World of Warcraft™

PvE Healing:
Very fun. Not very exciting. You just sit down. Watching your group. Spam some heals.
But when that moment where the boss/mob hits the tank hard. You are forced to step in and do something else then spam heals. BAM. Everyone is fulled of relief.
PvP Healing:
HEAL HEAL HEAL /run . HEAL HEAL HEAL.
Very exciting. You have to be wide awake to pvp heal.
If you are alone...and more than 3 people come towards you. Pop whatever that makes you take less DAMAGE and go run to the rest of your group

I say PvP healing is better <3

fulled of relief, heh.

PVP healing is a lot more exciting, but it can be a lot more frustrating as well.

I was a terrible healer until I learned to heal in pvp. Pvp healing is the best way to get better at pve healing.

You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that because you threw your computer out a window because of all the stunrage.

I used to be a PvP healer like you, but then I took a group of Alliance to the face with no peels.

but then I took an arrow to the knee.

You got the meme wrong, but it's okay, I've got your back.

02/21/2012 11:07 AMPosted by Romijin

I was a terrible healer until I learned to heal in pvp. Pvp healing is the best way to get better at pve healing.

^This

I learned the same way.

You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that while stunned.
You can't do that because you threw your computer out a window because of all the stunrage.

Not quite.

You can't do that while stunned

... then ...

You can't do that while silenced

... then (if not dead) ...

You can't do that as a frog

... then (if still not dead) ...

You can't cast while interrupted ... or ... Your cast did not complete because of death-grip/knockback ... or ... Your cast would have completed, but you were slowed and only half of it finished before you were knocked back.

... then (if still not dead) ...

Your cast has been interrupted by Fear / Horror

... then (if still not dead) ...

You die

Easily, easily, the single most frustrating and EXASPERATING aspect of trying to play a PvP healer in this expansion, given the profligate overexpansion of player control mechanics that were added to dps classes, is that a healer can often spend more time with no control of his character than he spends actually playing it.

Moreover, the burden of frustration is not equitable. Since healers and flag carriers are so much more frequently the targets of these mechanics, the game has been designed so that dps players whose characters have a large kit of player control mechanics (eg. rogues, mages) enjoy a disproportionate share of the fun factor (since controlling other people is fun) while healers, in particular, shoulder a disproportionate burden of the frustration of the game design; the whole point is in keeping healer players from playing, a goal for which Blizzard has heaped assistance onto dps players in the form of an enormous suite of player control mechanisms that can often be seemingly endlessly chained.

When a rogue and any other dps player target a solo healer, they can almost always kill the healer before he even has an opportunity to react (forget resilience in this scenario ... in a single silence it is usual for a healer with 4.4k resilience see his health drop by more than 50%).

02/21/2012 11:52 AMPosted by Buffyria

I used to be a PvP healer like you, but then I took a group of Alliance to the face with no peels.

The frustration started to become way more than the fun, so, I stopped healing pvp , and am starting to enjoy pve healing, I've hardly done any pve healing til now, I've pretty much just healed pvp.
To the OP, if you still enjoy pvp healing I'm happy for you, it means that there are still people out there with tons of patience, mine kinda ran out lol

Pop a dam pvp trink? ... Run alway?

Don't forget smokebomb. The ultimate "screw you healers" button. Its an unlimited range silence that I can't do anything about unless I am standing in it. I find it more frustrating than anything.

I've never understood the whole PVP healing makes you a better PVE healer thing. There's boatloads of abilities you almost never use in PVP that you have to use in PVE and vice versa. I'd be the first to admit that I'm no PVP expert so maybe one of you who used PVP to learn to PVE heal can explain it to me?

02/21/2012 08:42 PMPosted by Sarakatawen

I've never understood the whole PVP healing makes you a better PVE healer thing.

