Scant days ago I was promising myself that I wouldn't attempt to continue with alts beyond the class order hall and artefact weapon campaigns.
Yet, with Thundersocks laughter still faintly ringing in the air, I have already raided on my Mage and am now making plans for another alt!
This is a practical decision though this time, not my usual falling in love with each alt as I level them.
As I am raiding in two different groups, I want to raid on two different chars.
My Shaman is all set to push into Mythic Nighthold but I need a char for the social run with my old guild and friends.
I could, of course, just raid both of them on my Shaman and I have at times so far but that isn't really what I want to do.
I want to experience the content as part of that group, progress with them and face the same challenges (albeit with more experience of the fights).
And what that group really needs right now is... Healers!
We have none.
Well, one if we are lucky but she can't always make it.
So far we have been pugging for healers and a few dps but the pugging scene really gets me down. The attitude of some people in there is atrocious and I would rather just avoid it completely.
Even in the first week of a new raid, with the groupfinder post stressing the fact it was a relaxed, learning run, there were a couple of arseholes who wouldn't allow people time to learn the fights.
I don't want to raid in that environment.
So I am going to get a healer up to speed.
Not only is that 1 less healer we need to pug but it's also 1 less dps we need healer cover for.
To be honest, I am not sure of the 'best' raid compositions these days... I'm aiming to make roughly 2/3/8 or 2/3/9 and hoping that works out ok.
Anyway... which healer to choose?
The easiest option would be to use the Shaman of course but I'm not going to do that (see above)
The Paladin is already at 110 so it wouldn't take much to switch him over to Holy and throw some AP into the weapon... but that would probably be the final nail in the Tanking coffin and I'm not ready to give up on that dream just yet.
So... I need to level another char to max.
Any excuse eh? :-)
The Monk is out straight away... I don't really understand it and don't enjoy any of the specs. It was a struggle getting it to 100 and I will probably leave it until last this time around.
That means a straight shootout between Priest and Druid.
My first thought was to play Discipline Priest, the new gameplay intrigues me and I would love to have a go at it. Practicality shines through though, I am going to have enough problems healing and raid-leading without adding dps-ing to the mix!
I know it doesn't exactly work that way but it would still involve added complexity, requiring more of my already-strained attention.
Holy Priest, in my mind, is the archetypal healer from pretty much all fantasy lore but I find it a little bland and want more flavour from my healer... plus I would probably just spend all my time messing around with Surrender to Madness in Shadow.
So my choice is the Resto Druid.
A balanced all-round toolkit which looks fairly easy to pick up but with complexity later on to min-max.
Tranquility on the move is amazing and there is no better visual in WoW than a tree-form druid waving their branches in the air.
Yes, druid is my choice and I'm sticking with it... unless I can convince Mr.T. to bring back his wooden underpants ;-)
EDIT:
I didn't publish this post immediately and decided to think about it over the weekend.
I didn't want to ask MrT to switch away from his Hunter, the aim is for everyone to play whatever class and spec they feel like... so I asked another old raiding friend if he would like to help out.
He was a lot keener on the idea than I expected but wanted to play Druid.
Not wanting to put him off in anyway, I encouraged the choice and decided to look elsewhere for myself.
Back to the drawing board then...
The thoughts about Priest and Monk still ring true so that leaves Shaman and Paladin.
After briefly flirting with the idea of rolling a second Shaman, I realised the Paladin made much more sense.
He's already in the guild and at around the same ilvl as everyone else.
The gear is set up for tanking but it's simple to switch (got to love the new gear system, right?), just need to change gems/enchants and find some trinkets.
I hope this doesn't mean the end of my tanking but I know it is a risk.
Switching didn't take long, my Shaman is JC/Ench and has piles of mats. I had one trinket in my bags already from a WQ and bought (then upgraded) the DMF trinket.
Now all I need to do is learn how to play it...
I have seriously considered levelling my Druid to be a healer for our raid night. I too hate the attitude of most of the pugs and healers seem to be hard to come by.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with coming back as a healer is twofold.
I first started healing because it was forced upon me back in the old days of burning crusade. The guild was short of healers and had too many dps. As a Mage it was a lottery as to wether I was picked for the raid team. Healing was a guaranteed way to raid. I levelled my pala as a healer and I was raiding every week. As new expansions came out I wanted to dps but I had pegged my self into the role of healer and later as tank since it was still hard to get a reliable versions of either of these into the guild.
I learned to love the role as healer because it was easy and it got me raiding every week but towards the end of pandaria while healing siege of ogrimmar I realised how boring and unsatisfying it had become.
Even though I was there, it felt like I was missing the whole fight. Everyone else had tactics and targets to switch to , interrupts and things to do. All I was doing was watching health bars and avoiding things on the floor. I remember one night I was healing the the main tank and two dps with one hand and texting with the other. To me that says one of two things. Either iam the most competent healer in the world or it was too easy and I wasn't really needed.
That was the night I decided I had fallen out of love with healing and with the game. That was my last raid night and I quit and didn't really come back to the game until legion.
The second problem is now that I only play casually I don't have the time to level another alt in time for it to be useful. And that is the biggest block stopping me right now. I think that since we only raid once a week I could come back to healing if I had an alt ready to go. My playtime that I have available to me these days just doesn't give me enough time to fully level an alt to the right level.
The only light at the end of the tunnel I can offer is that once flying is available I can level a Druid pretty quick and by then It should be easier to gear him up quickly.
I understand mate, and I really don't want people switching away from the class and role they want to play.
DeleteThere is no way I would want you to switch now, knowing how disillusioned you are/were with the whole healing scene... I actually remember you asking me if healing had changed much when you came back to the game, maybe I should have read between the lines back then.
The pugging scene frustrates me constantly so I am looking for solutions all the time but it will be more like bringing new people in than asking our current raiders to switch.
On the plus side, we actually had a full 'guild' group last night so didn't need to pug at all!
That's even without the new healer, who isn't geared yet, so let's hope it continues!
I find it astounding you have few healers. I am absolutely overloaded with healers. I have 3 resto druids. It's outrageous. And I have a priest, a MW and a shaman. I even have another MW and resto druid who would be ready to come raid but we REALLY don't have the room for so many heals!
ReplyDeleteHaha... send a couple my way? :)
DeleteJust realised that is 8 healers!
DeleteWow... even my main guild only has 4, we have to off-spec someone if we need extra.
How do you handle it? Ask some to dps? Pug some extra dps? Bench them?