I hate going into heroic Halls of Reflection, and seeing that it's a warrior tank for the pug. That instance is hard to heal as is, although I've certainly cleared it with DKs and pally tanks (never had a bear though). But whenever it's a warrior, its almost impossible. There's just so many things to worry about with the waves honestly, and warriors have a lot of trouble with aoe threat compared to pallies/dks. Add pally healers to that sort of encounter, and you're asking for trouble.
The problem though, is not that it's hard for a warrior/pally combo. I've cleared the instance ONCE with a warrior tank, so it's certainly doable. The problem is that...I'm always getting blamed for wipes with other warrior tanks and get kicked or group falls apart.
Except for rifleman, every mob can interrupt my healing, that's a bad sign. All dps and myself are picking aggro because warrior has trouble gathering all the mobs to pick up threat on all of them. Add to that mess that I'm often the only one doing any sort of debuff cleansing or crowd control (I do -occassionally- see other dps help with that, but not often)...and it's kind of annoying that it's always my fault we wipe according to warrior tanks.
Something I've noticed? Warriors are the only tanks that -continually- go out of LoS from me and stay that way, and blame me if I get blown up by ranged mobs for not keeping them out of LoS or for not healing them and letting them die while they rampage out in the hall...
Howerever....If the warrior isn't in line of sight of me, I've learned to dance in and out of corner in alcove to get out of LoS of mobs when they're casting while getting in LoS to toss a heal to tank. Dancing doesn't exactly help on healing when just about every heal I have is not instant cast, however, and certainly makes my job harder. It does get the mob into the alcove though.
...funny then, that once ranged mob is inside alcove, it's often still blowing me up, and tank is still out in the hall, running like a chicken with it's head cut off and out of LoS from me, while I can't hope to hide from ranged mob anymore. What's the result? There's no point in me hiding in corner and I stop doing so! But to the warrior, when I finally die, it's because I wasn't in corner (nope, it certainly wasn't because mob was in alcove continuing to blow me up).
Or, hey, I'm overhealing and getting aggro that way! Early on, I certainly tried to keep tank topped off, or healing at start of wave. I learned better. Quickly. Ouchies are very motivating. So it was certainly a truthful bitching early on.
Nowadays I never start to heal at the start of wave until tank's health has gone down a lot. I really, really do try to let them pick up aggro, and I have an idea of how much my heals do so I don't overheal near the start either, just try to keep tank over 50-70% to give them time to pick up aggro, and stick to FoL healing to lower risk of overhealing.
But if things get frantic enough with a lot of fast dropping health not just on tank but also on dps, I'm going to be a bit more serious with heals, putting beacon on tank if it's not already there and healing everyone as much as I reasonably can, trying to avoid overhealing, though it certainly does happen with crits. Of course, this leads to me grabbing aggro, which leads to me focusing on healing myself, which means dps might die because they're picking up aggro or I die because vicious cycle of healing aggro keeps mob on me and tank is having a fun time smacking footmen....here comes wipe time, and oh look, it's obviously the pally healer's fault.
Now, sometimes I still heal off just as a mob dies and new wave starts...but if party is pretty dinged, would it hurt to keep the mob alive just a little longer so I can get you guys up to near full? Or maybe to get back in the freaking alcove instead of all being out in the hall so I don't pick up aggro from the closest mobs to the alcove and random dps doesn't pick up aggro as well?
I would also note that I have a macro that I press when I get interrupted in spellcast, warning it's happened if the tank is low in health. Does tank ever pop a cooldown to save himself? Nope! Haven't seen it happen yet! Oh look, down he goes! Who's fault is it? Pally healer!
It's my fault for not keeping them healthy enough so they wouldn't die when I'm interrupted... and it's my fault for overhealing if dps or myself die first.
I don't mind that it's a hard instance for a warrior to pick up aggro in, or that it's a hard instance for paladins to heal in... but it pisses me off that I'm -always- getting blamed by warrior tanks, or worse when they ask why I'm even in the instance with less than 5k GS and start their rant of how much I suck as a healer around that tidbit.
Oh, I must not know anything because I'm not as geared as them! With their insults and their kicking me out or ragequitting and telling me to L2P, I will surely learn better!
Pfft, yeah right.
That one warrior I actually completed instance with? Every single member in that party, including warrior, had less than 4.7k gear score. Two of the members had -never- done that instance, even in normal mode. We wiped four times, but we still cleared the whole instance.
One of those wipes was the two dps who'd never been there getting blown up by lich king at the very start, despite warning them to move before we started. Of the three wipes during waves, one of them was honestly my fault, though I admitted as such (I am perfectly willing to own up to my own screw-ups).
But, in spite of wipes...nobody was raging, bitching, or assigning blame (except for the 'whoops, my bad' self-assignments). At worst, it was a bit of grumbling, mostly we just laughed and promised to do better.
Seeing as we cleared the place, I'd say we did.
So why is it that I repeatedly see groups with everyone else having more than 5k+ gear score....doing dps all over the place instead of focused dps? Why do I see those 5k+ groups not helping cleanse, shackling undead, removing curses, freezing trap, repentancing, etc? Why is it when I see focused dps in those 5k+ groups, I often see them focusing on riflemen/footmen while priest/mercenary run rampant (sometimes even after I mark them if I can)? And why is it when we wipe, it's always my fault?
Nope, no incompetent tanks or dps here! They've got 5k+ gear score!
TL/DR: H-HoR sucks donkey balls, especially when tank is a warrior.
