The healer of our static group in World of Warcraft was otherwise detained last week and so I took up the healing mantle for the evening, a garment that I am very comfortable wearing, although I was given again to muse upon its curious properties.
The healing mantle, for those who are unaware, is an impressive item of clothing which provides an aura of invisibility to the wearer rendering them utterly anonymous to everyone else in a pick-up group. It is well known that tanks are indestructible self-healing marvels, and that DPS can sustain continuous damage, be it from AoE or by standing in pools of molten rock, without so much as putting a hair of their perfectly sculpted bouffant out of place. Everyone in your average pick-up group is a marvel of robust and rugged constitution. All four of them.
Until one of them inevitably dies.
It is at this point that the healing mantle activates its primary systems and transforms. First it disables invisibility and instead turns itself a really offensive shade of fluorescent yellow. Secondly an underpowered motor jerkily raises an electric sign on a metal pole from just behind the healer’s shoulders; coming to rest several feet above the healer’s head, the sign consists of an arrow pointing down at said head and the words “THEIR FAULT” all in buzzing flickering neon. Finally a pair of integrated loudspeakers rotate from their resting place, lock into position on the healer’s shoulders, and repeatedly squawk a distortingly loud siren alerting all the other players to the healer’s presence. All attention is generally focussed on the healer at this point and bent on determining exactly what they were doing skulking away at the back of the dungeon while these other four were valiantly fighting the good fight with nothing to keep their health bars topped-up but the aura of sheer magnificence that they project; sadly they weren’t magnificent enough to facebutt their way through the two groups of extra adds that they pulled, but that’s not the point. Thank goodness, though, that the healing mantle was there to alert them all to the traitor in their midst!
Thankfully the healing mantle is deactivated when playing with friends or other competent people – these folk seem to project a damping field which prevents the mantle from obscuring the efforts of the designated healer – so I’m happy to report that my turn as healer the other night was a suitably happy and stress-free experience.
Being fifteen levels or so above the dungeon content probably didn’t hurt either.
Holy shit! I could not agree more with the cloak of healing theory! The raid ends and everyone is measuring their e-peen regarding how much DPS they did, even the tank (especially Paladins) join the fray about how much AoE damage they did… but no one ever gives two shits about the healer, how he/she kept every AoE-ignoring, defiant, retarded raid/group member alive through the endless plethora of stupidity they exhibited.
The really strange thing is that anyone wearing a healing mantle is always preternaturally aware of other people who are also wearing said mantle and their efforts to keep a group on its feet.
It’s like a heightened sense; I was going to make a comparison between this phenomenon and sparkling like vampires in Twilight, but I threw up into my keyboard half way through.
I rarely notice the Healer but when I do it’s usually because I’ve come close to dying (probably through something stupid I did), my Health Bar has dipped dangerously low then like a miracle, it’s topped up and I’m still alive, still dishing out MQSRDPS.
That’s when I make sure to let the Healer know, in Party Chat no less, that they’ve been doing a great job. And if I get to the end of a Run and haven’t thanked the Healer, I’ll do so then.
“I don’t think I came close to dying once, Healer, so you must have been doing a fantastic job; thanks for keeping us alive.”
And as soon as I do that EVERYONE thanks them. Funny how that happens.
And as soon as I do that EVERYONE thanks them. Funny how that happens.
It’s like forcing a Romulan warbird to de-cloak off their starboard bow: all they can do is fire panicked torpedoes of thanks and hope that they get through the healer’s forward apathy shields.
What? Oh c’mon, it’s better than the Twilight one.
I have NEVER thanked a healer in WOW, and I feel no guilt about it at all, you hear me? No guilt!
But then again, I’ve never played it. Am I still allowed to post on sites like this?
Am I still allowed to post on sites like this?
You can post on sites like that if you want; for the record, posting while doing a handstand would be more acceptable if you were wearing pants.
Quote: “for the record, posting while doing a handstand would be more acceptable if you were wearing pants.”
But not those lacy ones you bought me last Christmas, they itch my sensitive bits. I told you time and again, silk, not nylon!
Hmmm, I wonder if I have enough time to exchange these leather ones with spikes before Christmas.