Concillian did, I found myself rolling tanks simply because I got tired of seeing bad ones and figured that I could do a better job, especially with my knowledge gained while playing a healer.

But Brista, the problem you're running into is what all mid-sized guilds run into: getting critical mass for end-game content. You're large enough to be fun to be in, but not large enough to keep the hardcore Achiever personalities who expect high-end raids consistently. Thus, your members get poached. The solution is to ally your guild with other guilds to get cross-guild raids. The Lurkers on Stormrage work now with The Basin guild and Carpe Aurum in raids of MC and Onyxia every week, but alone we wouldn't be able to, and without those possibilities for the level 60's we have, we'd wind up with more people leaving. Cause you know, my swingin' personality just doesn't seem to be enough for people to stay all by itself. :)

If you are guild master, you're going to have to start extending olive branches to other guilds of your kind in order to build a base of players. Create a chat channel that members of the guilds can join, like the {name hidden} channel the Lurkers use on Stormrage that Lurkers, Basiners, Guardians of Elwynn, etc all use to form groups if there's not enough interest in their individual guilds. By pooling your guilds together, you form a loose uber-guild with enough players to achieve a critical mass. Hopefully.

You will, unfortunately, have to get going on this quickly, before you lose too many members. Otherwise, you then form a critical mass in the other direction - negative growth - that led to the semi-death of the Lurkers guild on Tichondrius. Too few players encourages players to leave, which reduces the number of players, which encourages those left to leave, which reduces the number of players...ultimately, the personality and friendliness of the guild members is not enough for some people to stay - they want more. Even if they have to sacrifice that to get it.

Good luck. :)

I wonder if any professor out there has a research paper about the social dynamics of online guilds in this scenario?

-Bolty

[oldmandennis]

Fantastic post Bolty.

There are definatly sweet spots in the number of players in a guild. I'd say about 70 for MC, 100 for MC/Oxy, and 130 for 7 days a week 2xMC 2xOxy. If Dusk is the biggest at say 30 people, they are going to keep attracting more until they get to 70 or so, because they can say "We are going to MC this weekend, and all your healer are belong to us". When they get to 70 they need to start telling some people to stay home, and that gives other guilds a chance to get bigger.

I've been through all the situations Bolty described, first in a small guild that was "boiling off" our high level players to bigger guilds. The 60's that were left didn't feel like helping the mid 50's much, especially with Warlord's command. I was within a day or two of typing /gquit when we merged with a medium sized guild in an alliance with a larger guild, and now we clear all the minibosses in MC without too much trouble.

Definatly look at the alliance thing, and if that doesn't stop the bleeding merge, and sooner rather then later. I almost think there is no place in WoW for 20 person guilds, only 5 person RL friends and groups of atleast 70(weather guilds or metaguilds).

[MongoJerry]

It sounds to me like what's happening is that you have a small newish server with few high level 60's, so right now the only way people on your server are going to see any of the end-game raid content is to join up in one guild. That is, the high level population on your server is only large enough to support one guild. This Dusk guild sounds like an aggressive achiever guild that got the jump on the other guilds, so they're the one getting the people who want to see that end-game content. Many people will want to join that, even if a lot of the people in it are jerks. It's not just the items, although that's an attraction in itself. It's also just the pure experience of going through it.

In order to compete with Dusk, basically, you're going to have to do what you can to keep your members and maybe find some other guilds on your server with whom you get along. It might be a good idea to directly merge with one another to create a bigger critical mass. Or, at the minimum, you should make some alliances and try to instance more together and maybe try to organize end-game raids. As the high level population on your server grows, your problems with Dusk should lessen for the reasons Bolty and oldmantis outlined. That is, there's a point where guilds get too large and people start leaving, because they don't get into the guild's Molten Core runs because there are too many people trying to get into them.

My main advice is to get bigger -- by recruiting or merging. Also, don't hold a grudge with those who left. I'd kill them with kindness. You might be able to get some of those people back, when they find out that the Dusk people's personalities aren't so great.

[NotSoDarklord]

70 is beyond the sweetspot due to the fact that most guilds want to be as strong as possible, as a result the "hardcore" guilds make due ( and actually prefer to have) with 50-60 so that loot is not spread as thin. Minor nit.. your other figures are also a bit high, but seems to be directed towards the more casual guilds attacking endgame?

