And as you said, if everyone is alive at the end, that really is the most important thing!

The whole point of the post was to show how silly they are, really. I was hesitant to link myself because it made me feel narsisistic, but at the same time wanted to give examples. And I know the circumstances of my raids, and can elaborate on them, I couldn’t do that picking someone I wasn’t familiar with.

In our raid last night, after reading your post, I actually tried to to boost my HPS as high as I could to get ranked (without the raid group being altered in any way). I only ended up getting ranked for one fight, Festergut. Really, it’s not about HPS. In my attempt to get ranked, I was actually playing worse and felt less useful to the raid. It was also kinda boring, since I used less variety of spells than normal.

I’ve never really run into anyone that has done things “to be ranked”, but I don’t doubt that they exist. Even on the parse there with my shaman, I only solo healed because the other healer swapped to his tank because we couldn’t find a second tank and I said “I might could do this alone…”.

Certainly I don’t begrudge them their 15 minutes of fame.. but there’s just so much that can influence those healer rankings – far more than the DPS rankings. I’m happy for them that they get a little bit of an ego boost – but at the same time it makes me feel self conscious because I can’t get up there too. It makes me feel like I’m failing. Why can’t I manage to get ranked?

As a druid I can pump out some crazy HPS, yes – but I’m also “competing” against guilds who take fewer healers, have different assignments, have DPS that stand in different amounts of fire, have strats that call for healers to “just heal through it”, have different healing assignments and healer mixes…. and so on.

If I’m in a 25man fight and the RL calls for more DPS and fewer healers to cover everyone, then we’re all going to do higher HPS by default. Or if I’m the only resto druid on Blood Queen or Sindy, I know I’m going to be higher than normal. If we decide to 2-heal 25man Twins “for the lulz”, then our HPS is going to be crazy.

It’s also important to note that a lot of people don’t get ranked casually, by chance, in passing. They deliberately set out to do it by altering their play style or assignment, and getting their raid leader to assign fewer healers, etc. I’ve run with several healers who informed me they were “going for” top 10, so they were going to do XYZ this fight.

On current content, and possibly even beyond, I doubt I’ll ever get “ranked”. I can’t compete with a group that 4-heals ICC, when we take 6.

There’s a finite amount of healing to be done in most fights – it may fluctuate if people stand in badness, but speaking very generally, there’s only so much healing to go around. Dilute it with more healers, or healers whose strengths in that particular encounter can eclipse yours… and there’s little chance of you getting on that list.