Story Imbalance - Faction

Oh, goodness.

The Horde have a more impressive storyline than the Alliance in Cataclysm. The Horde have gained more territory than the Alliance in Cataclysm. The Horde have their Mary Sue leader who's been center stage for an entire expansion, and they'll be getting him back as their own again. The Horde have manlier shoulder pads. The Horde have bigger ... weapons than Alliance.

Seriously? People want equality?

Because I'm pretty sure they actually don't. I'm pretty sure they simply want to dominate for no apparent reason.

This is all purely opinion here. I'm too lazy to do any serious research. That said, the Horde got some extra mounts, the Horde got some more pets, the Horde got more territory - all of this (as far as I'm aware) is true. What that ignores is that Horde originally had fewer of each available to them for the longest time. So their newest toys supposedly bring them up to Alliance standard (well, except perhaps the mounts... Worgen vs Goblin, that was just kind of pathetic and sad, but even so, WTF should you care? Grow the hell up; people who care about mounts will be able to tell that your mount count is equivalent to XY Horde's mount count because they'll know how many are even a possibility for you already. Those who don't know shouldn't matter to you in the slightest).

But that's pretty meaningless, isn't it? That's rather shallow, and cosmetic.

What really matters is the epic story lines! Man, those Horde. Escaping their home planet. Rediscovering their home planet. Going to clean up some Alliance prince issue and having one of their own betray the entire faction. Losing their Mary Sue leader who got all of Jack done for YEARS (speaking of which - it seems that what the Horde Thrall bootlickers like best about Thrall is his display of purely positive Human traits, rather than any apparently Orcish behavior; I find that kinda funny) and instead finally gaining an active, alive, and extremely flawed leader. Some love him (huzzah, not a Mary Sue, and someone who leads FOR THE HORDE!), some hate him (I WANT MY MARY SUE BACK). Then an expansion where Mary Sue gets emo. I suppose, considering it's Thrall, he finally hit puberty. Not only that, he got his first girlfriend. Which, even for the most stable very young man, is certain to cause a bit of soul searching which includes self loathing and self righteous rage. So he's supposed to save the world, and hey, look, he does - in one of the least popular expansions of the game!

Well, I can't lay the blame solely at his feet. He was just along for the ride. When you get right down to it, his story about saving the world was limited by the fact that it had to be told during an expansion, and within the game. And the game is produced by a company with time and financial restraints. Blah. Blah. BLAH.

ANYway.

I agree with the people who are upset that so much Warcraft story is being left out of the game itself. I'm one of those players who will not purchase a Warcraft book, Warcraft comic, Warcraft manga - any Warcraft story-telling device just so I can figure out why something that makes no sense in the game is supposed to make sense.

I play Warcraft because I like the game, and I am intrigued by the story within Azeroth. If I were a Warcraft book reader, I'd just be reading the books and I wouldn't purchase the game to pretend I shared a world with the characters I'd been reading about.

I do not agree with the people who demand that the Alliance gets equal "air time." World of Warcraft is not a TV show. World of Warcraft is not a sports team. World of Warcraft is a game, based on some story telling. A good story with a strong theme does not often come from a number of sources. The fewer story tellers involved (assuming the story teller isn't crap), the more solid and cohesive a story will be.

I'd rather have a good story to observe, than a crappy, uninteresting story that lets both sides take equal turns at being extremely mediocre and equally uncool and unlame.

When the story devolves into all Horde being blood thirsty savages and all Alliance being corrupt, slave-thieving jerks, then sure, there's room for complaint. As things stand now, the world of Azeroth has a story that is progressing, and in order for one side to change, the other side needs to change as well. Just because your side doesn't seem to be taking the first step each time doesn't mean your side won't get its chance.

The Alliance is reactive. That's just what they are. They refused to band together until each race's surviving city had no choice but to seek out assistance. They refused to coexist (for a very short time) with the Horde until their entire world was other wise doomed.

The Alliance is not proactive. The Alliance hides a lot of corruption. But the Alliance is not only corruption, Alliance is not only people sitting on their rears waiting for bad things to happen. If that's what you want Alliance to be, you are free to believe it. You'll be wrong, is all. ^_~

I don't really understand why players need to treat the factions like sports teams, and keep score. I just plain don't get it. I don't think that's how a video game should be played. With that in mind, I really don't understand why observers feel such a sense of possession of sports teams in general. I understand a certain degree of sports team pride (yay! my favorite player on my favorite team did well today!) but I haven't yet managed to twist and corrupt that pleasure into a hatred of other teams, of other players.

I'm not an Orc. I'm not a Gnome. I'm not a Worgen, I'm not a Tauren. I'm a human being in a completely different world, pulling on the racial costume of my choice to romp around in Blizzard's story. I'm occasionally disappointed that certain faction leaders might as well be 2x4 planks with voice recordings, but since I've nothing to do with Azeroth politics, it actually doesn't matter to me at all. The story will be what Blizzard wants, and I'll nod and smile and then probably go raid whatever there is to raid and get gear, and not much care about Azeroth politics.

You're not playing WoW for the story line. You're just not. You might enjoy the stories, you might enjoy the lore, but that's not why you're playing. You're playing because your an MMO junkie and prefer to get your fix through WoW. When you want story, you read comic books and manga and authorized fan fiction that gets published in paperback. Don't be sad that Metzen isn't writing about your favorite characters. Just like with normal authors, purchase and support the books that are about the characters you care about, and don't purchase or support the books about the characters you don't care about.

Piers Anthony is stuck writing Xanthe books he HATES WRITING because they pay the bills, because people buy them. Blizzard will be more likely to write the books you like if those are the only ones they're making worth while profit from.

Don't be a dork.

I'm wrong a lot here. That's okay. You're wrong a lot too. But this is my corner of wrong, and I'm not going to trek over to your corner to pinch you about it. You'll need to come here for my pinches. Sucker.

All I Wanted was a Beta Invite

Clearly, the MOP beta is here. I've been crawling over MMO-C's front page for the last few days (skipping that which did not interest me, naturally) and skimming the forums of both the official WoW site as well as MMO-C.

Eventually, the whining about Annual Pass subscribers not all getting into wave 1 beta invites got to me, and reminded me of a certain song... So I've taken the liberty to edit some of the lyrics to fit the situation. (which I'll take down if asked but... really, how many people are even going to find this? it's not even going to be good!)

