Healing is fun, even on a smaller scale. No, I don’t mean gnomes. At least, not exclusively.
Note: This will probably be the last of my “Life As A Healer” series (until I find something new and interesting to add on the subject). Next post will be back to the same old content (ie, filler, most likely).
The last week has been a bit of change in scope. I think I spent more time healing 10-mans than I did 25-mans, and it’s a surprisingly different experience as a tank-healer while still remaining pretty much the same as a disc priest.
You see, with 25-man content being so brief at the moment the guild has formed a couple of 10-man groups* to fill in the time leftover after we’ve cleared what we have for the week. The idea is to give us practice with hard modes that we’re not just capable of doing so far, along with a bunch of Ulduar hard-modes that we’ve never gotten around to (such as Firefighter).
Anyway. In 25-man there’s more delineation in roles; the tank healer heals the tank, and the raid healer heals the raid. (Yes, I know disc priests can do both, but I’m trying to make a point, so shush.) In 10-man content there’s not enough healers around for that to be completely viable (unless the raid healers are all flavours of awesome), so it’s more a case of tank healer healing the tank and raiders X, Y and Z, while the raid healers keep on doing what they’re usually doing.
The odd thing for me is how different it feels, for all that I’m doing pretty much the same thing I was doing beforehand: throwing shields around like a crazy person (or crazy dwarf), and throwing out the occasional penance on either the tank (preferable) or low-health raid members (if the tank is topped up).
The difference is that having only 40% of the number of people to track mean it’s easier to keep track of where people are and what’s happening to them (well, apart from my occasional bouts of tunnel vision). 25-man encounters are frantic (and to be honest, pretty darn crowded with 25 people stepping on each other’s toes), but good raiders are almost interchangeable.
10-mans, on the other hand, are a lot more forgiving thanks to the reduced damage and other effects. And the smaller raid size means you tend to get to know your fellow raiders better – with 25 people, there’s often people you don’t get to know that well due to the number of people you’re raiding with (especially for someone who tends not to socialise easily, such as myself).
I think I prefer 25-man raiding, to be honest, especially for hard modes. Sadly we’re not doing them too much; a number of guildies are burnt out on Ulduar25 hardmodes, quite understandably, and we’re just not geared and capable enough for heroic ToC25. I’m probably going to be sitting out for the last two heroic ToC10 bosses, so that reduces the number of challenging encounters even further.
It’s about raidtime though, so time to go heal stuff. Possibly even my targets.
/wave
* - Contrary to popular belief, the 10-man group I’m a member of is in fact not called “Team Nutsack.”
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