It FHeals Great to be Me

Imagine yourself a Night Elf Hunter. Now imagine yourself wanting to get into a dungeon party. Unless some people who you've run with and proven yourself with are on, and NOT in Kara at the moment (grrrrrr), you're pretty much the single most hated potential party mate of anybody on the server.

Now, imagine this beautiful fertile valley of paradise on the otherside of the mountain. Imagine yourself a priest. Imagine yourself a priest who wants to heal, and wants all kinds of 5-man runs. You're a wonderful thing, and everybody wants a piece of you, right?

Pretty much, but do you want a piece of everybody else?

Such is the reality in WoW.

One can draw an analogy to a singles bar.

The Night Elf Hunter is the ugly guy who walks with a limp, drools, and doesn't have a dollar to his name. To stand a chance at finding someone to party with, he's going to overcompensate with as much charisma, charm, and inner spiritual goodness as he can possible cram into the 2 seconds he gets to actually talk to prospective party members. When he does actually get a party, he's going to just pour it on and be the most attentive, generous, skilled person he can be, with the hopes that he'll be remembered and selected again in the future.

Then, in walks the Holy Priest. Who wants to party, and wants to heal. Here's your hot chick, all gussied up and in heat, ready to rock. She can pretty much behave any way she wants, and she's more or less going to find people to group with. While our friend Quasimodo the Hunter has limited options, Paris Healerton's got everybody shoving their 2-handed mace (well, its really an off-hand item, but they want you to think its a 2H-er) in your face. Her challenge is in how to choose the good from the bad, as the ones that look good at first are usually the worst, and the Quasimodos that you really want for their inner creaminess are just tough to see through that gruesome exterior. And even some of the Quasi's haven't figured it out yet, and are just as rough on the inside.

Such as it was for my priest. Healed my first instance the other day. The Stockades.

And let me tell you, if LFG/LFM at level 70 is sometimes rough, at level 20, what a mess. All day long, I was just playing tailor and alchemist, lurking in the LFG channel. When a call for a healer in Stockades came up, I said sure.

For the next hour, we went through endless shenanigans like people wanting to swap out and get their high level alt to run us through. No thanks, I'm here to play, not run through on easy mode. Then you get the people joining in when asked to be a DPS and then saying "i'll heal and the priest can DPS". Nope, I'm healing this run, you're invited to kill stuff. /kick. On and on it went. I was ok with the whole thing, as I was just running between the tailoring and alchemy trainers (thankfully located near eachother in Stormwind), AH, and mailbox.

Finally get a crew and head in.

Ended up being fantastic. 3 of the players were experienced in the game, playing on their low level alts, including a father/son team. The 4th had a great attitude and was fun to play with.

Healing the run was really cool. Such a different experience than providing mass quantities of sustained ranged DPS.

I'm sure I did a million things wrong (like writing blog entries that're too long and boring). I overhealed. I was nervous and used tons of mana-inefficient quick casting heals rather than waiting for health to drop a bit and then casting longer ones. At first, I didnt cure any diseases, as I couldn't find it on my action bar.

I totally had tunnel vision and was staring at green bars. So much so that I got lost, didn't see which side room the party went in, and then ran in the wrong one and died :-(

But had a ton of fun, and I kept everybody alive.

And levelled up. I think I'm going to stop any solo action with this guy, and see how rough it is trying to level up only doing dungeon runs and quests inside dungeons.