Anyway. Here's what goes through my mind now each time I read a post by an AP subscriber who's very vocally unhappy they didn't get into wave 1:

I was on my computer and I was just like staring at the forum thinking about everything, but then again I was thinking about nothing. And then my GM logged into vent, and I didn't even know he was there. He called my name and I didn't hear him and then he started screaming “Chewie, Chewie!” And I go “What? What's the matter?” He goes “What's the matter with you?” I go “there's nothing wrong, man.” He's all “Don't tell me that! You're in SWTOR!” I go “No man, I'm not in SWTOR. I'm ok, I'm just thinking, you know? Why don't you get me a Beta invite?” He goes “No! You're in SWTOR!” I go “Dude, I'm ok. I'm just thinking.” He goes “No! You're not thinking, you're in SWTOR! Normal people don't be acting that way!” I go “Dude, just get me a Beta invite! Please, all I want is a Beta invite!” And he wouldn't give it to me! All I wanted was a Beta invite, just one Beta invite, and he wouldn't give it to me! Just a Beta invite!

They give you a white shirt with long sleeves!
Tied around your back, you're treated like thieves!
Drug you up because they're lazy!
It's too much work to help a crazy!

I'm not crazy - IN NO BETA CLUB!!!
You're the one who's crazy - IN NO BETA CLUB!!!
You're driving me crazy - IN NO BETA CLUB!!!

They stuck me in the no Beta club,
Said it wouldn't be too bad a rub,
To give me the needed professional help, to protect me from the enemy, myself.

And now I want a Pepsi. *sighs*

For those curious, I've  butchered Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies.

Ahune's Still No Cake Walk

I'm still working on gathering the pet from the Ahune encounter, and on nights when I've yet to try for the satchel it might come in I wind up needing to PUG for it. So I use the Dungeon Finder tool and wait for my turn in line.

Over all, my experience with the Ahune PUGs has been pretty positive. No one's been a raging ass.

Tonight, however, I was flabbergasted. I thought I'd share with you.

Click the post title to read more :)

Blizzard's "Real Names" Fiasco

 .

So... the storm has come and gone, and the most vocal set was apparently those opposed to the change. I'm honestly not sure whether it was the number of unique accounts who posted, or a silent exodus of people who simply canceled their accounts without posting anything on the forums.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was appalled at the idea. I'm also not ashamed to admit that I posted such on the forums - one in the official thread, and one in a related thread. I am also not under the delusion that my posts made much of a difference. My posts were generally directed in Blizzard's direction, but they were also directed at other players who couldn't understand my concerns with the whole idea.

There seem to have been some people who had no freaking idea what the actual issue at hand was; I've read that some people apparently thought that you would be posting under your real name, and when you did so all of your characters would be made visible to anyone who looked. I read that people were confusing the in game version of RealID and the forum version. I have no idea how anyone who was able to pass reading comprehension tests (say, middle school level) could have confused the issue, but I suppose we all forget certain skills the moment we graduate from one school year to the next (and then into the adult world).

The people who didn't understand what was actually going on shouldn't detract from the thousands who thoroughly understood the situation and remained unhappy.

Theories on why Blizzard changed their minds vary. Player response is one possibility, another offered was due to legal concerns. Money is the most accepted reason being tossed around, as far as I know. But it causes me to wonder what monetary benefit they expected to gain from the change. Perhaps less of a server load due to the possibility of fewer trolls? Fewer forum mods to have to employ to keep said trolls and their threads neatly organized? Was someone going to give them a fat wad of cash if they went for this wild idea, just to see if the fan base would let the company get away with it? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I don't think the forums are causing Blizzard to hemorrhage money due to trolls and Community Managers, however, and I think the purchase rate for StarCraft II should more than make up for both development costs as well as forum support for several years to come, since they'll be releasing the game in three parts (which sound more like expansions, since you'll need to purchase them all at full price, separately and over time). I don't think SC2 will have a subscription model to continue with income, but because it's not an ever changing environment like WoW (it's not an MMORPG), it also won't need the constant staff to monitor and fix nearly as massive a world. It'll be a smaller universe needing less upkeep (I think... I could be wrong, and that's fine too).

Why they didn't propose going with the normal version of forums (where you have a nickname associated with your account, and whenever you post, it's under that nickname) to replace their current version (where you can post under the utterly anonymous, easily deletable "name" of any character you've created) baffles me. It would have caused significantly less uproar while accomplishing much the same thing, without causing thousands (though I wouldn't be surprised if it were a million or two) of fans to lose faith in their company.

That's what it came down to for me, and I was surprised both at my reaction, and at my own surprise. I've been down the path of losing faith in a gaming company (Sony, I'm looking at you) and eventually simply having no faith left in me for them. I was taking a look at the entertainment I've been getting out of WoW recently and realizing that, should they have stuck to their plan, I would probably have canceled my account because I would no longer be comfortable with the path that Blizzard appeared to be starting down.

Buying vanity pets and mounts was a small concern for me. It was a clearly defined, anonymous sort of addition to the game, and I find them entertaining and fun. They're cheaper than a date, each. I'm a collector. Had they shifted the options toward items that provided actual benefits within the game besides my personal warm fuzzy glow, I would have canceled my account, because I don't want to support a company where money will give anyone an advantage over others within their game.

Likewise, I don't want to play a game where the company starts spouting out personal information to people I haven't personally chosen to share it with.

I enjoy World of Warcraft. It's given me a number of fond memories. They've never, ever matched up to the awe and wonder of EverQuest, but they're also a lot less bittersweet. Where EverQuest was a rollercoaster of wonder and despair, World of Warcraft has been a pleasant, comfortable stroll through a beautiful park. WoW has been the stable, long term relationship, while EverQuest was the first relationship that taught me the greatness MMOs could provide, while also showing me the more painful dangers and disappointments to be wary of.

Part of why I play WoW is because I have nothing else that grabs my attention in quite the same way. Which isn't to say that I NEED to be playing an MMO at all times. I don't enjoy doing things alone. I enjoy doing things with at least one partner. Cooking, cleaning, working out, exploring, learning, playing card or board games, playing computer games - I want to do them with someone else. Currently, WoW is what I'm doing with someone else - several someone else's. If two specific people were not playing WoW, then I would no longer be playing WoW either. If either of those two people start doing something else that I enjoy more than WoW, I will drop WoW like a hot potato.

So that whole schpiel there is to explain why I frankly wouldn't have a big problem with just not playing WoW anymore, should they have stuck to their original plan. The game is not quite that riveting for me at this point in my life.

