Quote Originally Posted by platonicx View Post
Today i saw our "battle cleric" die .. of course after that 3 other people died. Had to raise him with my rogue. If he wast a battle cleric and just stayed back noone would die. Thats a fact. There is also the thing he was a poor player and possibly an idiot but that doesnt really help my point. Although i still think in a lot of situations clerics should stay out of aggro becouse if cleric dies scary things happen.
I'm going to respond here not to the poster, but to the attitude of the post, as I believe this will help healers more. That's who I'm interested in helping. Rectifying other players perceptions of what a healer should do is not one of my interests.

"That is a fact." You see this alot. Players with experience in other MMOs, players that think they know what they are talking about that don't, players that just have a me centric view of playing, or players that don't have a healer toon or haven't played a healer at the higher levels. You see players that really lay it on thick with a very self-assured posture telling healers to stay back and heal. The reality is that only "gimpy" players need a healbot in standard quests. If you can't stay alive 5-10 seconds after dropping to 30% (the longest you should need to wait for a heal, provided the healer thinks you diserve one), then you need to address your playstyle.

They basically like to blame the healer for their own play issues most of the time. The
only fact here is that you can usually say there is something about the player not playing the cleric that could be improved. This of course doesn't indicate that the healer was perfect, but it is rarely solely a problem with healing. This is because, there are very few encounters that need a healer to "save the bacon" in order for you to complete them. If there is a situation where "saving the bacon" is necessary, its almost always because of poor strategy, even on elite.

The only caveat to this is that you can have clerics that decide they are ready to play a stage 5-7 cleric, when they don't have the experience yet to do it. I've heard people claiming that they moved through these stages quickly, when it actually takes time with multiple group settings to gain the expertise. Running through waterworks on normal and meleeing does not make you a stage 5 cleric. Nor does doing Running with Devils with a guild group while meleeing and offensive casting. Do a quest where you actually have to heal and the other facets to test your mettle. When you are in VoD, actually melee the orthons and Sullomondes while healing when you are the only cleric - on hard even. Do Sins of Attrition and vorpal with the other tanks while you keep them alive. When you can do these, you are very much at stage 5-7. Then do it without any mana pots. I only present these to give the healers something to test their mettle against, not to say you aren't good if you can't do these things.

In the end, you need to have fun playing your healer. Don't let players who think they know what they are talking about fool you into being a healbot if that isn't what you want. They frankly need you more than you need them. Don't over-estimate your abilities or experience, but don't play it too safe either.