Priests, or "HEAL ME!"

Non-Gamers' Guide to This Post

Aggro: Stepping too close to an enemy so that it detects and attacks you. It will follow you if you run, but will stop following after a certain amount of time.
Murlocs: A shore-dwelling enemy with a very distinctive battle cry. The cry sounds like gargling, and the boss name "Mmmrrrggglll" is funny because that is a phonetic reproduction of the murloc aggro sound.

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Priests can be designed to focus on either healing or damage, though they are the very best healing class in the whole game. So when other players see a priest, they assume "healer." Now, I have a Shadow Priest, a priest that is being designed to officially "melt faces." And I was whacking some murlocs, waiting around for Mmmrrrggglll to show up so I could kill him for a quest, and this hunter came along whacking murlocs of his own. (Yes, I died while taking these pictures. Yes, it was totally worth it.)

This was cool with me, the hunter hanging out and attacking murlocs. We helped each other minimally, neither of us really said anything, and I healed him once when we both aggroed too many.

So I turned off my action bars and took a picture of dead Mmmrrrggglll (I got the live ones later), and apparently the hunter had asked for healing while I was busy. Since we hadn't spoken and generally were doing our own things, I hadn't bothered watching to see if he was okay.

When he got back to his body, he demanded to know why I didn't heal him. I told him (part) of the truth -- I was lagging and couldn't properly click on things. This was true when I got back and attempted to help the hunter -- I was being hit by a murloc that looked like it was still fighting the hunter, who was dead. I had to log out and log back in to fix it.

Still, it predicts a long, difficult road ahead for my little shadow priest. People will expect me to be a healer, but I'll be concentrating all of my talents on damage. My brother told me just to make sure people know I'm a damage priest, not a healer, before I join a party, and I should be fine.

It was just kind of annoying for a complete stranger to assume that I would babysit his health even though we weren't even grouped together. I'm not going to let someone die if I can do anything to help, but people are pretty demanding of priests, because they're so useful. I've even heard that some groups will get really mad at a healer if the healer lets them die -- for any reason. I play a healing priest elsewhere, but that seems so ridiculous. The main reason anyone dies on my watch is when they're doing stupid things, like aggroing whole rooms of baddies, or working badly as a team.

Anyway, I thought that was an interesting experience and wanted an excuse to post pictures of Mmmrrrggglll. He's in the Blood Elf area, and his name really amuses me.