I'm glad they've changed their minds. And I'll view this change in plans with significant skepticism, because I still cannot fathom WHY they thought this change might be a good idea, and I will always wonder about the primary cause behind the reversal of the plan.

I'm also interested in what lessons the rest of the industry took from the whole event. Blizzard's a pretty damn big name, I think. Obviously within the MMO clique, but also within the isometric strategy and adventure game publishers. While not part of the console gangsta clique, I think they're pretty aware of Blizzard's potential.

Activision Blizzard looks slightly foolish (from my perspective) if they were serious with their original plans. It feels more like an Activision idea than a Blizzard idea. I appreciate that Blizzard gave us a heads up so far in advance of implementation (though for StarCraft II it's really only a few weeks prior to having gone live, and I feel for the people who are having to change whatever code was involved in this system). I also appreciate that they were willing to change the plan for the time being.

That they took a step back and changed their minds makes it look like a vocal minority "won." It makes it look like the idea was not only an idea that their players didn't like, it also seems like Blizzard realized it was a bad idea. Which seems like it would make similar plans from other companies harder to gain player approval for.

Finally, some people are celebrating as though the change is a
victory of some sort. I don't feel it was a war or a fight, it was too quickly begun, and too quickly ended to merit that sort of term. Perhaps it was more like a PR skirmish. It was odd, awkward, and an unexpected surprise.

I wonder in an offhand sort of way whether the people who insisted that using real names on the forums would count as "Blizzard Fanboys." Some of the people are so vocally ambivalent about the whole thing that the way they make a point to post how much they really don't care just smacks of hypocrisy to me. Probably because they all involve some sentence or paragraph aimed at the people who disliked the change and basically insulted them as paranoid or stupid ninnies, rather than simply sticking to saying, "I'd be alright with this, and this is why." Adding, "And you're stupid for these reasons," makes a neutral sort of opinion post a distinctly biased flavor. (This here is my bit, at the end of a clearly biased post, about the people biased against me - I don't feel hypocritical at all about it because I was honest about my bias from the beginning - so there).

Thankless

Healing's tough. It's not entirely pointless because there is some fun to be had, but from the perspective of a healer, I find there are limits to just how much healing I need to do while still keeping the "fun" factor intact. About 75% of the time, my entertainment depends heavily on DPS (or even my fellow healers) not being stupid heads. And about 50% of the time, these people fail me.

Healers and Tanks have a symbiotic relationship. We each understand that our roles are necessary roles within the whole raid structure - if there aren't enough of either type, well, none of us get to do ANYthing. Some of us enjoy our roles as non-DPS more than we'd enjoy DPSing at all. We're also used to being taken slightly for granted.

DPS thinks:
- The tank's job is to generate threat, so I don't have to pay attention to mine.
- The healer's job is to keep our health up, so I don't have to pay attention to mine.

Good players don't yoink threat regularly. Good players don't stand in the fire. Good players do great DPS without making anyone else's job harder. And good players don't make other people miserable with other various misbehavior (whining for loot, bragging, insulting people, ignoring raid commands, etc). Sometimes a good player will have a bad night, and really, that's alright. But the bad players, for whom every night is a bad night?

Go away.

I love tanks. But I think my standards for who can be called a tank, and who can't, are slightly strict. If they fail to keep more than 1 creature on them consistently, I don't consider them to be real tanks. If a monster is nearly always shuffling it's way past the tank and melee into the casters, and tank does nothing about it (especially if it's on a healer, because healers generate verrry little threat now and I guarantee with a poor tank we're not DPSing to get some threat), that player isn't a tank.

I don't actually have a tank chara--- no, that's not true. I have a couple of characters who can be tanks, and one of them I'm actually hoping to learn tanking on in the somewhat nearish future. I'm honestly a bit afraid to give it a shot with strangers, but there's not a lot of choice. Still. I'm gonna be a snob tank, or I'm not going to tank at all. Tanking is probably the single most important role in the game, because if there isn't a tank, there's no point to having a healer.

Over the years, tanking has been one of the more stressful roles within various games, and it's also been a rather thankless task. People whine and bitch about bad tanks, but you don't often hear, "You did a great job tanking tonight. Thank you for keeping all the monsters off of my face as well as you did, and for stopping those DPSers from getting us all killed."

It's sort of similar to the healing, except that it's more visible when healers pick it up and save the day (because that's what the encounter's about - all of a sudden we KNOW we're taking a lot more damage and our healing stable is being pushed to its limits).

So tanks - I love you. I really do. You have a much better understanding of my pain, and you're performing your role such that you make my own easier. I don't always pay attention to which bosses do a frontal thingie I need to stay out of so I know I give you a heart attack once every several months by not being in the right place, but I do notice and then I avoid that area like the plague, ever-after. Thank you for asking me, kindly, to shift out of the danger zone. Thank you for staring at boss groin or ass all the time. Thank you for doing such a bang up job of keeping meanie monsters off of our 16 or 17 stupid DPS. Thank you for coming to our raids and making them possible. Thank you for not being bitter over the times when I fail you and you hit the floor during encounters. Thank you for eating those big repair bills.

Thanks, tanks.

Healing in a Raid Environment - Don't Suck

Wow. It's been a while.

*waves frantically at the air as a plume of dust and debris explodes into the air after seating herself*

Well then.

I'm gonna whine. Feel free to move on :)

My guild's current healer roster includes 3 Holy Priests (one is a recent returnee who we haven't seen since BC), two Resto Druids, one Disc Priest (c'est moi!), and one Resto Shaman.

The Shaman and Disc Priest are extremely reliable attendees. The two Druids are relatively reliable - we usually have both of them, it's interesting when we've only got one, and it's a little scary when neither (rarely) are able to attend. Of the 2 Holy Priests we've had for more than a couple of months, one attends very occasionally while the other attends relatively often. I cannot speak for the returnee.

This is about one of our Holy Priests. I feel the need to whine about this, I apologize. I speak from the perspective of a fellow Priest, so at the very least I'm pretty familiar with cast times and spell abilities. I understand what our mobility is like, generally speaking, though I'm not sure what her Haste looks like.

That said: this Priest is incapable of being mobile during fights. Which means that this Priest has issues getting out of the fire, or the slime, or the void, or whatever the bad stuff is. I find myself out-healing/bubbling this Holy Priest when she doesn't die. This Priest is also incapable of reading healing assignments (particularly when asked to DPS for a single encounter), and listening to fight explanations (as evidenced by, when asked for questions regarding the just finished explanation, a question that basically boils down to : Could you repeat everything you just said?).

