In multiplayer video games which feature competitive or combat activities performed by player characters of numerous different character classes, such as World of Warcraft and Overwatch, a "pocket healer" is a player who preferentially plays as a healing character class (such as a Cleric or Medic, depending on the genre of the game's narrative setting), and who follows precisely one other player around (usually a "tank" class or other resilient or damage-dealing player type) to provide healing services for that character. Pocket healers differ from other healer playstyles in this strict focus on preserving the health and combat readiness of only one other player, rather than serving an entire team of players, attending to each of their needs as they arise.
There are numerous reasons why a player might choose to be a pocket healer instead of a party healer. The most common reason is that the pocket healer simply prefers to advance through game objectives quickly, and maintaining an entire party can be a more time-consuming way to progress through objectives, where a single powerful companion acting as the healer's bodyguard is able to be far more expedient, with no risk of either player wandering off or needing to wait for a fallen comrade to respawn. The two can work in tandem, making the game into a mutual escort mission.
Another reason to be a pocket healer is that one may have brought a specific other person into the game, from their real-world social life, just to enjoy the game together. The involvement of random strangers might contribute little to their shared enjoyment of the game, so as a pocket healer there is no expectation to devote time and attention to strangers, in priority over one's personal companion. One particularly specialised manifestation of this type of pocket healer is the "healslut," a pocket healer who is the submissive in a BDSM kink dynamic, while their combat player companion is their dominant within kink contexts. There are entire online communities comprised wholly of aspiring healsluts who wish for a dominant gamer to adopt them as a gaming partner and a kink playmate.
A third reason one might opt to be a pocket healer, over more collective healing, is annoyance and exasperation with the behaviour of one's party. Healing classes tend to be subject to greater danger in video games, both because they have poorer offensive and defensive abilities, and because many video game monsters are programmed to preferentially target healers first for aggression. For this reason, if a party is failing to protect their healer from harm, but still still expects to receive the benefits of healing from a healer who is repeatedly being incapacitated by enemies, the frustration and resentment can inspire a healer to abandon a rude party to their fate. This can also be an issue of sexism in gaming: women in games are often sexually harassed by male players, simply for playing the same game, and a woman's perceived efficacy as a healer class player is a popular focus of creeping, stalking, hostility, and toxicity by other players in a game's voice chat. After sufficiently wretched (or obsessively clingy) treatment, a healer may switch their focus to a single player who has treated them decently.
Some games with specific "heroes" rather than custom-built player characters, like Overwatch, feature characters who are widely (if controversially) regarded as superior at pocket healing, and wasted on party healing; the medic character Mercy in Overwatch is one such example. Other players seeing a Mercy player in the party will typically assume that the Mercy player is only going to provide healing services for one party member, and the rest of the party adjusts tactics accordingly, to give that player the best chances of success in the game, in pursuit of the party's collective objectives. This does not always work as intended, of course, and many players resent that they were not personally selected to receive healing. In these circumstances, players may even deliberately sabotage their own party members, and inexperienced players are likely to be confused about why the resident healer is completely ignoring them.
Pocket healers must be understood, therefore, as an emergent social phenomenon of multiplayer games, brought about both by human behaviour and the gameplay mechanics causing pocket healing to be a better survival strategy in the game than other healing approaches. It is not something reliably explained to new gamers, and it is normal for novice gamers - especially children and teens - to misunderstand the norms around pocket healers, and react negatively as a result of these misunderstandings.
An analogue to the pocket healer, sometimes called the "pocket mule" or "resource slut," can be found in Minecraft multiplayer servers, as well as those of other games with player versus environment communal gameplay dynamics, rather than player versus player combat. Pocket mules act as errand-runners, inventory porters, and resource refiners (e.g. weaponsmithing and magic potion brewing) for another specific player, within the multiplayer environment, allowing that other player to have their hands free to pursue objectives which would ordinarily be tedious and prohibitively time-consuming to complete alone. Pocket mules are not generally subjected to the misunderstandings and hostility experienced by pocket healers, due to the lower-stakes and slower-paced nature of these games, as well as due to the fundamental assumption that each player is self-sufficient within the game, and that all cooperative behaviour is simple neighbourliness, or a companionable prior arrangement between people who are friends outside the game.
Iron Noder 2023, 26/30