The Why of Dueg, A History of Healing

I may have mentioned it a few times, but I’ll state it again for those not paying attention.  I like healing, no, let me rephrase that, I love healing.  The thrill of seeing a health bar go from green to almost completely red and then back to green within a few seconds because of a well timed heal just does “things” to me.  Things both awesome and terrible.  But there’s more to it than that.

Just another day at the office

Now as I’ve stated before, my first character was a smelly ol’ dorf named Duegan who also a priest.  When I originally created him, I just sort of arbitrarily chose priest without a thought to the class dynamic.  I was aware that it was a healing class and assumed that I would most likely be doing some healing at one point or another, but I didn’t choose the class for that reason.

Now back then about 95% of my time was spent soloing with Duegan.  I got to do some of the dungeons such as the Deadmines and Scarlet Monastery, but those were usually isolated runs when a friend of mine absolutely had to have a healer.  I was specced shadow the whole time, even when healing so I wasn’t exactly the master of heals that I am today. 

Then came Dire Maul.

Some may not know this, but Dire Maul was not initially in the game.  It was released a few months after the launch in a content patch and for a time was the most difficult zone in the game.  So one day I was putzing around in Badlands, working on getting level 59, when I get a tell from one of my friends saying that they were at king, their healer had bailed and they needed me for the final fight.

At first I was somewhat reticent to do it.  I mean, I was shadow specced, I hadn’t run an instance since Mauradon about 10 levels previous and quite frankly, I was intimidated by it.  But my friend was insistent, saying that if I didn’t come the group would have to break up and a whole evening was wasted.  So I pulled on my big boy pants, hopped a gryphon (summoning stones were but a distant dream at that point) and made my way to Dire Maul.

The fight was crazy nuts for me.  With me getting thrown through the air and everybody and their mother taking insane damage left and right.  I seriously thought I was going to throw up, my heart was pounding so much.  However, in the end we pulled it out in one shot, downing the King and grabbing our due tribute from those cranky ogres (they just needed a hug really).  And then it happened.

Everyone in the group started talking about how awesome the heals had been and why that other healer, who had allowed three wipes, sucked so hard.  I basked in the glow of their praise, feeling even better about myself when I revealed that I was shadow spec and we had still been able to one shot one of the toughest encounters at that point.  Being level 58 when the previous healer had been 60 an unable to pull it out didn’t feel too shabby either.  It’s honestly one of my favorite memories from WoW.

A few days later, unfortunately, I had to quit the game for monetary reasons and Duegan sat at level 58 for about another year and a half or so.  When I came back after BC was released, he remained shadow spec so I could level through Outland easily, but soloing just wasn’t appealing to me anymore.  A lot of my friends had moved to Horde side, but I was being stubborn because I didn’t really want to start all over again.  But something was just missing from Duegan.  Shadow spec and soloing just didn’t appeal to me anymore.  I was bored.

At first I thought this boredom was from the priest class itself.  So when I did finally reroll horde, I figured I’d try a new class and spent a little while leveling up a warlock.  Eventually I became bored with that class, not really enjoying it either till I realized that it wasn’t the classes that were boring me, it was the soloing.  Since I had made a baby priest to explore the new (at the time) Blood Elf starting area, I figured I’d level up with him.  I was passingly familiar with priest healing and I knew that being a  healer meant getting groups.  So I dedicated myself full time to being a dungeon diver and healer.  I had finally figured out what part of the game I fit into.

Maybe it’s a bit of narcissism or maybe I just have an overwhelming urge to be useful.  At first I thought it was simply a matter of wanting to be able to get a group when I needed one mixed with the familiarity of the priest class, but since then I think it may be more of a reflection of my psyche.  I can’t get into other roles such as tanking or dps, but healing has just always felt right to me.  I can’t really explain it, all I can say is that it’s my role and I relish it.

So what about you?  I know not all of my readers are healers, but a majority are, so what brought you to healing?  Is it just because you love the color green?  Or are you a superstar and want everyone to know it?  What about those who aren’t healers?  What’s drawn you to the role that you play in WoW?  Could I possibly ask any more questions in one paragraph?  Drop me a comment and let me know.

-Dueg

Incognito, the Way of the Alt

"What? I got a boogie?

As anyone who’s played WoW for more than month knows, sometimes the game can get… well, a little boring.  I know it sounds like heresy to some, but occasionally people log on and stare at their toon for a few minutes and think to themselves “I want to play… but I don’t want to play the same old, same old.”  They find themselves scrolling down over the “Create New Character” button, hypnotized by it’s shiny redness and bright yellow text and with one click, they’re off to a whole new experience.

Alts are fun and can provide a new view of this game we play so much, which is always refreshing, especially when burnout begins to rear it’s ugly head.  But they can also be a curious thing, telling stories about the person behind the keyboard that they weren’t even aware of themselves.  And of course, there’s the alt-o-holic, suffering desperately from altitis, unable to stop themselves from making one character after another that usually end up going nowhere.

I find myself somewhat in the latter category there.  I know for me whenever I get bored, I immediately start tooling around with the character creation process.  I have 10 chars on my main server, 6 on my original one and at least 20 other characters spread out amongst another 5 or so servers.  I have a problem with leveling them though as is evident with Dueg being my only level 80 char.  The closest one is a level 68 DK, with my original main being level 66.  Hell’s bells, sometimes I’ll just make a character and never even log in on them, resulting in occasional purges of unused toons.  I know, I have a problem.

I’ve also noticed a curious phenomenon that seems to crop up amongst the healer crowd.  Healers tend to make tank alts.  I know I’ve done this myself with my highest level alt being a warrior that I have an eye for eventually having to be a tank.  Considering that he’s only level 25 after about a half a year, we’ll see how that turns out.  However, I’ve read other blogs on here and I know numerous healers in game who all love their baby tanks (or grown up in some cases).  Is it cause we’re needy and want all groups to pay attention to us or are we just givers who can’t help but be helpful?  I dunno, but the second reason makes me sound more altruistic, so we’ll go with that.

Others use alts as cash cows, only leveling up when necessary to advance their trade and only logging on when their coffers start to thin.  Still more will have the bank alt, who does nothing but take in all the trade goods, put them in the AH and then dance on the mailbox in their underwear while you’re afk making a sandwich.  And you say I have problems?  There’s also the victim of circumstance, someone who rolls an alt to fill a particular role needed for the guild or to play with a group of newb friends.  These type of alts are the most likely to make the transition to mains.

And then there’s the true gamer, the person who’s just not satisfied with the one character.  You know the type, always popping up one char then another then another.  Maybe they dual box or have it all on one account, but you can always rely on them to show up with a tank or healer or dps depending on what the situation is.  They’ve got five level 80′s and will have two more before the end of the month.  Their mailing and money making systems are perfected to a tee and they know which professions to have and on which alts for optimal min/maxing.  Yes, we all know at least one person like this and we’re all ever so slightly jealous of their stash of alts.

So what is it that drives you, gentle jerkwads?  Are you like me and make alts for fun, but quickly tire of them and run back to your main after maybe a night or two off?  Or are they strictly a money making venture?  One that keeps your main rolling in the dough and dresses out any other alts in world blues?  Or perhaps you are one of the tireless few who can level an alt from 1 to 80 in a month and have raided with 6 different classes?  Drop a comment and let me know.

Oh, and by the way, yes, that is Proto Dueg in the pic up there, he’s my level 66.  He’s shadow specced and fairly moldy.  And smelly.  I mean, he is Alliance after all.

-Dueg