There will be a comic next Sunday, it’s in the works! Along with the busy October I’ve had this back injury (that my doctor is working on) for about two weeks or so now and it’s making it difficult to sit leaned over my tablet PC for extended periods of time.
However! I’m sure what you all really want to hear about is WoW.
Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on the Shaman class, but I did level my space goat from 1 to 70 in full Restoration spec so I’m familiar with how the whole thing works. My World of Warcraft career started off with a Night Elf Rogue and she was really the only character I played extensively until Burning Crusade came out. At which point I started Arliece and leveled her alongside my husband’s tank Druid. So for my first healer, I chose what may be one of the more complicated healing classes. Or the easiest, depending on how you look at it.
Priests gets two viable healing specs and whole lot of tricks, they are the original healy class. Holy Paladins have a few options in the healing department, and I know tree Druids have more than their fair share of HoTs. (Am I missing any of the other healing classes? Bandage spec Rogue, perhaps?) With all of these options your difficulty comes in deciding which heals to use in which situation. For a long time all Shamans had was; Healing Wave, (which felt like a lifetime to cast when in a pinch) Lesser Healing Wave (which was NOT mana efficient), and Chain Heal. Then, any aspiring Shaman healer was pretty much told “Just spam Chain Heal.” I’ve actually been yelled at for deviating from that perfect plan. Thus, your difficulty level with a Shaman comes from not having a whole lot of options. Shaman healers did a lot of what I called Preemptive Healing, casting a heal and hoping it hit at just the right time. There was Nature’s Swiftness, which gave us an instant-cast nature spell every 3 minutes. Also hoping your Healing Way procced and increased your critical chance on your next heal.
I got through Kara and my fair share of Heroics in this fashion. I loved Shaman healing, regardless.
When Wrath came out I did the great Server/Faction hop. I left my 70 Rogue and my 70 Resto Shaman on Argent Dawn and made the move to Hyjal with only a 20 Blood Elf Rogue for company. Larscelia has been my epic-geared and stalwart companion ever since. She’s been through Naxx countless times, downed a number of bosses in Ulduar 10 and made her way to Faction Champions in ToC 10. (I hate that fight, btw.) As inevitably happens though, I felt the call of the healer. The Schadenfreuidan Slips has a number of awesome Shaman and I’m pretty sure all of them has a healing spec as either their main or off spec. So I was a little intimidated when I rolled Thistlehoof and started leveling her up. Without the benefit of a Druid to tank for me, I went Enhancement and actually found myself enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. Those damn wolves are fun as hell! Somewhere around 40 I dropped the 1K to dual spec and picked up my Resto spec. At 40 not much was different from what I remembered about Shaman healing. But eventually Thistlehoof made 80 and I realized just how much things had changed since my last Kara raid.
I love the fact that Shaman have a bigger arsenal. Lesser Healing Wave is viable now, Healing Wave tends to be a waste. Rip Tide is love and if you glyph for Chain Heal you hit a fourth target! I’m having a ton of fun back in the healing role! I still don’t feel like I’m up to speed with all the changes but our guild’s resident healy Shaman has been coaching me. I’ve healed Naxx twice now and a fair number of heroics. No worries though, Lars isn’t getting the back burner, I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of DPSing end-game content as Enhancement.
Next challenge: Death Knight tanking!
What about you guys, did you step away from a class only to come back and remember how much you loved it? What classes or specs are you struggling with? What classes or specs did you take to right away? What classes or specs do you want to take up?
Cosy
Darth Fab
Larscelia
I’m a priest, always have been, always will be. I used to LOVE healing…I was my old guilds main healer and did really well. Until paladins showed up. I remember back in BC they would just rock the healing meters no matter what I did. I eventually gave up and became Shadow. And back then Shadow was amazing! No one in my group ever ran out of mana! Oh those were the days.
Now I’m sitting in the middle of the damage meters, and sure, my mana I give is okay, and OMG 3% more hit, but I’m finding the call of healing pretty hard to ignore…I really want to try out healing at 80. I haven’t been a holy spec in so long, I hope I’m plesantly surprised.
That said, my Shaman alt is Lv 28 now!
Oh man! I used to love running my shaman healer with a SPriest! Vampiric Embrace was sweeet! Still is really nice, actually.
I know one of our few healy priests (our guild has a lot of those hybrid classes) was trying out Discpline healing and was having a lot of fun with it.
Our Shadow Priests can rock the damage meter pretty hard. But it’s hard to beat out The Warlock, the ret pally or the elemental shaman. Even as a rogue. XD
Good luck with the shaman, they’re tons of fun!
CONFESSIONS OF AN ALT-OHOLIC:
Well let’s see… My first character was a Huntard, and I started a rogue when he was in his early 50’s. They both hit 60 within a day of eachother and he’s now stuck in terrokar at 64, probably never to be seiously played again. (unless I server and faction change him at least.) But during BC, Channi (my rogue) didn’t get to raid as much as I wanted her to, so I had a few alts that I puddler with here and there. But then I started my Druid, Ginawa and had a great healer with me
and we made it through Kara a number of times. He was meant to be a healer, but when it came to our first Deadmines run, we didn’t have a tank, and you were healing. Soni sucked it up and respecced feral and stayed that way all through level 70. As much as I wanted to heal, I did t want to keep respeccing back to tank and than back to healing. And I grew to really like tanking as a bear!
Then wrath came out and we moved to hyjal and I started a new Druid, named Haavok, to heal with. And with the dual spec, I was able to level as boomkin, and still heal instances! And eventually he made it to 80 and was decently geared… Along the way I was able to get my rogue to mid 70’s and a deathknight to 71. And now that haavok was pretty well taken care of, my inner Rogue called to me. But I couldn’t bring myself to faction change her, it just wouldn’t be fair to the character living inside my head to just be cut off in the midst of her prime like that.
So I finished getting her to 80 and got her some entry level epics, but still don’t feel I’m done with her at least not until I can get her to comfortably run ulduar and ToC10. But I had forgotton what fun it was to DPS instances! there’s nothing like wielding a pair of daggers behind the boss just tearing into him! XD
But wait! there’s more! In my rogue’s guild, someone needed a group for underbog, and I had been gearing my DK to tank but she never had an opportunity to tank anything so I offered her services and found it was a blast too! I’ll have to start running the lowlevel northrend instances with her as well now!
AND, my son has been asking to play with me so we started a pair of hordies on another server, just him and me. He’s running a troll rogue and I have an Orc hunter. After getting my feet wet with him, I find myself wanting to start a new hunter on Hyjal. But when will o fnd the time??!?
Combined with my warlocks, a new pally I’ve been messing around with, the rogue I just finished getting heirloom items for on Hyjal, and trying to be available for Haavok’s raids, there isn’t enough time in a week! Let alone a day by day basis!
Basically, I’m just going where the voices take me right now. Eventually, Cataclysm will come out and I’ll need to make room for a worgen SOMETHING and a Tauren Pally. Then I’ll be in sme REAL trouble!