It drives me nuts. I think to myself, "Were you watching TV while they were explaining the fight?" or "The healing assignments are still on your screen, and your name is listed."

Now I'll admit that occasionally, when I had a Holy offspec, I'd check with the heal lead about which spec I was healing in. In the end, I realized that my assignment was based on the knowledge that I was in Disc spec, and I was basically allowed to use my Holy offspec on fights that *I* deemed appropriate for said Holy spec, but other wise it was expected that I was in Disc and my healing would be determined thusly. So I understand how switching between specs can be a bit questionable PRIOR to heal assignments being posted. But immediately after heal assignments are posted, 75% of the time during runs where you've been asked to DPS for one fight (and one fight only, consistently), gets old. It gets really old.

We're a relatively forgiving guild. So long as you're not dragging us down, we'll let you come along and carry you through some nice gear. We won't think you're super cute when you giggle and use the "I'm a girl!" card in vent as an excuse for not performing well - at least, those of the guys who don't think they have a chance to get into your pants won't. At least one of your fellow female healers will feel alienated.

Our other veteran Holy Priest is decent. She dies a good bit (not an outrageous number, but you know when she does because, well, you have the blue angel of "Aw, crap..." hovering about), but then again, when she's "ON," she's really quite an integral part of the healer system. She doesn't flirt around, she doesn't talk on Vent much at all, she doesn't attempt to buddy up with anyone besides the people she already knows IRL - but best of all, she doesn't make excuses. She listens to explanations, notices her assignments, and does her thing. I *like* her. And not even in a patronizing, "I'm better than you, but you meet my basic standards," sort of way. Maybe it's because she's not trying to create a personality online. Maybe it's just because she's so low profile and manages to not do anything that pushes my buttons - I like unobtrusive competence.

Perhaps part of my bias goes back to the early days when this bumbling, not so great Holy Priest had recently joined the guild and, in tells after an explanation, complained about the length of time taken, and called all of the preparation "retarded." Having buffs, knowing what to look out for during the fight, and being ready to do your job to the best of your ability seemed not to be something she was interested in. And that just lit my fuse.

Why would you join a progression minded guild if you're not interested in putting forth the effort to assist and participate in that progression? Progression isn't about gear. It's about challenging yourself and overcoming new obstacles. If you want the satisfaction of steamrolling Ulduar, ToC, or even ICC 10 (or just the first 4 or 7 bosses in ICC 25) and getting every conceivable piece of gear from them before moving on to the harder stuff, this is not the guild for you. If you just want gear but don't want to expend the effort, time, and emotional turmoil involved in progression raiding, this is not the guild for you. If this is not the way that you enjoy playing the raiding game... this is not the guild for you.

It's alright if this is not the guild for you. We won't take offense that you don't enjoy this sort of thing. Will you take offense when you realize that we've noticed how you don't quite fit in?

You May Not Initiate a Vote to Kick Yet

I behaved poorly recently. I behaved like a child, and I enjoyed it. I was immature, mean spirited, and vindictive. I'm not proud of myself.

But it felt so good. (NOTE: Feel free to skip to the end, since most of this is the tale of what occurred - if you're not into people behaving badly, go ahead and scroll down)

I do my daily random on a somewhat random basis. Usually, I try to group with one or two people I know - a mage friend, and my honey bun tank. That day, the three of us were all available at the same time, so we put in for our random Heroic and poof! We were in!


The PUGs were a Warrior and a Hunter. All five of us were ridiculously geared. The PUG Randomizer had placed us in --- Nexus. Woo! Easy run! So we run up and take down the first monster, and then my tank boy needs to fiddle with something. The Warrior and Hunter race ahead. The Warrior pulls. My response, as the healer, is to save this Warrior from itself. *runs up, heals Warrior, and the Hunter pet as well*


"Dude hurry up" says the Warrior.


Pally Tank is not amused. Warrior proceeds to pull the rest of the ice room ahead of the Tank who's now a bit irritated that the DPS Warrior can't take a deep breath before trying to whack body parts off of enemies. So the Pally Tank has ceased to pull.


This continues until we reach the first "real" boss, where we obliterate the Blood Elf wench with some speed, and then ...


Well where did the Warrior go? Where's the Hunter? Because they're not in range of their healer (me), and their healths are getting dangerously low. Ohp - the Warrior's up there. And dead. And here comes the Hunter running for the tank with a mob. And the Tank looks at me across our desks and says, "Let him die."


I feel rather bad, but at the same time - the Tank is the Tank, and the Tank gets to pull unless the Hunter is Misdirecting to the Tank. The Warrior's being a jerk, and the Hunter is, for some unknown reason, following along like a lost puppy rather than being useful.


Well, the Hunter dies. And then Tank, Mage and Priest take care of the add. Warrior and Hunter just lay there. They spout some obscenities and make demands but I'm not interested in rezzing people who aren't team players, can't type in complete words OR sentences, and are making a point of speaking and behaving rudely.


Someone initiates a Vote to Kick, and the Warrior gets booted (well, he was the one running ahead and pulling), but now we're stuck with the Hunter. Who,  by the way, is now the Party Leader. Who, also by the way, refuses the option to look for a 5th party member. And who, as well, is repeatedly calling us all Scrubs (but mostly the tank) for going soooo slowly, nevermind that he just plain stopped bothering so long as people were running ahead.



So we've got Tank, Mage and Priest in the group, and now that no one's pulling ahead of everyone else, we're moving forward and killing stuff. It's a little slow, but we're okay with it because, well, it's progressing the way groups normally progress - Tank pisses things off and holds their attention while DPS whittles them down and Healing makes magical golden sparkles that make Tank and DPS feel so fabulous that they absolutely must continue to perform.


The Hunter remains dead. I've put him on ignore at this point, as has the Mage. The Tank responds to the Hunter on occasion, so anything I hear is second hand, but every so often the guy apparently comes back to make jabs at us.


We continue clearing to the next boss, and at the big elemental white freaky guy we pause. Well. Three raid geared people (the RPG trinity, at least) against a Heroic Boss. Very doable, though possibly taking significant time. However, this is Nexus, there are no enrage timers, and Tank and Priest have duo'd Skadi from about, or more than, half health down to death before, so it's not like this is anywhere near impossible. Just slightly irritating and requiring patience.


I'm a silly head so I start DPSing, and getting slightly distracted - long story short there is, we wipe. I assume the Hunter heckles us. We get back in there - I'm feeling very guilty, because really, I'm a healer so that's what I should be doing but those Rifts were eating us alive so I felt like I ought to be doing SOMEthing to help. Mage comments - and I get the impression that we were both being dorks, so it really wasn't as much my fault as it could have been.


