Where do you find "The Love"?

[Kevin]

RFD doesn't give much scope to Warlocks. On the other hand, Maraudon and BRD stand out in my mind that I felt I was working my butt off with Pavis. I think this is less a factor of playing a "support" class and more that RFD is a "perfect storm" of Warlock unkindness, especially with a somewhat overlevelled group.

I remember a BRD run where it was "The Pavis Show". Banish, seduce, runner control, DPS and more that I'm sure I missed. I know I felt like was just there to support you on it. You were running pulls because of the group we had and doing so much there and I had a blast being there with you.

For me, the game is a problem-solving exercise. This is why I tend to favor classes with lots of tricks and tactics for different situations. I also like to feel I can contribute to a group effort, and this has so far varied in inverse proportion to the number of people I'm grouped with. :) I'm much more interested in doing 5-man instance runs with oddball group compositions than repeatedly zerging instances for phat lewt.

Is this yet another reason I enjoy grouping with you so much? I get so much enjoyment from the game in this manner as well.

My experience with Hykim has been that 5-man runs as main or secondary healer are very rewarding. Raids, not so much so. Perhaps this will improve now that Bliz has included an interface that will let me heal outside the support group druids usually are placed in.

Taranna is similar. I've rarely had to the chance to "be a druid" aka secondary healer, but those times are a blast. I recall making Hykim be a bear for a BRD run with me on the 3 elemental pulls and I know you were a cat and a healer on that one too. I've gotten to do that in a instance a few times and it was great. Of course in my duo with Eth I get to do it all the time in world quests so I gladly let another druid have the chance to be more fluid when I can.

Taranna got in her first raid last night so she could get some blood. We had Aleri (priest), soulstealer (60 druid), and Taranna (58 druid) as our healers. I'm hoping that all the cross healing I did didn't bother soulstealer too much. With Treesh and I being in the same room it was so easy for us to say, I'm putting this heal on this person so we could up our efficiency and we were both quick on the heal so I think we cut soulsteal our a bit. I was using the Blizzard raid UI for it. I think it helped a lot with keeping me a happier druid/healer because of the cross group healing that could be done.

Of course I think I might have done a bit too much cross healing that lead to a few deaths of people in my group. But that was my first raid healing experience and I was a medicated so I wasn't top of my game. I do think I had more fun healing UBRS than I do as an off tank and even as a main tank. Main tanking is still the most stressful thing in the game for me right now, though being a druid and the only healer/rezzer on a five man is stressful too because if someone dies from a mistake you made you can only bring them back once every 30 minutes. But it is also hugely rewarding too. My mistakes last night didn't bother as much and were not as harsh since we had 2 non combat rezzer there. I was mad at myself if someone died, and there were deaths that were my mistakes that caused them, but I had this nice safety blanket that I usually don't have of letting them stay dead, finishing the mobs off and having them get rezzed without a 30 minute timer staring at me. That must be nice for priests. :) I didn't have to think "Oh #$%& if someone else dies this is essentially a wipe now." That was pretty new for me.

I'll register my mild disagreement on what we are calling "support" classes. In my mind, there is one goal in any encounter - putting the opposition horizontal. The tank/healer duo is a tactic that facilitates the survival of the real point of the spear, the DPS monkeys.  I'd call the tank and the healer the support team.

I agree. I've duo'd a protection spec warrior and a holy spec priest. I know how slowly we kill and I know that just the two of us are completely sunk in some situations because while we can stand around for a long time we won't be able to get rid of the mobs fast enough for our health and mana pools. The team needs that DPS more than it needs the damage sponge and healing in many cases. I've seen many early tank or healer deaths (one or the other not both) that have been DPS'd out of. I've seen many early DPS loses where you couldn't tank and heal your way out of them.

This is even more true for the loss of a tank where you still have healing and DPS. Most non boss pulls do not need a tank at all. They are helped by one but not needed. I'm some cases it doesn't take too much additional co-ordination to make it work. Maybe a lot this comes from when my hunter and pet were the tanks on Terenas in Ragefire, Wail Caverns, both Razorfens, and Scarlet Monestary all at level appropriate times and all we had a was a shaman for a healer as well. In some cases were were level appropriate and 4 manning those places like that. In one case, Wailing caverns, it was the shaman and the hunter who duo'd it at appropriate level. The tank with few exceptions is support. And you become less and less useful the more people you have around. The last two UBRS runs I've been in there were lots of aggro issues the MT (me once and Galtreth once) really couldn't control it, through no fault of their own either, both runs were pretty successful. It just shows how much less important a tank becomes. Darian, mjdoom, and myself have discussed the lack of need for warriors in many places and the high level of feeling useless you can have if you are built as a tank and you aren't in that roll. I've never had that feeling with a healer or a DPS class. I have never felt that I was pretty much useless to have along. I have as a warrior.