So I gained a few levels, and begin to travel a bit. I’ve always been an Explorer, and bizarrely enough, I find that zones which have the typical ‘Snowy Winter Wonderland’ design usually have a powerful psycho-suggestive effect on me, leaving me sat in front of my PC shivering, even on hot summery evenings outside. Time to head south for the winter, I thought, and hopped on the Deeprun Tram to Stormwind, and the Human Newbie forest, an altogether more clement locale.

That’s when I met The Steamroller. A Human Paladin of a similar level to me, who seemed to be having trouble with the local wildlife. Perfect, I thought, a tank and a healer – that’s two out of The Big Three, and at our level, the missing third element – the Crowd Control, wasn’t really necessary anyway. I signed up, and only then realised that I had a previously hidden class skill:

‘False Sense of Invulnerability’
Req: Priest Lv 1
Area of effect: Anyone else grouped with the Priest
Duration: Constant (Passive)

'Previously accustomed to having to conserve health and power for methodical soloing, all group members are driven temporarily insane by the sudden influx of healing power from the Priest. Emerging seemingly unscathed from previously difficult and life-threatening fights, rate of pull increases by 300%, and downtime is negated entirely’

Frightening, and hardly a ‘spell’ unique to World of Warcraft, but even veteran players are sometimes subconsciously victim to it. ‘Hey! My health keeps filling itself up! I don’t have to wait between fights now! Sweet! Let’s try something harder! Now now now!’

The Steamroller was a textbook case, and a particularly excitable player to boot, constantly jumping everywhere, hurrying us along, and doing that really annoying ‘=^.^=’ ‘cat’ emoting lots. But I took it as a kind of extreme training exercise and gritted my teeth. Admittedly, we did do a bit better than either of us could alone for 'Rate of Kills', but it took quite a few deaths before the idea of watching someone else’s blue bar began to sink in. Part of this whole Priest Project, for me, is to develop my patience with others a bit – never a strong suit until now, and boy did I get some grinding in on that.

I mean really…they even have an /oom voice emote (which I use frequently). It doesn’t get any clearer than that! But The Steamroller, and many others since, seem to have real trouble wrestling with the concept that in group-based MMO work, the party’s ‘health bar’ is actually the blue one under the primary healer’s portrait.

It’s quite fascinating to watch though. I couldn’t work it out. Was The Steamroller like that all the time anyway, solo or grouped, which would explain their sanguine attitude to dying lots, and low level, or was it me? Having a dedicated healer had somehow equated to ‘God Mode’ in their mind, and whoosh! Off they went like an exocet missile, right down the gaping mine entrance and in. Reminded me a bit of Starship Troopers, and it was all I could do to keep up and chain-heal as The Steamroller struggled back out, in the middle of a dense Katamari Damarcy style ball of pissed off Kobolds.

Trouble is, most mob AIs are smarter than we were, and invariably they’d turn on me, meaning that I ended up as Main Tank, and Primary Healer, all in one. I wondered what The Steamroller was even doing here after a while, relegated to Backup DPS. Chainhealing is a Bad Thing, I know, and I really try not to, but when The Steamroller has ‘FSoI’ up, it’s hard to stop them agroing everything in sight. If only Paladins could taunt effectively. At one point our roles completely reversed, with me tanking, and The Steamroller using their half-arsed heal to try and keep me going! Ahhh...good times...

Still, we survived, sort of, and after a while I managed to politely drill the whole Priest OOM thing into their head, and we did well after that. But the ‘See that blue line under my picture?’ conversation is one I find myself reusing again and again. At level 28 or so, I’m working on Blackfathom Deeps, and by this point, you’d have thought most Pick-Up Groupies would have the hang of it by now, but alas, I fear my days of preaching are far from over…