We take down Anomalous (?) and move on. The Hunter ghosts, runs back in, and just sort of hangs out at the zone line while we continue to clear trash and kill the rock boss - woo! No distractions that time, no problems, though it does take a while what with a Mage DPS and the darn guy's spell reflect stuff. At least the flowers that pop up give her something to do while she waits for it to wear off, though. We finish and run up to the tunnel that drops down near Keri and pause - I need to AFK, Mage needs to AFK, Tank... well, he'll be around. So we do our thing.


Then we all get back and we have to ponder: The Hunter, who's been a flat out jerk almost the entire time, is still in the group, and we have no way of getting rid of him. "You may not initiate a vote to kick yet," it keeps saying. Nevermind that I've yet to initiate one today. We've cleared the rest of the instance of bosses, and we DO want our Frost emblems. But the Hunter is alive and inside the instance, and we don't like him. We don't like him at all. He's been insulting from the beginning, unhelpful for the main portion of the run, and now he's just expecting to sit back, do nothing, and either get some laughs or get some free Emblems out of the whole thing.


I don't want this. It just seems completely contrary to what grouping should be about.


I ask the rest of my group how they feel, and they both seem to agree. I'm being a bitch and I'm aware of it - we've cleared the instance for this Hunter, but I'm not willing to just leave the group and hand it over to him to finish with a fresh group of strangers. Kill 1 boss and voila, Frost emblems. No fuss, no muss, and NOT TODAY, buster.


So we occupy ourselves and just... wait. It turns into a waiting game. The Tank heads back to the zone entrance - aggroing a number of trash mobs we didn't touch on his way, and drags them to the Hunter. The Hunter freaks out and zones out. I'm not actually certain why, or whether the trash would even aggro on the Hunter to begin with.. but he zones out, and then back in after a minute. The Hunter and the Tank play chicken with one another, aggroing mobs on one another. The Hunter MDs to the Tank who tanks for a bit before zoning out, and the Tank brings a cleaving mob to smack the Hunter. It goes back and forth for a while. Eventually the Hunter gets "smart" and actually tells the Tank that he'll send trash at the ladies (Mage and myself) and proceeds to run through the instance toward us gathering trash. Tank says we can take care of ourselves.



The Mage and I are basically fully present - and decide this would be a fine time to sell, repair, stock up on reagents in town. So we port out and do as we said, do a bit of AH browsing and the like, and eventually, eventually, we port back into the instance. The Hunter's ported out as well so it's just the three of us for a minute but the Hunter eventually notices and joins us. And then runs out, looks for a mob, and Misdirects to to me, the Priest. Grid tells me I've got aggro on something, so while rude, it doesn't come as a surprise when something appears from around a corner and lifts it's arms to decapitate me.


However, I'm right at the zone line. So escape isn't a problem. 


We wind up clearing more trash because I'm just not interested in being MD'd to again and it gives us something to do.


In the end, the Hunter had nothing to MD to any of us, and got impatient. So he ran into Keri's room, activated the spheres and started Keri up. He MD'd to the Tank, who simply zoned out and then right back in.


Something I learned: Keri sees right through your piddly Feign Death (that, or her aura ticks it into uselessness, I'm not sure which). The Hunter died.


And promptly disbanded.


We got a friend on their alt (another Hunter, but not one that spouts obscenities) and took Keri out, and got our emblems. Then we ran another, so the Hunter Alt could get random Frost emblems as well.

Not my proudest moment in WoW History. I could have been a grown up and just finished it off, ignoring the Hunter. I'll admit that I was also leery that the Hunter might do something to sabotage us during the Keri encounter even if we'd just left them alone. It feels very odd that this entire event occurred. Clearly, a group may need to lose some jerk in their group, but as of this event in my experience, there's nothing a group can do once there happens to be more than 1 jerk present (or, as in this case, what if we're ALL jerks?!). We were helpless to simply clear the atmosphere other than ditching and re-grouping - which, yes, I acknowledge as probably being the most effective use of our time.

But it strikes me as utterly bizarre that we would HAVE to do so, after all the effort put into creating the rules of the new LFG tool. I mean, it wasn't like we were going out of our way to sabotage the group we'd been given - we simply found ourselves in a weird situation wherein we had two extraordinarily impatient DPSers who managed to scrape our Tank the wrong way, and things got abruptly out of hand. They remained that way due to personal choice, on the parts of everyone involved. I think the Warrior actually got the best out of the whole deal, and likely wasted significantly less time than any of the rest of us. At the same time, I need to figure out just how the Vote to Kick function really works, because while I don't use it often (and certainly don't plan to), it would be awfully nice to understand what limitations it comes with.

HeHoR, I Don't Like You

Halls of Reflection is a cool instance. I like it on Normal mode. It's interesting, to me, the small gauntlet at the beginning. Fighting ourselves in the second room. The sensation that, while Arthas is stalking us down and Jaina's melting walls while we fight off packs of Scourge, I'm actually not playing an MMO but rather experiencing a scenario within a third person Warcraft strategy game in isometric view. That just strikes me as downright cool. I've never experienced that in a game, ever (well, clearly I refer to those games which are not iso view strat games).

Halls of Reflection on Heroic I dislike intensely. This is entirely due to the PUGs I've run it with - and I know it's due entirely to these strangers because changing just 1 stranger within that group can make the instance a challenge rather than a painful exercise in futility. Often it's a matter of the Tank quite simply failing to be able to aggro and control multiple mobs despite the DPS focusing fire on the same target - this I consider to be the tank's fault. Often again it's a matter of the DPS splitting damage and trying oh-so-hard to tank different mobs themselves -- hey, here's a thought, you're not a Tank so don't do it. Your healer is cooling on the ice cold stone-and-saronite floor now, thank you for assisting Arthas, there. Most of the time I just let them keel over because, well, I have to choose who lives and dies and my first choice is, "Not the tank." After which would be myself, after which would be the properly behaving DPS, followed by the DPS that I'm really hoping will die so they're not eating my cooldowns (since mana's less of an issue, it's the cooldowns that kill my groups in HHoR).

Tanks:

• Do not tank in the center of the room. Go ahead and run out to get some initial aggro but COME BACK to our safe little cubby hole! I don't care if it's the hall you first enter the room from, or behind one of the two bosses in that room, just slink back in there after you've made yourself known to them! Please use your ranged abilities to piss off even the ranged adds. You'll get your heals faster if you do.

