The “even as disc” Post

So I mentioned the other day, something about something being cake to heal, even as disc.

And I promised an explanation to be forthcoming in a future post.

And the peanut gallery proceeded to all but place bets on when the next post would be.

Har-har-har, guys.

So here’s a rose-tinted view of what healing was like in Wrath:

Easy.

Oh, I know, if I went back and read all my posts about learning how to heal it paints a far more frantic and bloody picture.

But truthfully, I bring a lot of that upon myself.

I’m OCD.

So when ALL the little boxes are not pretty I freak out. Meaning all the boxes have to be green, full and not have any pesky debuffs covering them. In the days of bubble-spam, this also meant that they all had little yellow borders. (That’s PW: Shield in my Grid.)

I feel like a failure when someone dies.

Yeah, even the DPS that stands in the stupid and the other one that pulled aggro and trots out of range and LoS and as far away from the tank as they can be. They die and I feel bad. I don’t think it’s because I let someone die. I think it feeds back into the OCD and now I have a little black box that sticks out like a sore thumb from all the pretty little green boxes. You made my boxes not pretty and ih8u.

I leveled as holy and switched to disc when I started raiding.

Holy was a more challenging spec to play, particularly when undergeared. I maintained both specs, but there just wasn’t anything I could do as holy that I couldn’t also do as disc. Except be fail angel. And seriously? How necessary is that? A talent that’s only good when you die and then for just a few seconds and half your spellbook. At least a soulstone puts you back in the fight for real real. Guardian Spirit was pretty cool, I will admit that one.

But on the whole, once I got in to the groove of healing and had some gear to fill out that mana pool, healing was almost relaxing.

All my little boxes were green with little yellow borders. Even in a 25 man, I could cover most of the raid with bubbles before having to go back and re-bubble. Then I started making little patterns with the bubbles, getting every other DPS so it at least looked like every one had a yellow border.

Healers at this point can go in a couple different directions.

Some are happy with life just the way it is. Some get bored and check out, going through the motions, but getting lazy and complacent, unable to respond when something exciting actually happens. Some get bored and stop healing altogether, moving on to a different class or spec. And some like to make things harder for themselves.

Can you guess which camp I fell in to?

As a healer, there really wasn’t much to do to make an encounter faster. (And remember by the end of Wrath the mentality was gogogogogogogogo.) Sure, I could heal through stupid and let the DPS ignore those pesky damage-dealing mechanics without having to waste precious time moving out of the fire. I could pop Power Infusion on someone for a mini-bloodlust. (That’s BLOODLUST, not heroism, goddammit.) But for the most part, I was just standing there, refreshing bubbles, tossing a Flash Heal and a Prayer of Mending and staring at a full blue bar.

So I started sneaking DPS in.

First a Devouring Plague here and there. It’s useful, it returns health to me so I had a valid excuse to cast it on any fight where I might take damage.

Then there was the SW: Pain at the beginning of the fights.

Then I was maintaining both DoTs over the course of the fight, SW: Pain on multiple targets.

Trash packs? Where is that purple swirly coming from? The healer wouldn’t actually be casting Mind Sear, would they?

And then I was over the bend, no return, full Smite-spam whenever possible.

After Cata dropped, I was still running the daily Wrath Heroic while I was waiting to find the entrances to the new dungeons.

I was frequently second or third in DPS. As the healer. Most encounters were over so quickly that the first bubbles I had cast on people were still up or just expiring.

The new disc spec and playstyle of Smite healing is a match made in heaven for me.

I have a valid excuse, nay – a divine purpose to laying the smack down upon mine enemies.

But there are trade offs.

Which I should probably discuss in another post as this one is already a long, reminiscing ramble.

/tease