And you never will, because it's not true. Any benefit reaped from PvP healing is either placebo, or due to an increased mental involvement due to the Oh !@#$! factor, not due to an actual difficulty increase.

pvp is good at teaching the value of reaction time and reading what other people are going to do (which is apparently easier the higher up you go). Plus I think it teaches you how to use more of your class' abilities.

pve on an individual level is really really easy compared to this - because you often know whats coming, but only pve can teach how to work together with other healers (except i guess 5v5).

I think pvp also helps a healer learn about other class' cooldowns, which brings quite a bit of value when you're organizing who to heal in pve, since you know a particular class can hit a particular cooldown and won't need to be healed much.



This is all from a BC/wrath PoV, because I learned early on from all the glads we had that pvp was a complete pile of garbage in cata, and I wasn't going to put up with that crap (and apparently either did they because they all quit), so stuck to pve.

02/21/2012 09:13 PMPosted by Gamex

Plus I think it teaches you how to use more of your class' abilities.

This is the sentiment that I disagree with. With the amount of CC going around nowadays, and the attention given to healers, freecasting is damn near impossible against a decent team, which effectively locks out a sizable portion of every healer's toolkit. Then we have the fact that some spells are simply ill suited to the PvP environment, such as small ground effects and conetangle heals, and the fact that some CDs are used for almost entirely different purposes than they are in PvE.

I refuse to believe that PvP familiarizes a healer with the whole of their toolkit.

02/21/2012 09:13 PMPosted by Gamex

pvp is good at teaching the value of reaction time

WoW's reaction time requirements aren't strict to begin with, so this isn't as important as it could be.

02/21/2012 09:13 PMPosted by Gamex

I think pvp also helps a healer learn about other class' cooldowns

Valid, but in a raid, assuming things are going as planned, there's only one person who needs that kind of information, and that's the raid leader. Any significant CD that gets used should be planned out ahead of time, and the raid leader will always at least have a hand in this planning.

02/21/2012 09:13 PMPosted by Gamex

and reading what other people are going to do (which is apparently easier the higher up you go)

Valid to an extent, but you have to keep in mind two things. Firstly, behavior in PvP is much different than behavior in PvE, both in playstyle, and in information interpretation. Learning to read the behavior of your arena team partner isn't going to help very much with learning to read the behavior of the rest of your healing team, as you'll be looking for entirely different cues, and you'll be looking for them in different places.

Secondly, and I mentioned this before, PvE is much more structured, and much of it is pre-planned. There's simply not as much to "read."

I've never understood the whole PVP healing makes you a better PVE healer thing.

And you never will, because it's not true. Any benefit reaped from PvP healing is either placebo, or due to an increased mental involvement due to the Oh !@#$! factor, not due to an actual difficulty increase.

Or because any practice is good practice, especially under a lot of pressure.

I don't know why anyone bothers to argue what's more difficult. Obviously, whatever the person in question is doing takes the most skill to them. No one can admit they're not as good as they think they are.

I know you disagree but I still stand by everything I said. I also think downplaying the value of reaction time is a mistake, and encourages slower gameplay as acceptable, especially when something goes wrong and a solution needs to be found very quickly.

I also think it's a mistake for only a raid leader to know everyone's cooldowns. Because of knowing the cooldown and time of cooldowns on other people, I'm more able to organize where I can fit my CDs into so that we don't die. A raid leader would have to go Kungen-mode to be able to call all of that for everyone all the time.

02/21/2012 09:57 PMPosted by Windfuehrer

And you never will, because it's not true. Any benefit reaped from PvP healing is either placebo, or due to an increased mental involvement due to the Oh !@#$! factor, not due to an actual difficulty increase.

Or because any practice is good practice, especially under a lot of pressure.

I don't know why anyone bothers to argue what's more difficult. Obviously, whatever the person in question is doing takes the most skill to them. No one can admit they're not as good as they think they are.

I feel there's absolutely no debate that high level pvp takes more individual skill than high level pve. That may just be my opinion, but I don't think anyone could ever change that assumption in my mind without a ridiculous amount of proof and flawless reasoning.