[Xanthix]

I don't have any advice on how to deal with this scenario, but you can take comfort in the fact that bribing healers is bad for Dusk, and bad for those who take the bribes.

Those who jump ship will earn the ire of everyone they left, and will be known, even in their new guild, as people without great loyalty (at best) and as traitors (at worst). What Dusk gets for its money is basically a "pick-up guild," a motley crew of healers, tanks, and DPS, many of whom are there mostly out of greed. That doesn't sound like a fun or prosperous guild atmosphere to me.

[oldmandennis]

70 is beyond the sweetspot due to the fact that most guilds want to be as strong as possible, as a result the "hardcore" guilds make due ( and actually prefer to have) with 50-60 so that loot is not spread as thin.  Minor nit.. your other figures are also a bit high, but seems to be directed towards the more casual guilds attacking endgame?
[right][snapback]82632[/snapback][/right]

You are rightish... the more hardcore you are the fewer members you need to insure 40 people at your raids. But we don't know how hardcore these guys are. If they are really just grabbing any lvl 50+ priest they find, then they are not necessairly getting the hardest of the hard, and may need spares to insure the sucess of the raid. The other number are based off the 70 number.

Edit: checked out our alliances numbers on DKP site: 120 members active (probably 110 people) in the past month, we tried Oxy and granted it was a holidy weekend, we had 33 people keyed and ready to go. I think we usually have about 50 wanting to do MC. We are considering a second run, probably in the next month we will start that. So for casual guilds/alliances, my numbers might be a smidge low.

[KiloVictor]

My main question though is not "why does this happen?" but "how can I win?"
[right][snapback]82595[/snapback][/right]

I don't think you can win at this game. The only winning is not to play it.

The previous posters nailed it with the need to get your capped players on to end-game content. Alliances are a good way of doing that, merging with like-minded guilds is IMO better. And make sure somebody is asking your 40 and 50 priests daily if they need help with anything. Beyond about level 45 or 50, a lot of quests involve instances, and healers become very dependent on groups to get anything done. The people that I partied with at that stage are the people I still party with today.

You can console yourself with the fact that it won't last: this happened too on Kilrogg, a few large guilds ran out in front to run the end-game stuff, a bunch of medium-sized guilds were forced to merge, ally or disband, and a bunch of small guilds just went away.

Now, however, MC is a farming zone for the biggest guilds, the medium guilds are all running at least parts of it, and the smallish guilds have gone so far as to start organizing pickup raids or raids with allied guilds. And some of the players from the large and medium guilds are helping with those pickups, because they have all the loot they need from MC and they're frankly bored again. People are leaving the bigger guilds because they don't get into the MC runs, so they have to step down to smaller guilds where all 40 spots are not already taken.

So this too shall pass. Small consolation now, but as long as you're doing something to get your high level players into the end-game instances, you'll weather the storm.

Good luck!

Kv

[Brista]

After all that it hasn't been Dusk that imploded but us. My (former) guild master isn't really fussed about this poaching and I'm now guildless so I guess it's good luck to them after all

[Icebird]

Ah, guild drama.

Our guild started off pretty small - none of the initial members chose a priest as their main character, and for a while we relied on pick-ups, and one druid as regular healer. We've merged with another guild, and we now have 2 priests (still low) and 3 or 4 druids (plus lots of paladins). Since we found numerous times that lack of a healer was killing plans to run instances, several of us started priest alts.

While that might put me in category 2) according to Bolty, I'd also put myself in category 1). I really enjoy keep a raid alive, and I feel more critical to a groups success than when playing my main, a warlock.

At least one of our priests has got several offers to join one of the MC guilds, but he's turned them down, despite his strong interest in going there. Guild loyalty can often count for a lot.

While I enjoy playing with good groups, even bad groups can be a useful learning experience. I did Zul'Farrak last night with a warlock who was fond of Rain of Fire. I warned him not to use it too early during the Divino-Matic Rod quest, but he did.

