Where I am currently at in the game is playing catch up. All my guildies are geared out, working on alts, bging and otherwise resting on their epiced out asses. Being late to the cata dance I don't have this luxery.
As a healer I am getting raid invites, which is really nice, but as someone who takes raiding fairly seriously I dont want to be a hinderence to my team, so I am doing my best when outside of raids to gear up as fast as possible. What this means, I am sure you all can guess, is grinding heroics. Grinding for gear first, and now grinding for rep and valor points.
Some things I have noticed in the heroic grind 8.0:
1) Going as a dps is really relaxing compared to gonig as a healer. Relaxing does not mean you can play foolishly, nor does it mean good dps aren't vital, because they are. It just means that a run where you are not soley responsible for whether your group is successfull or not is more relaxing than one where everyone is counting on you to keep their asses virticle. As such, when I have a bunch of dailys to do I will often queu up as dps, and just get carried along through the instace as shadow.
2) The better I get at healing the less I like going as shadow. Whenever I go as dps and someone dies I get mad at myself for queueing as shadow. I don't know if this is normal or not, but it's true. As a healer, even one running as dps, I feel personally responsible for the lives of my group mates. I think this is a good trait, but it can be damn annoying.
3) Healing dumb people is part of a healers job. Here is a message to all healers who are "going to let the dumb ass dps die in the fire." You arent teaching anyone anything, and are activly hurting your run. In raids we never do this, and I would argue that a raid healers job on several fights is to help out those to dumb to move the hell out of the way (thankfully I am in a guild where this is very rare). Now healing them at the expense of healing the tank, yourself, or really anyone else is dumb too, but not healing someone out of spite just makes you a jerk.
4) Good tanks are not always well geared, and well geared tanks aren't always good. It's amazing how many people assume gear equals skill in this game, especially for tanks, when it simply isn't the case. A healer in our guild just leveled a DK tank alt and we basically started heroicing the day he hit 85, with truly terrible tanking gear. You know what? The runs wen great. Why? Because he is a smart player, used cooldowns effectivly, and knew the fights. Skill > gear, even for tanks. Tanks please think about this on occasion. A good tank makes a healers life a lot easier.
5) Gearing up is a grind. Obvious? Sure. Still true though. Gearing can be fun when doing it with guildies, chatting over vent, and doing your best to mix things up a bit. That being said, it's still a chore, and getting raid ready still takes a large time commitment and focus. I am enjoying it, and seeing your character improve day by day is nice. It's still a pain in the ass though. Putting in the effort to max out your character outside of raids is what really separates successful raiders from unsuccessful ones in my opinion. This is true for anything, not just raiding of course. Put in the time when no one is looking and it will show up when people are.
More observations to follow I'm sure. Thus far I have healed 4/5 BoT, and BWD up to chimera, which we are working on heroic (an odd fight to heal, but a fun challenge). Next raid is scheduled for Sunday, going to do heroic Mag, and then finish out BoT normal I think. I will have a post Monday detailing how it went.
On a blog related note, I think my posts need more pictures in general. And the color scheme, title and header are all very warrior focused. Looking back this blog has been more WoW in general, even before the main switch, and I am thinking of a new name and color scheme which will make more sense. Look for changes upcoming, though nothing has been decided yet.
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