The Length of a Fight

I noticed something last week while healing Festergut and Rotface for the first time on my Priest.  Still only at around 4700 gear score but with the buff, even with my limited experience, that was more then ample.  Then I noticed it again last night after DPSing (Hunter), Tanking (Druid) and Healing (Priest) the weekly.

When Festergut went down when I was healing I immediately thought to myself "already?"  It was like the fight happened in 15 seconds.  Then the same with Rotface when he went down.  The fights seemed to be over as fast as they started.  I thought it was just because it was a new perspective for me as it was my first time healing there.  After last night I am sure it is more then that.

The fights took basically the same time (within 30 seconds of each other) but when I am healing it seems like all fights are over as soon as they start.  When I DPS it seems like the fight takes a while but it not overbearing time wise. When I was tanking it was more like "when the hell is this god damn fight going to end", it felt like it was taking a year and a day.

I am left to wonder if it is the same for everyone or if it says something about my play style that I perceive different roles in different ways when it comes to fight length.  I guess I would have to wait to see if it continues to have that feeling once the newness of healing wears off for me.

If I had to guess why it has those feelings for me then I would say it is because of something like this.

Healing: I am always doing something on every global.  It is not on the same target over and over and there is no such thing as a rotation or even a priority.  Each case of healing is different based on various things.  How many people are taking damage?  What is the damage they are taking? Will the damage stop where I can leave them for a bit? Will they die without immediate attention? Will something small and fast temporarily solve the problem? Are two or more people knocking on deaths door?  Who should I save first?  Is there time to save them or is the tank expecting some spike damage? Is there a magical effect that can be crippling that I need to take off immediately?  Well, you get the idea.  There is so much going on at all time and so many decisions to process at all times that there is no time to notice how long the fight is going on.

DPS: There is a lot of pressure on you to put out the best DPS you can at all possible times.  No one ever wants to hear that your DPS was a little lower because it was a high movement fight even if you are a Hunter.  They do not care.  So there is my priority system to work with and there are the expected movements I need to work around while not damaging my DPS which usually means having to know when everything is going to happen so I know when I need to move so I have all my instants ready for use while moving to maximize my DPS and not lose as much as I would otherwise.  That takes some paying attention to if you want to do your job well and that is not even mentioning managing your threat which sometimes can be more work then managing your DPS.  All in all there is a lot to do, but not as much as when healing.

Tank: Okay, I stand there and get beat on while keeping the big baddie mad at me.  That is my job.  Just make sure he stays madder and me then at anyone else.  Maybe if there is some big damage time coming I need to worry about some of my oh shit cooldowns but with the exception of a few moments here and there in a fight, at most, if you have a good healer they are not something you need to be worried about all the time.  You know when the oh shit moments will be coming so you know when you need to be ready for it.  It is redundant work, you know, the same thing over and over.  More often then not you need to move less then a healer or DPS will need to.  You need to pay attention to a lot fewer of the mechanics because many of them do not effect tanks so it is more of just keeping threat and watching for adds should the fight happen to have any of them.  That is the only part that could sometimes get hectic.

That is the break down of why I think fights that take the same time feel like they don't.  It all depends on what it is that you need to do during the fight.  The healer is always thinking so time flies when you have no down time making the fight seem faster.  DPS have some down time to just watch priorities between the mechanics so the fight seems to take a bit longer.  Tanks seem to have lots of down time where they just sit there and do their thing not having to worry about much else meaning that it seems to take forever.

Am I the only one that has experienced this or does it say something about my play style?