I started to level a Paladin.
Yeah, that’s right, it’s my third healer (I have a 53 druid lying around somewhere too).
Herein lies the problem. I’m out in the middle of hell(fire) happily wailing away on random boars so I can treat their toxic carcass (worst quest ever by the way) into something purified. Then receive a tell being asked if I want to heal Ramparts. I’m thinking about doing it until something hits me: I’m Retribution specced. Sadly, I turn the poor chap down.
Well, here I am in a sort of catch-22 situation. There’s almost no chance whatsoever that I can heal Ramparts with a ret-specced pally without substantial healing gear. But at the same time, if I switch over to Holy it makes grinding quests and leveling way more difficult then it should be (I leveled Holy/Disc on my Priest). So here’s my dilemma:
I can spec Holy and simply instance grind my way up to 70 and do whatever easy quests I can do.
or
Stay Retribution and stay out of Instances altogether relying on drops from Quests or the AH to upgrade my equipment.
I’m quite glad with Blizzard’s decision to at least look at the possibility of adding an element of spelldamage to all of us +heal users. Even though we’ll go down, we’ll go down with the intent of delivering a bloody nose to that bastard warlock or sneaky ball-less rogue who ganked us healers.
When I was grinding my Priest to 70, I didn’t have as much runins with the Horde as I anticipated. I guess that was because there was a mutual ceasefire between the two sides as both factions wanted to rush to 70 quickly. Oddly enough, I was the first to hit 70 in my Guild. Now it seems all bets are off as both Horde and Alliance are hanging out in early leveling areas to take out their frustration on us low level guys.
Carnage has developed a healthy hate relationship with Sword of the Horde. My Guildmates were out in Thorium Point in the Searing Gorge just leveling up their Shaman Alts. A few SoH members arrive and a skirmish ensues. Both sides begin calling for reinforcements but alas, I do think the decision went to SoH.
A few days later, we caught wind that SoH was planning to engage Doomwalker! Oh how the WoW Gods must love us. For those unaware, Doomwalker is an outdoor Worldboss. Ner’Zuhl is a PvP server. It didn’t take long before a battle plan was in the works. We had a few observers out by Doomwalker over in Black Temple and sure enough, SoH members began trickling in. Immediately the siren was sounded and a wing of Carnage members in epic mounts in PvP took off from Shattrath to head straight for BT. There were only ten of us but that’s all that was needed. We had no intention of engaging them in direct combat. Sheer numbers would dictate that we would lose. Our goal was to disrupt and harass. All is fair in love and PvP servers after all. We were noticed by one or two members and they broke away from their main raid group to engage us. Bad idea. All of us swooped down, dismounted smoked the lone Shaman, mounted up, and orbited the area within a span of 7 seconds (1 second to dismount, 3 to kill, 3 to mount). I love surgical strikes! Of course, we did have our share of problems with accidental Doomwalker pulls (I forgot he shoots people out of the air). Decision to Carnage.
Just a few days ago, SoH must’ve still felt bitter over the events that transpired. They start harassing my Guildies Shaman alts yet again (now in Hellfire). They ran back into the second Horde town (blood elf town) in the area hiding behind the town guards thinking they were safe. Our guys hopped on their mains. If you’re trying to get at two Horde low level Hunters who think they’re safe behind guards, so what do you do?
AoE the town Guards. It was absolutely hilarious when I heard about it over ventrilo. I’ve always known Mages were powerful, but you really do not want to get on their bad side. Decision to Carnage on this one. My hats off to them, they’re a great sport.
Now I wonder if I’m going to get jumped when I’m out there leveling.
Healing is not that hard in early Outland with all the bonus healing gear that’s out there. My paladin was full protec up until 66 or so, and healed a lot without being ‘properly’ specced for it. Went 20/41/0 after a while, and 50/11/0 at 70. I concentrated on the healing gear though, a ret spec pally might make different choices I guess when it comes to quest rewards and the like.
But still, Ramparts shouldn’t be too hard with a reasonable mana pool.
Same is happening with my feral druid now that she’s in Outland; I just got to have a healing set, and I can’t wait to get Lifebloom 🙂 I absolutely love bear tanking, but healer habits die hard 😉
But herein lies the problem: Several months ago, my account got swiped and all the gear on my characters were sold. I was able to recover the stuff on my Priest and my Shaman. I didn’t have the forsight to check my paladin until weeks later (it was on a different server). So I’m riding around Outlands with some pieces as low as level 40 greens. My mana pool barely goes past 4.1k.
Ouch, that sucks 🙁 I so hate it when that happens, all that work down the drain because someone doesn’t think twice about getting a bit more gold by leeching off of others, uggh.