Work and Play

I never actually got around to what I wanted to talk about yesterday. No sidetracks this time.

Ever since I heard that Blizzard will (eventually) allow dual-speccing, I've been waiting for it. And waiting and waiting and waiting. Some days more patiently than others. I would run a Holy spec for instances and raiding and a Discipline spec for questing and PvP. That's pretty much the way I've been set up since I joined my guild and needed to be able to do both effectively. As far as the actual spec goes, I like both of them just as much for their purpose. However, the way I think about respeccing and the length of time I spend in a spec tells a lot about the way I play WoW.

I think of my Holy spec as a 'work' spec. I'm only in it when I need to be to do the big heals. I really like doing instances and raids, and my real talents shine when I'm doing that kind of healing. But to me it's still a chore to be in Holy spec, and I get out of it whenever I can. I'm in Disc spec right now because I know I won't be raiding for a little while, and if I'm running with Zon it's good enough for heroics.

I have the most fun in my Disc spec. I can get out there and kill mobs non stop if I'm wearing my heal gear (my heal set is good for questing this time around, unlike the old Mooncloth gear) or if I'm in a dailies area and worried about allies, I can pull out my resilience set. The spirit on it is terrible, but that's what Honeymint Tea is for. Out in the world my resilience set is good enough to keep me alive for quite a while, and even beat some classes if I've got full mana. In battlegrounds and arenas, not so much, but as I've said before instanced PvP is really not my thing.

I think a lot of it has to do with being on a PvP server. If I were on a carebear server I wouldn't have to worry about getting jumped, so I could just suck it up and quest in Holy. It's not a bad spec, Disc is just more DPS and "armor".

Maybe this kind of attitude does mean that Blizzard needs to fix healing. I don't mind the way it works now, but when I'm doing heavy duty healing it is a lot of work.

OMG Discipline

I guess I have a lot to say today.

In the back of my head I was turning over the instances I did this weekend after writing that last post, and I've been very pleased to find that I can heal a group equally geared to me just fine in discipline spec. It's so nice not to have re-specced for 2 weeks now. Without doing any extensive theory crafting here's what I've found:

1. The uber-buffed shield works beautifully for controlling damage done by over-zealot DPSers, especially with the mana return component. I'm looking at you Px.

2. My LOLSMITE spec includes every bonus to spell power I could fit in. Now that spell power and healing power are one and the same, this boosts my healing as well as my damage, mitigating some of the loss I get from not having boosts to healing spells.

3. I have a few mana-regen trinkets hanging around now that help A LOT. Between the Bangle of Endless Blessings, that new one I got with the +222 to Spirit auto pop, and the Hymn of Hope, I'm doing OK. I even use the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle to change it up once in a while. I have a pair of straight MP5 trinkets I use out in the world that work good too.

We'll see how it goes when we start leveling out of our purple gear, but as long as I can heal a good group, I think I'm OK as a Discipline healer for now.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?... Discipline Specs

I didn't log Zully on at all yesterday, that whole home ownership thing got in the way what with the repairman and assembly of prefab closet units. I did get a chance to talk to Tran a little bit while I was slowly dragging my squishy little level 18 Warlock Phoenix through quests and he's been thinking about specs for his Rogue. Not having ever played a successful Rogue I didn't really have anything more intelligent to say than 'Oooh, shiny'. So I didn't really ask for specifics.

That did get me thinking about Zully's spec. She's been Holy from level 1. She had a very brief (as in less than 3 days) stint in Shadow around level 62 because when BC first came out Hellfire was as hard as hell for a healer without a group, which for me was pretty much always. Shadow spec did not go well. I had NO CLUE how to play Shadow, and my gear was all wrong, so back to Holy I went. If I ever want to try Shadow, I will roll a Shadow Priest, thank you. Zully's just not cut out for the dark side.

My guildies are very nice about spec. They never pressure people to respec, even if we do have more DPS Warriors than you can shake a stick at. I'm guilty of being one of the DPS warriors, but if I made Morning a tank, it would just land me in another issue: you can't play two characters at once. Almost all of our Tanks and Healers share an account. So if we're having a raid and need a tank and a healer, you gotta pick one, can't run both at the same time. I suppose if every tank player had a healer and vice versa we'd eventually have enough for consistent raids. There's another problem with making Morning a tank:

I'm a lousy tank.

I don't like marking and I'm not confident enough to lead. I like hanging out in the back and calling out when the patrol gets too close because everyone else's view is full of Tauren butt or ogre nads. I'm so used to shedding and avoiding aggro that the idea of pulling and holding aggro makes me nervous. I'm sure I'd get better at tanking with practice, but as it stands now you don't want me up front waving the shield, trust me. There's a reason Zully is my main despite the fact that Morning was my only max level character pre-BC.

Getting back around to Zully's spec, my arena partner is pressuring me to go Discipline. Here's my list of reasons I don't want to respec:

1. Zully's always been a heavy healer, and I like it. I know Discipline priests are just a different variety of healer, but I love me my 6k+ heal crits.
2. A Discipline Priest in full Primal Mooncloth/Whitemend is kind of silly, and I have put every heal related buff I can find on that set. It's a very common gear combo, but I don't care, I'm proud of what I've done with it.
   
3. Discipline Priests are built for instanced PvP. See my previous post about not liking instanced PvP. I want to be able to PUG Heroic Shattered Halls and amaze the group (like I did on Monday), and I don't think Discipline Priests are in that category.
   
4. I'm bad at the "Push this button to increase your healing/damage/defense" playstyle, and I get the impression that Discipline is heavy into this sort of talent. The only push button talent I've learned to use well is inner focus, and that's because I think the 5 second rule is the coolest mana strategy ever.
   
5. Despite the fact I've already admitted I'm a conformist, I really don't want to use the same cookie cutter spec as every other priest on the server. I'm already a Troll Priest among the Undead, and I'd like to stay a survival Holy Priest among heavy Discipine specs.
6. I really don't think my spec is that bad. I have some awesome auto-popping 'Don't Crit Me' talents that I'll lose if I go Discipline.

I had something very Zen to say about all this, but I think this post has gone on long enough. I'll talk to Mal this weekend about the arena team, but I'd really like to stay how I am until he really proves to me that the spec I have isn't going to be good enough to get the rating we want.