DPS:

• You are not the Tank. Your pet is not the Tank. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONTROL ADDS THROUGH TANKING MEANS. Your pet will die, you will die, then I will die and the real Tank will die. If adds are eating the face of someone who's not the tank and you're not splitting focus, it's probably the tank's fault. I know it might be tempting to try to save the day, but this is significantly less helpful than you seem to think it is.
  
• Don't split your damage - focus on a single target. Go ahead and let the group know what order you plan to kill things in. I've heard Priest -> Mage -> everything else, and I've heard Priest -> Mage -> Hunter -> everything else. I'm partial to taking out the hunters specifically because they just looove to ice block me (I would assume other healers as well) and my Every Man for Himself has a cooldown that the Hunters don't care about. Splitting damage means two things: You're basically going to tank something you shouldn't be tanking (see above), and everything will go down much, much slower. Except us. We'll all die much more quickly.

I haven't had any issues in the second room, so moving on...

The "Arthas is a creepy stalker-ex" part hasn't posed much of a problem for my groups, assuming we made it past the first room. I've heard horror stories, but really, my groups have been pretty good at this step.

That said, I've witnessed one hiccup, that being: Tanking the Scourge too far from Jaina. Which is another way of saying Tanking the Scourge too close to Arthas. Arthas walks at a steady single pace, and our job is to take out the Scourge. When we've taken out the Scourge, Jaina takes that as her cue to pull down an ice wall. Each wave of Scourge is successively harder - more mobs, more hard mobs by the very end.

There's no reason I'm aware of to keep the Scourge away from Jaina. The fact that the tank should have a sharp implement swinging within millimeters of their eye is one way to make sure they're on players, but the DPS is probably going to be hitting them with some stray AE damage, and let's not forget that they really dislike noticing that there's someone hiding at the back that's healing people. I've never actually seen them hit Jaina, though they've certainly had some interest in nomming on my face.

There IS reason to keep the Scourge away from Athas - that being, if the Scourge is near Arthas, then the Tank is near Arthas, and Arthas has a delightful little ambiance about him. One that slows your movement speed, and does (I've heard) 8k damage per tick. Sure, the Tank can probably eat a bit of that damage. Your DPS melee can't, however. And eat it they will, because your healer will be shrieking epithets at the back of your head which, due to Arthas scintillating conversation, you likely won't be able to make out over the sounds of your limbs slowly shattering in the cold.

So, sure, fight the Scourge where you will ... until Arthas gets close. Then pull back. You've probably got the Scourge under control at that point, and if you don't, then your DPS is probably slow enough for no apparent reason that you're all doomed anyway. At least if you die near Jaina you can look at her hot new bedroom eyes before you get thrown off the ledge.

I don't like Heroic Halls of Reflection. It requires a certain level of player experience. I don't refer simply to "experience within Halls of Reflection," but also experience in making use of Line of Sight for pulling, experience in focusing fire, experience in tanking multiple mobs (yes, even ranged mobs - tanks have SOME sort of taunt abilities with some sort of range beyond actual melee). I'm not saying that I think everyone sucks - they clearly don't. Most players excel, whether through skill or just plain old experience. But PUGs are random enough that HHoR is my nightmare, now. That tank with ICC tanking gear? Yeah, he won the rolls, but having 100k hp and avoidance like nobody's business isn't actually keeping the mobs off the rest of the group. That 10k DPS guy? Fabulous DPS - cept when he's eating concrete because he got aggro and held it close to his heart like a miser with gold.

So yeah. HeHoR - I don't like you.

I could stop pugging it, and then I could just snark at those people it's safe to snark at, but the people I know conspire against such possibilities. Darn all of them! The Tank who'll only stay logged on for Raids, the DPS/Healer who's addicted to outlevelling her husband's alt, and the DPS who refuses to log in during normal hours, but will log in right about when normal people are going to bed! You know who you are!

Cranky

I'm a cranky healer. This is something I'm still coming to terms with about myself, I ought to add. I'm a bit of an elitist about certain things, while at the same time very forgiving about those things which do not push my buttons.

Undergeared characters - they can be fun to try and keep up. Or they can be utterly infuriating as they do ridiculously stupid things, repeatedly, requiring my attention to save them from themselves at the cost of someone else (which I try very hard to avoid, but sometimes I just ... click the wrong bar). I don't like calling people or behavior "stupid," or any other derogatory term if I can help it, but apparently my elitism has forced me to start using such phrases.

The difference between the undergeared characters who aren't hurting the group and those who are hurting the group is what I go ahead and assume what separates a good player from a bad player. Team players vs self indulgent pricks?

Tonight I was shuffling through dungeons using the PuG tool (that's what I call it, regardless of whether it's a Dungeon Finder or LFG tool, I call it the PuG tool because it's going to get me a Perky Pug once I've saved 100 totally random people from themselves while using it). I got into a HToC group. Two of the people in this PuG were from my own server - I check, to find out whether I'll be embarrassing myself in front of people I might actually see again one day while sauntering through Dalaran. People from my own server make me feel ridiculously self-conscious.

Anyway, it seemed a pretty typical sort of run. Except at one point one of our group members (during the mounted phase of the first encounter) was just... sitting there. They weren't sitting on the knocked down body of the enemy, they weren't hurling javelins, they weren't working up the minimum distance to get a Charge in on a target. They just sat there, not doing much. Watching the show, I suppose. I didn't make note of who it was, but that I saw it happening at all sort of tripped a silent alarm in my head as a I charged in to skewer the enemy once my shields were maxed (they didn't need shielding either, they were at a full 3 green).

During the dismounted phase, I homed in on it a bit more. One of the enemy was a rogue. The rogue which spits poison puddles under people for giggles.

Well, someone just stood in their puddle. I was beside them and watched, and considered bubbling them or tossing on a Renew, but elected not to. Perhaps they were AFK without warning. Perhaps they hadn't noticed the puddle. Perhaps they were working up a really elaborate spell rotation. Except without the casting. Since I hate punishing my whole group for the mess ups of the few, I came to the decision that I would bubble and Renew them once they got lower on health. In the end, they got to about 30% before turning slightly where they stood and then moving their tuckus out of the puddle. And then they took another 5 seconds to find a target and start casting something - ANYthing.

