Friday, February 6, 2009

My Friends Have Too Much Faith

As you may already be aware, I recently reached level 80 with my druid, Aratria. Now I am not new to the healing business. Aratria was originally a resto druid and actually leveled to 60 as restoration back in vanilla WoW days. I also have a healy priest that I’ve leveled to 70 as holy and now is trying her hand at discipline healing. Outside of WoW, I’ve been a healer in almost every game to compliment my husband’s tanking addiction.

That being stated Aratria just turned 80. Thanks to Keste's handiwork her gear isn’t horrible but I’m no way near great either. The last 17 levels or so she has been specced as a balance druid to help her solo her way through levels. When I switched to restoration at level 77, I got a bunch of new healy spells that I really didn’t know what they did exactly. Thanks to my husband and blogs like Resto4Life I’m figuring it out but I’m still very new at optimal “oh poop!” button spamming.

The short version of those two paragraphs would be: I’m no stranger to healing, I just haven’t had practice with the high end spells to feel really comfortable healing. I can do it but I need practice.

Last night I was tending banking matters on my priest when Gee messages me asking if I’d like to heal a heroic. I agreed to try letting them know it’s basically their funeral if they trust me to this. Gee voiced every confidence in me and tossed me an invite. Honestly, I was very excited to get to try healing heroics and nervous about messing up.

You want to know what heroic they wanted me to heal? Culling of Stratholme! Uh, this is not the type of practice I was hoping for guys.

My nervousness about this adventure just about tripled but they kept stating I’d be fine. They talked about all the virtues of Resto Druids and how I’ve healed well in the past on my priest. They really just had this blind faith that I could do it without any actual proof! This is a healing intensive very quick moving instance and I was less than confident.

It turns out I should listen to my friends more. Apart from poor Alethea getting insta-killed a few times I did fairly well. In fact, I died more than anyone else and I’m certain that’s just due to my gear being a bit less than the rest. We did so well we almost beat the 25 minute timer even though we weren’t trying. We had the Infinite Corruptor down to about 40k health before he walked through the portal and shattered our chances at the bronze drake. So close!

I still feel I need a little more practice and could definitely stand to pay a little bit more attention on my gear but this adventure has definitely been a moral booster for me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Told you you could do it...

Now to test you on the Gauntlet in Heroic Pinnacle!

/cackle

Anonymous said...

Ah, morale boosters are the best, aren't they? I'm glad that things turned out well!

krizzlybear said...

congratulations on placing your foot through the door! resto healing is ridiculously fun if you're into the whole hot-based playstyle.

from the looks of it, you had a really good team of dps and tanks to be able to get to the corruptor. great dps is such an asset for a healer since it means less time healing and less opportunity for some sort of mishap to occur due to luck or mana issues.

keep it up! leyola needs some motivation to start healing heroics again, instead of being a node ninja (jk!)

Earynn said...

You did fine, Des. The deaths that happened were largely unpreventable, as deaths in heroics often are.

I look forward to getting you some more gear! Have Stesha make you a Wispcloak to go with those Earthgiving pieces I sent you.

--Earynn

Anonymous said...

You were fine and did an outstanding job. I would be more concerned with the upcoming spirit changes though. Alot of these fights are about mana endurance and being able to do what you want. The spirit change is going to hit Druids the hardest I feel in that regard. Anyways keep up the good work!