The Healbot

[mjdoom]

I have found that when playing with Lurkers/Basiners and there was a priest present I could relax more and just focus on the monsters. I get that tunnel effect. Nothing exists except Monster. Healer. Aggro. That's it. Keep healer alive. Keep monsters on me. TRUST. I trust the healer completely that I don't even fret when my health drops down to low levels because I -know- that there is a heal waiting etc. Go gadget-heal go!

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I kind of find this quote amusing to me. My two main characters that I play are a priest that is essentially a healbot and a warrior. The differences in my attention there are like night and day.

When I play my priest most of my concentration is on the tank's healthbar. I only pay attention to other healthbars as time allows (except in the case of AOEing mages) and hope that I rarely have to look at my own healthbar. For a majority of any fight my eyes are glued to my party display in the corner of the screen and I only scan for mobs in between heals.

As a warrior (and tank) the last thing I look at is my own health. I assume that the priest has me covered so the only health bar I ever really pay attention to is the priest's. For a majority of the fight I am scanning for mobs and using my various taunts and skills to keep those mobs' attention on me.

I think that this relationship is a key to instance running in general (and even moreso in higher level instances). The close relationship between the tank and healer is what keeps a party alive. If one or the other goes down then the other will soon follow and a wipe is on its way quite often. There has to be a level of trust between the two that the other will do their job. This allows each PC to focus solely on their particular task and increases effectiveness and efficiency.

In a simplistic view the task of all of the other classes is to learn how to use /assist and mind aggro. If they do those things they have a larger margin for error and don't have to worry much about any other party members. Sure, there can be situations where a mage or rogue might go all out to save the priest (potentially at their expense) but this is usually only the case if things have already broken down. That relationship between the tank and the healer is usually the key.

- mjdoom