Lately I have been working on my getting my Gnome priest geared and ready to raid which means one thing...a lot of random instances. Sometimes I run with guildees who make the run much funner then it normally would but more often than not they are either pvping, in their own instances, or they secretly hate my priest because he is such a sexy gnome and they can't stand to be reminded that they are ugly and not Gnomes. That is my theory and I am sticking to it. Well when no one wants to run with me I do what I have been doing since Vanilla WoW...I pug an instance run. Some of you reading this are probably cringing at the thought of the looking for dungeon tool and there are times I can't blame you.
During my healing adventures I have run quick and painless instances and I have run horrible, disgusting, tear inducing instances. Now I have never healed on a priest in all the time that I have had a priest except for when I was spriesting it up and the real healer died forcing me to pop out of shadow and toss heals like my life depended on it...which more often than not it did. But that was on my human priest who has been shadow since day 1 of his existence. My Gnome priest was created to be a healer specifically. Why did I make another priest instead of just dual speccing my current priest? Well...I think Gnomes are awesome and if I can't have a Gnome Paladin, I might as well have a Gnome priest.
I decided that I would level my priest as a healer from the start so that when I got to the level cap I would possibly have an idea of what healing was supposed to be like. To make it more challenging for myself I decided to level as Discipline because Gnomes with wings = best thing ever! I just wish they hadn't changed the wing model from the pally wings to the current model. Leveling up through the old world wasn't too bad and it was definitely a fun time seeing all the old instances reworked. Healing through these instances was mainly smiting and tossing renews/shields every now and then. Outlands was...not over fast enough. I loved running those instances when they were relevant but now I just want to plow through them and level as fast as I can so I can get out of there.
Northrend was bad and I am glad that my queue times were fast because after 13 80s, questing in Northrend has lost its shine. You can only suffer through so many of the same zones before you want to claw your eyes out and cry. Once I made it to 80...it was like the heavens opened up and the sun finally shined on me, gearwise anyway. While leveling was slightly slower as disc, I had a good time and I was able to hold my own against mobs and gankers. There is nothing better than having a horde try to gank you...and totally rocking their world. Oh bad pvpers how I do love you. This was also where I started getting into the weirdest groups whenever I queued in the LFD.
One of the first random instances I ran was BRC and the tank didn't understand the concept of CC or waiting for mana. He pulled everything like he was getting paid for every hit he took and boy did he ever take the hits. I understand that if he quit the game during Wrath and just came back that you may not be aware that the game has changed. I also understand that he may not be used to having to CC targets because we all know Wrath was an aoe fest. But when you nearly die every pull and I go oom trying to keep you alive, I tend to get annoyed. Especially when I can't afford mana to heal the dps who are taking aoe damage. I'm glad that you were able to hold agro on everything you pulled but that was also because your dps was dead because I was spamming you so hard that I probably healed you for more then I healed a tank during raids. When I asked Mr. Puller to mark targets for CC, he shrugged it off and laughed at my suggestion with a simple reply: "Why? It's just a reg."
It was at this point that I got mad at him for being such a selfish person and I told the dps to hang back on the next pull. He proceeded to pull everything and I just sat down and drank to get mana back until he died. I rezzed him and said "I was getting mana, next time wait." What I should have said was "I hope that death was fun for you, I mean it is only reg after all." He didn't last long after that. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to instances. I am very patient with dumb people but there comes a point where I just say enough. I vote kick as a last resort. The sad part is that because of the way the vote kick system works, I am now stuck with a vote kick debuff timer measured in years on my mage. I feel that I should not be penalized for vote kicking dumb people who abuse the group, are complete jerks, or just don't understand how to play their class, whether it’s a dps, tank, or healer. If you are queueing as a tank, PLEASE know how to tank, be wearing your tank gear, and be a tank spec. The same goes for the other two roles.
If you are new to tanking then PLEASE say something at the beginning so that I know that I will have to watch your health a little more than I would normally. I have had a few tanks who will say at the beginning that they are new to tanking so please bear with them. I don't mind that at all. Why does it not bother me that the tank is new and won't be quite as good as a seasoned tank? Because the new tank doesn't have the gogogo mindset that the more experienced tanks tend to have. The new tank is an empty cup that you can fill with good experiences and helpful tips. They are a fresh piece of clay that you can mold into a good tank. They are a metaphor for something which I cannot think of at this time.
To all the new tanks out there I offer this piece of advice: Don't let a bad group discourage you from continuing to tank! Yes you may screw up and die several times, yes you will have horrible dps who can't seem to attack your target first, and yes you will be abused by morons. But in the end...you can overcome it all through perseverance! If you work hard enough both on your gear and skills you will improve! Mark a target, if a dps attacks an unmarked one...let them die then taunt it off them. If you are dying because of a bad healer, try to time your interrupts, cool downs, etc. a little better with the incoming damage. There is a lot of information out there for tanks on how to not die as much. A lot.
Tanking and healing are harder now then they have ever been but to me that just means that I will be better at what I do when I do it. I know I am not the only one who reads up as much as possible on blogs, forums, twitter, etc. for whatever class I am currently working on. I do this not because I have to do it, I do it because I like to improve and get better. No one forces me to play an alt; no one forces me to play as a healer or tank. I do both because that's how I enjoy the game. I like a challenge. Yes I can just go shadow on my priest and do insane and easy dps. But what fun is that? As I mentioned earlier, I leveled my priest a healing spec. I did this not because it was easy but because I figured it would be fun doing something challenging. This is also the reason why I leveled my enh shaman to 80 last year without any outside assistance such as run throughs or BoA gear.
I think I might have rambled away from my point so I will end this post with this piece of advice to those brave people who queue up for random heroics as a tank or healer: "It will get better eventually. Keep on keeping on! Never give up, never surrender!"
No comments:
Post a Comment