SWTOR: My First Raid, part 3 (On Top of It)
In a large 16 man raid, you will often find that there is a main healer who basically takes charge of all the healers in the group. They are responsible for explaining the fight in healer’s point of view, assigning heals, cleanses, positioning, etc. Keesi, at the time, was the main healer in this raid group.
This fight itself is very simple. The tank faces the boss away from the raid group and the rest of the group DPSes the boss while avoiding circles. The boss has a missile phase when he launches missiles, and usually, the raid group forms a tight circle at the foot of the boss for area heals.
Keesi was an interesting healer, in that he always put the salvation (area heals) on top of himself and asked everyone to always stand on it if they wanted heals. Moreover, he demanded that all the other sage healers (there was one other besides myself) to put our salvation exactly on top of his. Out of the two healers, he assumed that it was me who did not put the area heal on top of his – most likely because I was the newest healer at the time. I don’t really blame him, but I wished he had not called me out like that in front of everyone… because I did put my salvation exactly on top of his. At the end of the raid, Keesi came to talk to me and asked me about my current build, gear, rotation to make sure that I understood how to heal well.
Whenever I work with new healers these days, I do my best to explain the fight and healing assignments privately. I usually take them to another channel or have a private text chat with them, as needed. I also encourage other healers to voice their opinions/insights of alternative strategies so that we can do our best to be more flexible for the rest of our raid. Although it was an embarrassing moment at the time, I am glad this experience taught me to be mindful to new players.
FYI, unless it is a phase when everyone is grouped together, it is probably a better call for healers to not ask DPS to move long distances to wherever the area heals are at… =___=