Now 5 seconds, as I type this, sounds like a trifling thing. It's nothing. It's... it's... well it's not the snap of a finger, no, but one can easily hold their breath for 5 seconds without any problems unless, perhaps, someone's punching them in the gut, or they've just run for their lives and are holding their breath the better to hear the enemy approaching over the sound of their own pounding hearts. But in WoW, in Heroic instances, 5 seconds is long enough to kill some trash mobs. Which, granted, is not all that important, except that during actual boss encounters those 5 seconds of casting some pain causing spell could save another party member. Say, an under-geared but trying-very-hard tank. So what I've got is some guy not doing a whole lot for more like 10-15 seconds (because, well, he stood in the poison for a bit before doing anything, and prior to that likely wasn't doing much else).

A bubble and a Renew would take me 2 seconds. You could even call it 1 second to do both (cast one, global cooldown, cast second and ignore the next global cooldown, but I count the second cooldown because a) I am cranky and b) that's how many seconds I wasn't healing someone else in the group who was actually participating).

But I AM cranky. I was in a mood, clearly. I didn't have the patience for people not paying attention and distracting me from what I felt I should be focusing on.

So that little event stood out in my mind and made me a bit twitchy, but the guy seemed to be a bit more interested in casting spells after that. Maybe he'd finished getting his drink and was back at his keyboard and mouse - I don't know. But generally speaking, I want my group present and focused when I'm healing them, because that's what I'm giving them. If my group cannot do that, it's actually alright - as long as they actually tell the group that they're going AFK for a minute or 5. Those 10 seconds it might take to type the info out makes all the difference to me. I'll protect you from stray damage if I understand you're AFK and were kind enough to let me know ahead of time. When you don't do that, I feel slighted and will damn well let you stand in the poison and die.

The next encounter was Eadric the Pure. He's a fun encounter, I actually like him quite a bit, and the only reason I ever really groaned when he showed up to the party was because I still needed the Achievement that required me to help save my group from 5 different Nightmares brought out by sexy-breathy-voiced Argent Confessor Paletress. At this point I do my usual - run to stand between the melee and the ranged, facing the ranged so I don't have to keep spinning each time he casts Radiance.

As he casts Radiance, I finally realize something.

Neither of the two players from my own server has ever done this instance before. Neither of them seems to understand much about these encounters, and they're both bumbling their way through the place. Both of them get hit by Radiance - three times in a row. The "I didn't stand in the poison" one figures it out, and turns away during the second to last Radiance, and I presume he shares it with his companion as the "I like to stand in poison, fires and void zones" one manages to avoid the very last Radiance stun.

I'm a Priest. I can dispel magical effects. The stun from Radiance is a magical effect. But I'm just so flabbergasted at this point, and so irritated, that I make a point of not dispelling it from them.

I should clarify that I'm not making this choice because they've never done the instance before. We're all new at one point, we all have to do something for the first time eventually, there's really no shame or blame in this case. What really, really bothered me about the whole thing was that they'd never done the instance before, and they didn't even think to mention it to the rest of us. They didn't want any help figuring the instance out, they didn't want anyone to be aware that they weren't entirely up to speed on the instance, in fact they didn't seem to want to have anything to do with anyone in the group at all. (Which is another thing I dislike about PuGs - the number of people who use them as a stepping stone toward other things, rather than interacting with their fellow players, even just saying, "Hi," at the beginning of the instance)

I'm a fan for going into stuff "blind." New raid encounters I like to go into blind at least the very first time (reading strats ahead of time just overwhelms me, anyway, so it's also the only way I can learn as it is). But I'm not interested in doing it on a complete stranger's dime, and would appreciate it if others would extend the same courtesy to me.

You don't have to go into an instance for the first time and say, "Hey guys, I've never been here. I'm going to suck. I'm going to do a poor job. I'm going to make this run miserable for all of us." Because, you know, it's not actually true.

But don't be ashamed to admit that you're a newbie to something.

Be ashamed of your shame, instead. Be ashamed that your pride was so very delicate that you couldn't conceive of admitting to your lack of experience. Being a newbie won't turn your epeen into an innie. It won't make most of us think less of you.

The only other possibility I can think of in this situation is that both of them had run through the instance before quite a few times, were entirely aware of how the encounters went, and were simply AFK for most of the fights save their hands on their action bar keybinds. You know - watching TV while ignoring the screen and just tapping their fingers in a random or pre-determined order. Like botting, except with a warm body within 25 feet of the keyboard. Which would just enrage me if I actually felt it to be the case.

Ugh. I feel like a total bitch after that experience. The only thing that makes me not entirely hate myself over the whole affair is that I had no intention of actually letting them die - more like, I wanted them to actually experience the consequences of their mistakes so they'd be aware of what to avoid in the future (get out of the green stuff, turn away when he starts making that big glowy thing). I should add that I didn't mention my observations in group chat or in tells. I didn't actually trust myself to say anything in a constructive manner. But I also didn't come down on them with a ton of berating words, either. Looking back on it, I sort of felt like the painting, The Scream - wailing silently.

Do no harm, indeed.

Hard Modes Called

They asked where the heck the people who signed up were hiding.

We've cleared Uld 10 on normal, and now it's time to start working on more Hard Modes. We've done a few, but not with the serious intent to finish the entire dungeon using Hard Modes - just as a way to pass the night when we had the right make up of people with us.

We had "enough" people signed up as of yesterday, and tonight we logged on at around raid invite time and saw... we were short 1 person on the sign up list, and two of those who remained signed up simply hadn't shown. So we waited around for about 20 minutes looking to see who else might log on, and then the raid was called.

I wasn't impressed.

Boo on called raids! Boo on people who sign up but don't show! BOO!

You Don't Know What it's Like to Heal as a Priest!

So something came up today that reminded me about the Priest QQ that goes around, and which I occasionally take part in but mostly in my head because frankly I enjoy healing as a Priest and I think we're pretty damn cool.

There are a few reasons for this:

• We have the Massive Toolbox of Save, which the other healers can't boast.
• We're extremely versatile - like all of the other healers, we are a Hybrid healing class. In our case, however, rather than being a Hybrid of both one healing spec and a couple of DPS or tanking specs, we are a Hybrid with TWO whole healing specs and one DPS spec (which has a lot of QQ of it's own going on right now, from what I hear).
• We're the only healers stuck in Cloth gear. That means we're the squishiest, most vulnerable healing class (imho). We get to wear pretty dresses, so we're all geared out for our funerals, because we make tasty targets in both PvE and PvP (though in PvE we're juicy targets only if someone's screwing up - the tank, the Priest themselves, or the DPS... you know, the entire group can conspire to kill a Priest, but if you're using Fade properly you can easily determine who deserves to die).
• Our Priest racials were so broad in terms of spectrum and variety that they had to go out of their way to spread the love amongst the whole class and take out the nerf bat, rather than favoring a select few races. Our Priest racials were a nice bonus for some of us, and a min/max necessity for others of our kind. We got some special love during Vanilla, and some of us still chose races other than the min/max preference anyway AND STUCK WITH THE CLASS THROUGH TWO EXPANSIONS. That says something for our class, I think.
• We're Priests. If you list off the names of the different healing classes and ask which ones sound like the main healing class, odds are extreme that Priest will be the class chosen most often. The game has been out for 5 years now, all veteran players understand what classes excel at which roles, and still, guilds, groups and raids love them some Priest Healer love.

