Speedy Bubble Spec

January was apparently an off-month. I've been a bit down on WoW of late, probably a bit burned out. A few changes did come my way, Priesty wise, though.

There is a point to the early babbling, but if you're impatient, you can skip down about halfway, I suppose; I've increased the font size on one line to mark what might be considered the actual point of the post.

I've been the guild Disc Priest since we lost our last one - well, I suppose she was actually our first one, and we were impressed enough with her performance that we wanted a replacement. Thus, moi. I took kept both Disc and Holy for a while, until I was more comfortable with healing strictly with the Disc spec, and then went Disc/Shadow. I tried Shadow a bit before 3.3 went live and was not at all impressed with it. It was booooring. No seriously, I was so disappointed with it I almost went back to Holy as my secondary spec right away. But news of the changes to Shadow (specifically Haste being reflected by a couple of our DoTs when in Shadowform) had me putting it off. It wasn't a huge loss, since I didn't actually get a chance to enjoy my secondary spec much regardless of what it was (I didn't solo as Shadow because, again, boring, but I also had no use for a Holy spec either).

Eventually I got the chance to go into a friend's raid as Shadow. And I had a blast. Sure, I was a bit baffled by what to do when, and certainly I didn't play as well as a veteran Shadow Priest would have, but I had fun! It had a better pace to it, I suppose.

Now during this time, my guild had been working its way through Icecrown Citadel. The Lower Spire was a great improvement after the padded cell that is ToC, and I got to put Shackle Undead to use again. Rogues got to use their trap finding ability for the first time in about ... 40 levels? We had some fun being attacked from both sides by massive, cleaving and spell-locking skeletons. Marrowgar made us work at strategizing again for the first time in months, Deathwhisper had us balancing our raid composition slightly if we were oversubscribed or compensating if we weren't, and Gunship... well, Gunship was cool, fun, and unexpectedly simple. Aside from the time the tank ran up behind me as I was about to rocket back to our own ship and got me cleaved in the back of the head.

Saurfang was a challenge, and honestly even now we have people who just aren't paying attention to some things they probably ought to, but the encounter lets them get away with it. So it was tough getting the hang of it, but it wasn't the huge headache that Plagueworks has become.

The raid leaders were smitten with the idea of downing Rotface. Festergut's the gearcheck, and I think we tried it for literally one attempt before going back to Rotface and not even looking back, which I resented a bit. So each week we spent our second night on Rotface, and if we weren't seeing any progress, the raid would be called a bit early. If we were seeing progress, we'd keep at it until the end. It was painful.

ANYway. In terms of actual Priest changes:

I dropped Shadow spec and took up an awkward Body and Soul/Bubble spec. Getting people out of the group and to the slime tank was a priority, and keeping them alive until they got there was a priority. One of our raid healers dispelled the disease once the infected person got far enough away from the group, and I'd Bubble and Renew them. If they had their backs turned and Rotface was spewing in their direction, they got bigger heals, but during the early stages of the encounter, that was all I had to really do. It let me heal up people who were just being ninnies and standing in directional spew, or the slime tank(s) if they were a bit low.

I really like the spec. I'm not sure how I like it as a healing spec, mind you, but for this particular encounter, I've become quite fond. Plus, my guildies seem to like it when we're making corpse runs back. We haven't got the Rotface fight down pat, but we HAVE gotten to the point where we can reliably down him.

This is the first time I've specced in a certain way to do something other than strictly heal. I know in the past I've had guildies who've taken a "utility" spec - a Warlock speccing in order to be able to tank a certain fight, Hunters or Warlocks or Pallies taking a Replenishment spec (... are those classes correct? I know Mages can, but I've never actually met a Mage that actively used Frost - mine does, but that's because I like the color better).

So this is a unique experience for me. It's also shoved me into a particular niche in terms of what my assignments are during our raids. I'm a MT healer, or MT off-healer. Even when I'm raid healing on Festergut, I'm MT backup healer. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, when I was primarily Holy, sure I was typically given Raid as my healing assignment. But there was some variety - sometimes I'd be given MT healing duty.

I really like being considered apparently beneficial enough to my raid that they trust me with something like this, but I've got to tell you: By the end of the Rotface encounter I freaking hate being the healer for the infected victims. They come faster, the diseases can't be cleansed quickly enough to prevent the disease from gnawing through half or more of their health and I wind up having to juggle between 2 and 4 people's health. Between the speed of the diseases landing, the odds that I'm one of the lucky victims, and people running in almost entirely different directions (and far in those different directions!), I wind up throwing up my hands (not literally, we die faster if I do it literally) and kissing a few guildies goodbye in my mind as I frantically try to figure out who gets higher priority over the others for saving.

Which is alright in smaller doses, really. I feel accomplished and stuff in small doses.

And yes. On my VuhDo keybinds, I've named this spec the Speedy Bubble spec.

Oh. And I've picked up VuhDo to try out, to replace Grid/Clique, and I'm liking it. It's taking a bit of time to become accustomed to everything it does for me, but I'm getting the hang of it. though sometimes my keybinds don't seem to change when I switch specs and I don't find out until it's midfight and someone's not getting the heal they're supposed to be getting. But that's a post for another day!