Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Sir Ralph, I keep wondering the same thing. I guess people don't think sticking in the background keeping the group alive is fun. It may also be that they're intimidated by the responsibility you'll have: screw up a bit, allow the tank die, and the party wipes. I personally enjoy playing a healing class.
Sir Ralph, I keep wondering the same thing. I guess people don't think sticking in the background keeping the group alive is fun. It may also be that they're intimidated by the responsibility you'll have: screw up a bit, allow the tank die, and the party wipes. I personally enjoy playing a healing class.
- Healing is boring to most younger players, and many older players as well. They're playing the game to kill monsters, and they're not killing anything when they're a pure healer.
- Healing is hard. It takes a lot more work than just mashing a button; depending on the game, it at MINIMUM requires mashing four to eight buttons, and generally requires a larger degree of skill than that.
- Healers ALWAYS get blamed for the party wiping. If the tank goes down, it's because the healer wasn't focussing on the tank enough. If some random weakling gets too close to the baddie and goes down, he/she'll blame you. No matter why the party goes down, the healer will get the blame. This is worse at earlier levels than at later (at least in games where it's hard to get to "later" levels), but it exists everywhere.
- Healers have to put up with the crap of the dumb players. As mentioned above, if some random weakling tends to get too close to baddies, you HAVE to protect/heal them somehow, or they'll die, and you'll lose the all important nuker or AoEer or whatever. If the tank casts Healing Signet, you have to protect him. You can't just ignore the dumbest players, if you want the party to survive... (well, most of the time anyway).
Basically, Healers are rare largely because they do a lot of work and get blamed when things go wrong, but don't get much credit when things work out. This is of course not always true, and I love finding parties that understand the value of the healer, but it's true often enough to discourage people from playing healer.
On the other hand, I play healers ... because it's a lot of fun, for the right sort of person. It's a constant battle to keep people healed, and to use the right healing spell, and not run out of mana or whatever. It's far harder, and thus more enjoyable for me, than nuking or tanking (except in FFXI, where both were quite interesting due to the extreme way they dealt with monster aggros, but that's a different story). It just takes a hard skin at early levels...
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