Wow Priest Guide - I Can't Heal, I'm Shadow

I've leveled a number of characters. Warrior, Priest, Paladin, Mage being the classes I have most experience playing.

One trend I've noticed when asking for healers/tanks for instances is the ever present "I can't Heal/Tank because I'm not specced for it" reply.

Now I realize the ease that spec allows and that it's not really the best idea to get a Feral Druid with 5k Mana to heal a Heroic or something, but in general - for leveling and the normal instances - people rarely will realize their classes potential to fulfill multiple roles. Are they just unaware that they're able to? Or are they lazy? I had a Holy/Prot Paladin in Blood Furnace get a Rogue on him and say "help i'm dying" while we were running back. I informed him he can tank the Rogue for a bit, heal and bubble till we get there. We find him dead and he's saying he can't tank anything cause he's a healer. I remember on my Paladin finding it quite fun to be able to tank mobs the tank hadn't picked up yet, HoJing them and healing, maybe bubbling in the worst circumstances.

Is it just that a lot of people who roll *potential tank/healing classes don't want to be pigeon-holed? Is it the communities stigma of off-specs? I find that it's not too difficult to build swap sets, and even at this level with my Warrior I find instances not particularly challenging for same level healers. Hell, I can put on my Tanking set on my Warrior if I need to and tank just fine, and it was the same for my Paladin. I could DPS, Heal or Tank anything up to heroics with the proper gear.

I yet to respond with "you can heal/tank it fine if you're not retarded, spec doesn't matter much in these instances" but I've come close. >.o

When I was leveling, I would just clarify that I'm not healing specced, but would try. If we were dying because I just couldn't heal it, then I'd say so and bow out. At 70, I just don't volunteer for instances unless I'm the DPS out of convenience.

While leveling, I had a pretty good healing set. Most of the time, I could keep a tank up with a renew and occasional gheal. At 70, it's significantly harder if you don't overgear the instance. I've been gathering a heal set up, however, and usually keep a mh/oh in my bags for times when the healer dies when the boss is at 10%.

All that doesn't really matter, though. Most people are, in fact, too worried about their spec. Fury/arms are actually better for tanking while leveling than prot, IMO. But people will be too afraid to tank. Also, people always go for their DPS set first and ignore tanking upgrades. I saw a slave pens run fall apart because our warrior tank didn't actually own a shield.

Think of hunters. You can have a lot of fun as a hunter, contribute quite a bit to a 5 man, and do some crazy stuff. Or you can autoshot and walk away. Most people prefer to stand there and do one thing than figure out all the ways their class works.