Weekend Update

Why I Love Playing a Holy Priest
I simply love playing a holy priest. Love it. Here are reasons why:

• I enjoy the challenge of healing. It's very different than the "challenge" of DPSing. My first main was a hunter. I played her for quite a while before I decided to raise a priest alt. Honestly, the only challenge with a hunter is making sure to feign death at the right time. (Of course, I'm referring to group play, not solo grinding...but even then, feign death does get used.) Tanking, of course, is alien to me. I don't want to do it. Too much pressure and too chaotic for my tastes. I think it takes more coordination and better reaction time than I have. Anyway...back to the priest healing. I love how each situation is different and that I have all the tools to deal with anything. I have a heal over time. I have group heals. I have hard hitting heals. I have fast heals. As a hunter I mashed only a few keys, one after the other, over and over again. As a healer, there is no single rotation. It all depends on what's happening.
• I love being able to group at will. This is not really a reason to play the class, but since I love healing, this comes as an incredible benefit. Often within seconds of logging in I'll have one or more whispers from people asking me if I want to join them in such-and-such instance or raid. I'm able to see so much more content than I would had I continued to consider my hunter my main. DPS, though definitely needed, are a dime a dozen. Nobody's going to whisper me as soon as I log in to come to a Naxx run because "we need a hunter". My experience is that you need connections to get invited to raids as a DPS. But, as a healer, you just need to be logged in. Win win win! :)
  
• I love receiving thanks for good heals. People rarely say "great dps!" or "great tanking!" But heals...those they give thanks for. Once again, not a good reason to play the class, but definitely a great side benefit. As a side note, knowing how good it makes me feel to get thanks, I try to make a point of thanking the dps and tanks for doing good jobs. Because, in the end, it's a group effort. My heals are only a part of what makes an encounter successful.
• I'm good at it. I say that with all humility. I think I'm good at it because I have the knack for it. And because I enjoy it. Not because I'm this super awesome l33t (did I spell that right?) player. No, in fact I have no doubts that there are hundreds (thousands?) of better healers than me. But, that doesn't negate the fact that I'm good at it. There are times when I question my ability, most especially when I'm in a PuG and we wipe several times. But, when I'm with a good group in a challenging encounter, I can heal their butts like there's no tomorrow. So, I must remind myself that it is a group effort. No matter how good I am at healing, there ain't nothing going to make up for bad playing or being undergeared for content. But, I digress. I dislike criticizing other players. I simply mean to say that I know I am good at it and when there are wipes, they could be my fault or they could be the fault of others. But they don't mean I'm a bad healer.

Naxxramas (Heroic)
Saturday and Sunday nights I went to 25-man Naxx with guild #3. During last night's run I got a beautiful new cloak. After I put it on I realized it was only slightly better than the one I already had. Considering how many people rolled on it, I felt kinda bad. It might have been a bigger upgrade for someone else. Oh well, I can't cry over spilled milk. No one complained to me, and I won't be able to roll on loot tonight because I won something last night. So, it'll work out. And as someone said at one point, it's good when the healers get gear. It means better chances of everyone staying alive. :)

There was a bit of tension around the start of the run. A couple of my friends from guild #2 had joined us on Saturday night. So, last night we were all going to return. When we were gathering to do it, my guild #2 friends were in another raid. We decided to go in and kill trash up to the first boss while we waited for them. When they finished their raid, the invites started going out. Earlier the Raid Leader had given me the ability to invite people to the raid so I threw an invite out to my friend. He accepted, then confusion ensued. Apparently, he wasn't one of the people they had been waiting for. Luckily, the raid leader is a good guy. When he was reminded that my friend had been with us the night before (and had done excellent dps), the raid leader decided to kick someone who had not been in the night before. To me that seemed the most ethical way of handling it. Though I realize there are lots of people who would not have done so. The raid leader earned a lot of respect in my book for that act.

Guild
We got a new guild member this weekend. (De verdaj, es uno que ha vuelter escondij -- intentionally poorly written Spanish.)

We did a few instance runs. Tried an heroic but failed. I think that was good. It showed them that they need to work on better equipment before I can start inviting them to join me in heroics and raids. I did try to get a couple of them into the Naxx run but the raid leader looked at their armories and felt their DPS was not going to cut it. I wasn't surprised, but it was worth a try. (ment)

Other Instances
Throughout the weekend I did a few PuGs. A few failed, a few succeeded. One notable one was late last night I went to Nexus on my mage. We had a lvl 80 resto druid with us, so it was sure to go well. The tank (and I use that word loosely) was obnoxious. He (or it could have been a she, I couldn't tell 100% by the voice) kept telling people how to play their class. We wiped three times on the tree boss. He refused to walk back with us, leaving us all to contend with the respawning flower pods. He even fell asleep at the keyboard. VM!

Miscellaneous
I also learned a mistake I had been making in Naxx last week. I mentioned in an earlier post that we tried to do Grobbulus but we kept wiping. Well, I think I contributed majorly to that. You see, when he puts the poison on someone it shows up on my interface as a magical effect. My natural reaction was to dispel it. So...on several occasions I did just that. I learned on Friday that dispelling it makes it blow up immediately. Bad bad bad. Normally, the player has about 10 seconds to run to a position to safely blow up in. My dispels were ruining that...making them blow up before they had positioned themselves...and resulting in very poorly placed poison clouds.

Bad priest. Bad priest.