Journey of a Novice Healer: IN THE BEGINNING

So, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I created a Draenei Shaman called Tzoltzil, with the intention of picking Restoration at level 10 and actually STICKING with it this time.

I’ve been a healer before, kinda. My original Shaman, Shamwhoa, was a healer up until about level 60, whereupon I switched to Elemental and never looked back. Sunbuer, my Priest, was a boost to 90, and though I did 90-100 as Disc, that was purely because of the strong self-healing of the spec. When I DID set foot into a dungeon (for the first part of the legendary quest) I did it as Shadow.

Tzoltzil is going to be a dedicated healer. Full on! I’ve not even bought the dual spec for her, and I don’t plan to. I figured I’d document my journey as a wannabe healer, because yay, I can document my miserable failures.

1-17

This was a relatively simple stage. Quest until I hit 15, and then I decided to finish the quests in my quest log, which took me to level 17! Bloodmyst Isle has a LOT of quests, evidently.

Naturally, as Draenei can be Monks, there’s a Monk trainer in Ammen Vale who expresses his shock at being a witness of the crash of the Exodar!

17-50

A large jump in levels here, but frankly dungeons are uneventful at this time. Keep up Riptide, use Healing Surge. Level up, get more spells.

There were relatively hairy bits, however. Scarlet Monastery has some rough patches. The trash between Thalnos the Soulrender and Brother Korloff is relatively compact, with lots of pillars that breaks line-of-sight, meaning that tanks will invariably tuck around them, necessitating you having to hurriedly run around to heal them.

The new versions of Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs popped up in my random queuing, and you know what? They’re pretty good now! Groups seemed to always get lost before their revamp and now? Easy peasy. Navigation simple.

Uldaman’s still annoying though.

50-55

The era of the impatient DPS. Amusingly, this Warlock then went AFK constantly, and died in that room with all the respawning mobs.

That’ll learn you. Sodding Blackrock Depths.

Blackrock Depths and Stratholme have an annoying thing in common. Much like Scarlet Monastery, the trash packs are very compact. Pull one pack and invariably 20 others will join in the party.

Dear every Warrior and Paladin tank I was grouped with today.

You can tank more than one enemy. Get them off me. I'm your HEALER. DO BETTER

— Panda Steve has got the taste! 🐼 (@ItsPandaSteve) July 22, 2015

And naturally there are a lot of tanks that either don’t know their AoE tanking abilities, or just plain refuse to use them, so the enemy they’re actively hitting will stay on them, but I cast a Healing Surge and everyone else sails over to me.

Sodding Stratholme.

Currently I’m at 55, and I’ve decided to quest for a level or two, as the current dungeons for my level are Blackrock Depths and the Sunken Temple. The former dungeon is annoying, the latter is boring. I’m holding out for Lower Blackrock Spire now, considering Upper Blackrock Spire is now 90+ only now.

Current State of the UI

So I have my cooldown trackers which I will NEED to move somewhere at some point, as it’s getting rather cluttered down there! Short cooldowns I’ll keep close to my health bar, but Call of the Elements, Ascendance (when I get it) etc will be moved to somewhere within sight, but kinda out of the way. I’ve also moved the bars up a bit so they don’t cover my cast bar!

1, 2 and 3 are my DPS abilities, for if I feel like attacking things for some reason (slow damage periods, or when questing). 4 is my Healing Stream totem, 5 will probably be Healing Tide.

So far, I’m finding healing really fun! May stick with it beyond 60 this time.

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SHAMANigans

If you’ve been following me on Twitter the previous couple of days, you’ll have noticed I am currently playing a Draenei Shaman on Argent Dawn EU.

There she is! Tzoltzil, Restoration Shaman extraordinaire.

Levelling from 1 to 15 went relatively slowly, then as soon as I unlocked dungeons? Being a healer means really short queue times, and everyone having heirlooms means fast runs through places! I went from level 12 to 37 in one (relatively long) sitting, and I’d like to say it’s through a mixture of questing and dungeoning, but it isn’t. I’d get a Hero’s Call quest, have to run to (for example) Stonetalon Mountains from Darnassus, and I’d queue for random dungeons on the way. By the time I get to where my questgiver is, OOPS, outlevelled the zone!

I actually forced myself to try and level through Desolace, and nope. Not happening.

Here’s a look at my UI setup so far. Naturally, healthbars of myself on the left, my target on the right, and my target’s target in the centre. Underneath my target’s health bar is a WeakAura to track whether I have Flame Shock active on the target, because extra DPS, no matter how small, never hurts. Underneath MY healthbars are bars to measure how long I have to wait for various cooldown-based spells to be available. As I level, I add more, which means I’m going to have to move these to a more convenient location at some point!

My raid/party frames are the standard ElvUI ones, as you can see. I downloaded an addon called Clique, however, to bind spells to clicks on these bars! Left mouse button is Healing Surge, right is Riptide, and my extra mouse buttons so far are Purify Spirit and Earth Shield. For my non-targeted abilities (Healing Stream Totem, and in the future other stuff like Healing Rain), I am just putting them on my normal bars.

I’m a DPS player through and through. I always try out different roles, then wind up going back to DPS eventually, but I am having a blast with the Shaman so far! It’s a way of injecting a bit of variety into the game. See things from a new perspective. I am having healer-based annoyances rather than DPS ones (“WHY ARE YOU GOING BEHIND THINGS? STAY WHERE I CAN SEE YOU” rather than the old “WHY AM I DYING?!” issues of old, and of course tanks not being able to AOE tank ANYTHING for some unknown reason), but you know what? It’s still new, it’s still variety.

It’s what I need. A breath of fresh air.