Pictured: Discipline Dueg
So the other day I posted on my guild forums saying that now that I had sort of completed a decent hit gear set (I still have one blue I need to replace), I was open to taking shadow as my second spec when 3.1 landed. My reason behind this was that the other night when we were in Naxx and had too many healers, a call went out specifically for Shadow Priests. The discipline priest we had along lost the roll, so he ended up respeccing for that night, but it got me to thinking. Though we do have a resident Shadow Priest, his schedule can be somewhat shaky as can our new Discipline Priest, so basically I asked the guild which we would like to have in reserve, Shadow or Discipline.
Though one of the tanks wanted Discipline for obvious reasons, the vote came back mainly in favor of having Shadow available when necessary. So last night with the patch looming I went and grabbed shadow glyphs and sat myself down in front of the priest trainer in SMC before logging and when the servers are back up, will be purchasing dual specs and going shadow as my secondary. Now let me clear something up real quick by saying that my guild is not forcing me to do this. We’re of the opinion that you have your raiding spec and when you raid, that’s the one you’re expected to be in. But all I do lately is raid, so I don’t mind having the guild dictate what my second spec will be based on what’s needed the most.
So I’ll be downloading Omen and getting a damage meter and will be doing the pew pew every once in a while and the more I started thinking about it, the more I feel like an occasional break from the frenetic pace of healing wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If any of you read the comments from my post yesterday, you could see that maybe Dueg is feeling a little bit of the burnout from doing the same thing over and over again for the last few months. Hopefully Ulduar will be able to cure me of that, but I like the option of being able to do something different for a change, something new besides whack-a-mole. Plus soloing should become a breeze now with the ability to change to a DPS spec at will.
But I also wonder if maybe I’m trading in my ideals for this. Anyone who’s a regular reader knows that for the past couple of months I’ve been saying “Dueg’s a healer, I’ll be going Discipline as secondary to cement that fact.” Priests are the only class that get two healing trees, an option that can be both attractive and binding at the same time. It’s not like you can’t ever respec again and you even have the option of making one spec your healing spec and the other will always stay dps, but I just don’t know. Lately I’ve been feeling like it wouldn’t be so bad to have a little less responsibility in raids. To focus on one target and just hit 1-2-3-4-5-3-4-5-5-3-4 or whatever. Discipline spec, though fun and a cool way to be a healer, is just not something new really. It’s still just healing.
So for the moment I’ve decided that I will let my guild decide for me and tell me what they need most and I will do my best to be that occasional dps and go all “pew pew” without following it with “laserz!” How about you all out there in internet land, though? Have you already decided or will it come down to wire when you have your cursor floating back and forth between the trees? Will your guild be the one to dictate your new secondary spec or have you told them to feck oof and you’re doing whatever you feel like? All I can say for sure is don’t be frightened if you see a smudgy BElf on here from time to time. That’s just Emo Dueg and I promise he won’t be cutting himself… at least not where people can see him dive deep into the despairing abyss of his soul.
-Dueg