And I pretty much let him die, which goes against most of my instincts as a healer. But I figured I would burn all of my mana trying to heal him, he would probably still die, and I would have a bunch of angry trolls after me. Tried to rez him between waves but I could never find his body and I think he released then reentered the instance. We ended up completing the quest with just 4 of us.

Chris

[Bolty]

Since we found numerous times that lack of a healer was killing plans to run instances, several of us started priest alts.  While that might put me in category 2) according to Bolty, I'd also put myself in category 1).[right][snapback]82750[/snapback][/right]

Oh, while people might start in category 2, they may find (as you did) that it can be pretty fun and turn into category 1's. Being a healer is a love/hate thing - evidenced by Shamans and Druids who refuse to heal people at all because they loathe it vs Priests that spec in Holy while leveling from 1-60. I'm glad you found what makes it fun!

At least one of our priests has got several offers to join one of the MC guilds, but he's turned them down, despite his strong interest in going there. Guild loyalty can often count for a lot.[right][snapback]82750[/snapback][/right]

A good Priest player will be tempted so often by the dark side... :)

While I enjoy playing with good groups, even bad groups can be a useful learning experience. I did Zul'Farrak last night with a warlock who was fond of Rain of Fire. I warned him not to use it too early during the Divino-Matic Rod quest, but he did.

And I pretty much let him die, which goes against most of my instincts as a healer.[right][snapback]82750[/snapback][/right]

You did the right thing. If you kept him alive, not only would you have blown your mana pool away, but when the Warlock died all that aggro would have transferred to you, and a wipe would be but seconds away. Ironically, part of being a good healer is knowing when to let someone die (as you know).

But if you're like me, you STILL feel guilty about it. You have to get over that, because people prefer having a party member die vs a wipe, and GOOD parties will recognize (as you did) that it was necessary. Sometimes it's the bad healer that shuns responsibility and tries to heal that Warlock, figuring "well, it's not my fault for the upcoming wipe" because they want to avoid taking flak for letting someone die.

-Bolty

[Mirajj]

Ironically, part of being a good healer is knowing when to let someone die (as you know).

But if you're like me, you STILL feel guilty about it.  You have to get over that, because people prefer having a party member die vs a wipe, and GOOD parties will recognize (as you did) that it was necessary. 
[right][snapback]82768[/snapback][/right]

I've been partying a lot recently with some rogues. Earlier today we did a Strat run, and one of the rogues went in for a sap. It went about as wrong as it could go, and ended up with 8 elites beating on him. The urge was to rush in, and it hurt to watch him get pounded into the ground like that. But he didn't even try to fight, just typed out "Let me die!" He did, then we rezzed him and took some revenge.

When you get in with the good groups, everyone knows when to die. ;)

[Roland]

I've been partying a lot recently with some rogues. Earlier today we did a Strat run, and one of the rogues went in for a sap. It went about as wrong as it could go, and ended up with 8 elites beating on him. The urge was to rush in, and it hurt to watch him get pounded into the ground like that. But he didn't even try to fight, just typed out "Let me die!" He did, then we rezzed him and took some revenge.

When you get in with the good groups, everyone knows when to die. ;)
[right][snapback]82769[/snapback][/right]

As a fewllow Rogue, I must say I would have done the same thing. As such, I applaud him for his self-sacrifice, and you for being smart enough (and kind enough) to follow his orders.

If I want healing THAT bad, I'll scream for it. I only beg for healing if I truly think there's a chance at us coming out on top with me staying alive, and even then only when the healer is neglecting me in favor of someone else. Usually, all I want out of a healer is a "get-out-of-jail-free card" - that is to say, when I'm nearing death and can't quite pull out of it, but still have enough juice to finish the job, I want JUST enough healing to get me through. Rarely if ever do I want to be healed to full health, and I never break a sweat until my health drops below 50%, and never even start to worry until about 30%. Once I hit that 30% and under mark, though, I'd want healing, unless I was in a situation where my death is inevitible, regardless of healing.

Long post short: I'd rather die than have healing wasted on me, but I'd rather live because of a well-timed and needed heal than be showered with "wasted" (IMHO) heals. I know my limits, and if things truly get hairy and I flat-out don't want to die, I can always "Vanish". ;)