As healing Priests, we can and will fulfill any healing role given to us.

Granted, our gear will limit us to some extent, but at the same time, an under geared Priest can still heal extremely well while under geared if the group or raid they're healing knows what they're doing. Others present who know how to stay out of the OMGitBURNS bad stuff and do passable DPS or tanking allow a healer of any stripe to do their job efficiently and well.

Gear will allow us to heal harder, faster, and looking snazzier than the next guy. Gear's great that way. What gear will NOT do is actually make us play better.

The Priest who can heal 10k HPS is only useful if she is alive. When you're dead, you do 0 HPS. You can be Soulstoned and pop back up, and as soon as you get fire or void or whatever lobbed at you and forget or miss that fact, you're back to 0 HPS. You can be Battled Rezzed - you're going to stand in the fire and do a little dance right before you hit the floor again, because you're special that way.

Now an honest mistake is one thing. Chronic offenders are another matter entirely, and those are the healers I'm referring to. Doesn't even have to be Priests specifically, obviously (Shamans get one extra shot at not failing, but if they're in the fires, they're just going to die one more time than the rest of us can).

I have a friend who's Healing Lead in her guild. She's NotAPriest [TM]. She's got like five or six Priests she's in charge of. There are some issues with the healing team in general, and she winds up picking up the slack for the lot of them a whole lot (at least, this is the impression I'm getting). She's a nice woman, though a bit gentle. She doesn't want to offend anyone, but she wants her healers to step it up - perhaps jogging up a few levels, in fact.

She's getting Priests (one in particular) telling her that she's NotAPriest [TM] and thus she can't possibly have any idea what the Priests are dealing with, and what they have to work with, when healing an encounter.

To which I, as a fellow Priest, must say, "What the hell?"

We're Priests. We're healers. Healers should work together and support one another, encourage one another. Priests in particular should do what they do best - we need to be versatile. We have a ton of spells available to us to save someone's ass. We can cast direct healing spells, we can cast group heals, we can cast AE heals, we can cast HoTs, we can cast Bubbles and we can cast reactive Prayer of Mending.

We can do pretty much everything anyone else can do. We don't do it BETTER than the other classes as that's not our role in the game (that's speaking as a class on the whole), but we can do it just as well. If we are played well, we WILL do it better than another class's character whose player only doe a so-so job. If we are played poorly, we will do a crappy job and think that our class as a whole is underpowered. Or, we will do a crappy job and not even notice, because the rest of the healers did a good job and carried our asses through encounter after encounter.

I get the impression she's hearing, "We're Priests. We can't heal XX way." I'm not sure I understand how that works. We can do everything - EVERYTHING - and yet there's a way of healing which we cannot manage?

I'm a Disc Priest. I can Raid heal. I may not feel like I'm doing it well, but if that's my assignment I'm going to do my Arthas cursed best to do a fabulous job. Why? Because I take pride in being a Priest and know that my Class can accomplish anything we're assigned to accomplish, healing wise.

I've been a Holy Priest primarily until very recently, I healed in ToC, I know what we're capable of in there. Holy Priests can tank heal - it's true! We can heal a tank when we're Holy specced. Certain talents within the Holy tree make it more manageable than if we hadn't taken those talents, but even without them we Priests can cope and adapt and manage to do a really good job at it... unless we've got our heads jammed so far down our belly buttons we can only hear the gurgling rumble of our stomachs screaming for OP Healing spells.

I know that as a Class we're encouraged to use Flash Heal and completely ignore that other spell (Greater Heal, anyone?), but I've always been a fan of the GHeal spell. It's certainly not my primary spell, but it's not off my action bar and it's actually got a key click bind on my Clique addon. It's monumentally slow as a Disc Priest, but sometimes I get the very odd urge to use a Greater Heal (or I just mis-click...) and it goes off.

As a Holy Priest, with Serendipity running at a full stack, it's a very decent spell to use. I wouldn't recommend it on anyone who has a small health pool to begin with, but for those characters that have a decent sized health pool (tanks, anyone?) it makes for a fabulous heal nearly as fast as a Flash Heal with a ridiculous health restored to mana ratio.

If you're running an instance that your raid is equipped for, if your Tanks are geared appropriately for the content (even if you're a bit undergeared), Greater Heal can be ridiculously useful. Flash the tank, or someone in the raid who's unlucky/stupid, get your Serendipity up to a full stack, and let fly on the tank. Or just keep that full stack running until "Oh crap," the tank takes a big hit and the Greater Heal becomes necessary. Take your pick, mana dependency can stink. We really shouldn't bottom out on mana during an encounter unless our DPS is doing a shoddy job, or WE'RE wasting our mana needlessly. We have our Shadowfiends, and we ought to have mana potions, and we can make use of Flasks of Pure Mojo and +MP5 food. If you're running out of mana and using all of these tools, someone's messing up - I can't tell you whether it's you or your DPS, but someone's messing up. (Or you're attempting content your members aren't prepared for, in which case, it's usually the DPS messing up, though through no fault of their own... this is when it becomes the Raid Leader's fault, unless you all went in knowing that you were in for the impossible, in which case you should already understand that this schpiel doesn't apply to you anyway)

TLDR: You're a Priest. You CAN fulfill any role assigned to you unless you're participating in content you have no right being in, or your head is jammed down your belly button. If your DPS can't do enough damage, or your tanks can't take the hits, it's fantastic if you can pull them out of the hole they've dug for themselves ... but when you can't? It's not because you're a Priest.

Bad Priests, Beware

On a completely different note:

Don't be a bad Priest. You can have the best gear in the game, you can cast extreme HPS, you can cause everyone around you to gaze in wonder at how bad ass you are.

If you're dying every fight and the other healers aren't, you're doing something wrong. You're sucking.

Stop it now.