On the Route One Takes to Changing Specs

I mentioned in the previous post that I have been varying levels of noob-ish at varying times due to a combination of my playstyle while leveling, growing experience, and the classes that I played initially. I thought that I truly had a handle on playing a priest. I was pumping some serious spellpower, I had regen flowing like it was water, I could raid heal with the best of them, and I could bust out tank heals like I had a pair (of Righteous Orbs, of course).

But I had a bit of a problem, and I didn't even know it. I wasn't using every tool in my toolbox. Sure, what I was doing worked just fine. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm by no means the type of player who says, "You have to do it this way or you're doing it wrong." I wasn't doing it wrong, per se, but I wasn't doing it...optimally.

You see, my background as a healer is as a druid. Back in good ol' vanilla, I was a druid. I walked into Molten Core and was promptly told, "Heal." 'Cause that's what druids did in MC. (Incidentally, MC is what made me quit WoW the first time. But that's a different story. And it had nothing to do with my role.) So, my entire experience with healing pre-Wrath (I was a huntard in BC) had been as a pre-tree, leather wearing night elf.

How does that effect my priest, you ask? Well...if I remember my old school druid healing rotation correctly, it went something like: HoT, HoT, downranked big heal to not quite top off, wait, downranked heal, refresh first hot, rinse, repeat. That was pretty much the extent of my tools and abilities then. No Swiftmend, no Lifeblooom. Just HoTs and direct heals.

And what is this thing I wasn't doing or using that I alluded to a paragraph ago and you are just waiting for me to get to? So, being a good little monkey who soaks up his conditioning well, I used what I knew. When I started priest healing, I rolled out the HoT first thing, and then spammed a bunch of Flash Heals, and a Greater Heal when I could afford the time (this was before the change that made Greater Heal faster after a few Flash Heals). Yeah, that's pretty close to the spell priority when a holy priest is healing a single target. There are a few things missing, though. Prayer of Mending I learned to use pretty early on. And I already wrote about when I learned the power of Binding Heal. But there was still something missing from my repertoire. Have you spotted it yet?

Bubbles. For some reason, I had it in my head that Power Word: Shield was just not worth the global cooldown and/or the mana. They were relatively expensive for me, and (I have no idea why I thought this) I thought they didn't scale with spellpower. I actually said to a guildy at one point, "Yeah, I could bubble. But it only prevents, what, 1500 damage? Or I could Flash Heal with for almost 7k. I'll Flash Heal, thanks." Why he didn't smack me, I don't know. He even used to play a priest. I think what made me actually start using bubbles was when I read a patch note about a change to the spellpower coefficient on them. I went, "Orly?" And I started bubbling the tank.

It was like a breath of fresh air. I had more breathing room. I had another powerful spell in my rotation. Even better, it was instant. I gave it a prime spot on my click-to-cast setup. And I loved it. I loved it so much, I wanted to use it more often. But there's that pesky cooldown. So, I started tinkering with talent calculators and very quickly determined that I could either have Guardian Spirit or no-cooldown shield. To which I said, "But...I love my glyphed Guardian Spirit. I don't know that I could do some fights without it." (Call me whatever you want, but Arachnid Quarter is still the quarter I dread healing the most. I lose more tanks between Anub'Rekhan and Maexxna than I do the rest of the raid combined.) So I kept using my bubble when it was available and the tank didn't have Weakened Soul.

But those bubbles were awfully tasty. It's like having plain old oatmeal for months, than adding a few dried blueberries. "Wow, I really like these dried blueberries! I bet that fresh blueberries would be even better!" I kept eyeing those fresh blueberries...er, instant shields, tinkering with talent calculators and hybrid disc/holy specs. "But I lose this..and this...and my crit's only at, like, 12%. I obviously don't have the gear to itemize Disc." Then, we were doing some Ulduar and I decided, "Screw it! I'm going Disc!" I damn near hearthed right then. But, I finished out the morning's raid (we downed Kologarn for the first time, exciting!). And *then* I respecced.

Turns out, all those purples that I had collected and were just cluttering up my bank? With a touch of regemming...some borrowing from my shadow set...ooo, regem that...Oh my...I have over 25% crit? How did that happen?!

Down one Circle of Healing and one Guardian Spirit (I'm not a big fan of Lightwell), I walked into Naxx armed with Penance and no-cooldown, powerful bubbles. And I loved it! I occasionally missed Circle of Healing. But Pain Suppression did me just fine in place of Guardian Spirit, and the bubbles. Oh, my, the bubbles. Some quotes from the night:

Me: "So...how do I go about running out of mana in this spec?"
Paladin: "Holy Nova."
Me: "OMG! It gives everyone little bubbles!"

Raid healing resto shaman: "Man, I love this healing next to a disc priest!"
Me: "Oh, why's that?"
Resto shaman: "I'm sorry, what did you say? I was making a sandwich."

Hunter: "...why do I have a bubble? Wait, my pet has a bubble too..."
Paladin: "Yeah. The whole raid has bubbles."
Me: "I love bubbles!"

Hunter: "It's kinda cool how the character flinches when they get hit with Penance. It's like the heal hurts."
Me: /target Hunter /cast Penance /repeat /chuckle

I actually had a lot of fun for some of the less healing-intensive fights weaving my bubbles so that everyone in the raid had one the whole time. See previous comments RE: mana and sandwich. =)

So, yeah, I think I like me some Disc.