MEDIC!!!

"I'm thinking about rolling a healer," one of my guildmates says on vent. "I looked down our guild roster, and we're pretty short on healers."

Gee, I replied. Wonder why? Could it be that it's a thankless job with no retirement benefits?

Cue sighs and various murmurs of assent. Healing really is the blue collar working force of MMO characters, the ones that get down in the muck and do the dirty job so that the rest can enjoy slashing things with pretty swords and calling down fireballs from the heavens against their enemies. Healing is a job where it's terrifically easy to overlook whenever you're doing it right -- because, not to be cynical or anything, but you're just maintaining the status quo of health bars -- and yet you get blamed and shouted at the second someone falls and dies.

In a way, I can relate in my real life job. Once in a while, I'm called on to officiate a wedding, which is about a thousand times more nerve-wracking than doing a funeral. At funerals, everything you do is supportive and comforting and is usually well-received; at weddings, all you can do is mess up the Perfect Day for the bride (and, possibly, groom). People don't remember weddings where the minister said everything perfectly and gave a great homily, they just remember the ones where his robe caught on fire or he messed up names and technically married the groom to the bride's mother.

I have nothing but deep, everlasting respect for healers in MMOs, and I try my hardest to stop even in the middle of a keep battle to type out "ty for heals" when some anonymous runepriest or archmage bumps my green bar back up, or rezzes my butt after dying for the millionth time. Yes, I have played healers in many MMOs, but generally never as a main, and never for long. Why? Here's what I usually bump into:

• As mentioned, healers get more blame than praise for their efforts.
• Healers generally don't get flashy spells or kick-butt armor.
• While other players get to interact with an ever-changing field of enemy opponents, healers interact with the same static objects (group members) and their naughty health bars.
• People can usually see when a person is doing awesome DPS or pulls off a mighty damage spell, but healing spells are blink-and-you'll-miss-them invisible.
• Because healing is such a powerful ability, healers are often gimped in two significant ways: weak defense and weak offense.
• And the final whammy: if you have the potential to heal, no matter what your spec, other people will demand you heal. You seemingly lack a choice in the matter.

So where's the incentive to play one? I played a druid in WoW, happy that I could at least switch back and forth between healing and damage, but even that made me resentful when I really didn't want to heal but felt pressured into doing so. Yeah, healers get all sorts of other perks, such as being in high demand and a weird sort of worship from other players -- which I guess is good for egos -- but it never was enough to help me overcome my growing hatred of falling health bars and group members who I assumed were playing a sadistic game of hide-and-go-seek with me so that I could never easily heal them.

If it were up to me, devs of all MMOs would just abandon the mindset that "MMOs need healers" and get rid of this subclass altogether.  Why do we -need- healers in MMOs?  Couldn't there be a way around that?  We already have classes that can heal themselves and regenerate health quickly outside of combat, so the potential is there.

Mythic's devs weren't blind to the unpopularity and pathos of healers, and they made a lot of bluster and promises in the buildup to launch about how they would sidestep a lot of the problems other MMOs fell into in this regard.  The end result of all this was a mixed bag:

Claim #1: WAR's healers would have a "friendly/defensive target" as well as an offensive target.
Outcome: This works easily, seamlessly, and makes you wonder why more games don't include it.  Thumbs up.

Claim #2: WAR's healers would have the option to spec damage, healing or a hybrid role.
Outcome: Yeah, but as I said before, when you are capable of healing, you'll be asked to heal above everything else, which makes speccing anything BUT healing a losing proposition.

Claim #3: Some of WAR's healers, such as the Disciple of Khaine and the Warrior Priest, would be unique "melee healers" that would fight to regain heal juice to use.
Outcome: Very mixed in practice -- the mechanic does work, but if you're in melee, chances are you're taking damage and will probably need to heal yourself instead of teammates.  If you hang back to solely heal, you have a diminishing pool of juice that can only be replenished with a 5-second channeled spell, which has to get annoying over time to use.

Claim #4: Healing would count as contribution in keeps and PQs, and be tracked in scenarios.
Outcome: Yes... and no.  The contribution system is still a bit wonky, and nobody quite knows if healing is more or less powerful than damage, or if there are ways to manipulate the system.  It is certainly nice to track healing in scenarios, yet it's very odd that the hit point bump from bolstering counts as healing for every character receiving it -- which throws off the healing charts.

None of these are bad first steps, but Warhammer has a ways to go before reaching the end of the journey to make healing classes not only fun, but heads and shoulders above other MMO healers.  Off the top of my head, I'd suggest the following:

• I'd love to see a way for the game to clearly show or tell me who is healing me and for how much, instead of a stream of green +100s above my head and a teeny tiny buff box under my character name.  Perhaps a message saying "Jaine is healing you!" or a notice when a player heals you for over a set amount (I'd like to send them a thank you card, in that case).
• I know it wouldn't be a universally attainable unlock, but the Tome of Knowledge really, really should be tracking healing and buffs and resurrections just as much as it does damage.  As a non-healing class, I have no problem with healers getting extra pats on the back this way.
• An easier way to cycle through friendly, or friendly-and-wounded, targets.

For the record, I've contemplated both a Rune Priest and Warrior Priest, probably leaning toward rolling a WP sometime in the future, but I am not yet convinced that these classes are all that and a slice of moist, yummy cake.  For those healers out there, why do you play your class and would you recommend them to others?