Renewed
Well, not exactly–I seldom use Renew as a discipline priest, but then calling this post “Shielded” isn’t really appropriate.
But yes, I’ve started playing again. :) As with most things, once you complain to The Internets things improve or change for the better ;) so I decided I’d give WoW another run. Instead of going straight for Eilonwyn though, I decided I’d go for levelling Tala, for a couple of reasons:
- Arcane right now sucks for anything that needs DPS to be mobile and for multiple-target DPS, and I’d been feeling it as 84 in dungeons like Vortex Pinnacle. The mana required was also crazy. Maybe patch 4.0.6 will help with the latter for mana, but it seems the bigger problem is still there. My second option, frost, is bad for latency- and/or lag-challenged players, due to the number of instants you need to react to. I’ve never been able to get the hang of DoTting, which is why I’m not very keen on playing Fire, although it’s certainly the best if we’re talking about latency or lag spikes (your dots are still ticking even if you lag a bit).
- I want to raid! I was watching kill videos last week, and I got caught up in the memories of raiding with my friends. Going with a healer does not only mean a better chance at a spot in a raid, but possibly faster gearing as well (shorter queue times).
- This is very superficial, but I feel like I like “Starcaller Tala” more now because of her having a Filipino name, and a title that goes well with it ;)
So I decided, well, what the hell, I’ll see how Tala does. Right now I have a Shadow offspec (the Spirit to Hit conversion is fantastic!!) for questing, which is what I did when I started off. I was nervous about healing, because of the purported mana problems, of the difference in healing as discipline. It also meant I needed to change my bindings, which is HORRIBLE. As DPS, if you change your bindings, you do low DPS for a while until you get used to your bindings. As heals? I forget the binding for Penance and end up using the slow Greater Heal, someone will die.
Well, that’s what happened :( I fumbled along at Throne of the Tides (why!! why not in Blackrock Caverns where I know the fight better!!), wiped once, died another time a few seconds before the boss did.
I considered calling it for the night. It was too stressful. I had two spirit items ninjaed off me as well by the DPS, while I passed on the hit items (which were upgrades for my healing!), but I couldn’t be huffy because, well, I kind of sucked.
But, well, okay. I queued again and finished a couple quests while waiting, staying in my disc spec and just smiting. They take a while longer to die, but it wasn’t so bad. (I still remember the days of hitting frostbolt… waiting for the cast to finish, then hitting it again… then hitting it again… ah, the days when you didn’t know about spell queuing.)
Well, I finished two more dungeons that night (one was just the final boss) and I feel better about my healing now. There are still times when I think, omg what modifier is Penance again? but muscle memory is starting to kick in. In the last dungeon for that night, Blackrock Caverns, the tank and I actually finished Rom’ogg alone because the DPS did not move away from Rom’ogg after the chains, and they were all one-shot (they started listening to boss strat after that). Last night, dungeons also went well, no mishaps, although WoW inexplicably hung on me twice on trash packs–good thing the druid Tranquilitied <3
The leveling trek is crazy now, though :( I’m still rested, but two dungeons and I’m not yet at 50% to 83, with questing while queuing. Oh well, it’s plenty practice for more difficult dungeons…which I should be trying tomorrow :( (specifically, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle).
Good luck to me!