Light at the End

Restokin just recently wrote a post about healing in Ulduar, citing a Blue post by that infamous Ghostcrawler talking about healing styles of two druids on two boss fights in Ulduar. It's a very nice post, with some large concerns about Regrowth and its lack of use during raiding on the PTR, and I encourage you to read it. However, it inspired me to talk about something I have a few times before, and that is healing meters, judgments and perceptions.

With WWS reports, it has become almost an obsession for some people to delve into them, see who tops the meters, who has done the most dispels, who uses what spells in what ratio during what fights and omginformationoverload. And anyone who has taken a statistics course understands that too little of this information scrutiny and making correlations can become omgmisinformationoverload.

Don't understand? Here is what I mean.

People have different ideas of what it means for a boss kill to be successful. Some think that, as long as the boss goes down, it's a successful kill. Others look at a boss that was killed with three fourths of the raid dead due to standing in crap or bad tanking or ineffective heals and not think it as a true "success." There can be boss kills where everyone lives (or the majority, anyway), yet this healer worked twice as hard with less overheal to cover for this other healer and tank x blew cooldowns because tank y's threat rotation was flawwed or DPS A skyrocketed to the top of the charts by attacking inappropriate targets or ignoring instructions that would improve their chances to survive (but would keep them from beating on a target for thirty seconds onoes). Are those successes?

I have met Druids convinced that glyphed Healing Touch was the best glyph choice for an 80 raider because they always topped the charts. I've listened to the worn-out complaints of a healer pushed to their limit because they are covering their own assignment and half the assignments of others. I've found healers thinking they are doing a bad job because they are low on the charts, yet they are covering their assignments, doing all they can and always trying to get better.

No one uses the exact same rotation, spec, or gear set. Every situation brings something different. Some places HoTs shine, other places you need the big straight heals. There is so much experimentation going on in 3.1, presenting only a few choice cases can only skew the data. Learning new boss fights while simultaneously adjusting to changes in a spell, combined with differences in healing assignment, dispel demands, mobility, skill, glyph and spec choice, plus preference, the results are going to be varied, different and can be interpreted differently, and even understood or represented in a way someone wishes them to be.

I have done my best on this blog to focus on positives, on how to adjust to changes, and how to keep playing and having fun, because in the end, there are only two choices: keep playing your Resto Druid, or stop. I wish to keep playing my Resto Druid, no matter the changes, until she ceases being fun for me. If these changes go through (and it is looking more and more like they will), what will you decide? Keep in mind, if the Resto Druid is no longer fun for you after these changes, it's completely fine. It's a game to play, a game to have fun with, and if you're not having fun, then frankly you're doing it wrong.