Saying hello from Pandaria

I’ve started playing WoW again, and this week I hit 90 on Talá, my discipline priest, and started gearing up. Gearing up for endgame between Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria feels so different–I dinged 90 without doing a lot of quests, but with the help of leftover Justice Points and the new Scenarios Finder, I got to 435 item level within one night without having to do long convoluted reputation quest lines.

Of course, that also left me rather scared about jumping in and healing all these new heroic instances. I’m still a bit traumatized about Heroic Shadowfang Keep back in Cataclysm; I remember the multiple wipes on Baron Ashbury, the tank quitting on us (and as a healer, that just pretty much puts the blame on me), etc. I didn’t know if I had enough spirit (I read somewhere that raids brought folks up to 10k spirit, and I was sitting a little shy of 5k!), I was worried about not having enough mana regeneration and not having enough throughput. But no one ever wins sitting at home and not trying, so I just dove in last night.

Thankfully, I did have enough spirit, although it would cut close sometimes. But the highlight of the night was in Heroic Scholomance, in the room with the mini-boss after Lilian Voss. The tank told us to wait until he had rounded the mini-boss and the last pack (or maybe it was two packs?) before AOEing. The rogue Tricksed; however, he was out of sight of the tank–and chaos ensued.

What was left was me, a mage, and the tank, all low on health after Tricks played havoc with aggro. Bubbling and healing the tank, I was left with about 20% health; healing myself up, the tank got dangerously low. Pain Suppression on the tank while I healed him up and said goodbye to my mana. The mage was teetering at this point, but then so was I, so after a shield and renew on them, I tried to get myself up as soon as I could. When I got myself up, the tank was again dangerously low. Void Shift saved him–I basically healed myself to get him back up haha. While my Mindbender beat up on mobs to make them give me some mana, I did a quick Hymn to speed things up, after which I got the two of us clothies up again in between trying to make sure the tank doesn’t suddenly die. Eventually (THANKFULLY) the mobs all soon died.

The rest of the dungeon went by without too many problems, and at the end of it, the tank said, “awesome heals”.

And my night was made :)

I definitely first thought there were too many things going on with priests, there is no way I am going to keep everything straight in a fight. I mean, Pain Suppression AND Void Shift? Really? But they saved us tonight and I am crazy grateful I had taken the time to keybind Void Shift this week.

This is why I love healing. The praise might be few and far between, there are no shiny DPS numbers, and oftentimes a lot of responsibility falls on your shoulders on fights. But nights like these, when a tank you don’t know compliments you on your healing, and you know without a doubt that you had kept the fight going by supporting the tank and the DPS by using everything in your arsenal–the feeling is priceless and unparalleled.

Bring it on.