A New Task At Hand

Playing a little bit here and a little bit there my Shaman managed to stumble it's way to 85.  That is the perfect description about how leveling is in Cataclysm.  It really takes no effort what so ever and the experience flows in so damn fast that you do not even need to try to level.  It will just happen on its own and if you are on rested it will happen lightning fast.

My Shaman is Enhancement, always has been since day one really.  I leveled it that way as well with intentions of making my second spec Restoration once I reach cap which is where I am now.  I have nearly a complete set of gear for resto in my bank.  As I was leveling, when there was nothing for enhancement, I took any resto rewards and held on to them.

Each time I got a new one I would compare it to the ones I had saved and keep the best ones.  Looks like trinkets are the only things I will be lacking for my starter resto gear.  Of course it will be a little bit of an adventure to start off with.  I have never played a resto shaman before.  Not even just for fun and playing around. 

I will still be Enhancement main spec.  I am only rolling resto as an offspec because I really have no choice.  Waiting forever for dungeons is bad enough on my Hunter.  Any class I have that can do anything other then DPS will do it. 

There is no reason in hell for anyone that plays a hybrid to ever enter a dungeon as DPS.  That takes away a spot from someone that has no choice but to be DPS and that slows things up even worse.  People could at least try to be a little bit of a team player and be a tank or a healer to help out queue times. 

Not to mention, it helps themselves too.  I mean really, would you rather wait 45 minutes for a dungeon or 3 minutes? 

I'll wait 3 minutes, heal the hell out of the dungeon and roll on all Enhancement gear being that is my main spec.  Being my offspec is the only spec that should be rolling on resto mail.  Unless there is a Elemental Shaman in my group that is rolling for spirit pieces, I will have no competition for gear for my off spec and only Hunters to compete with on my main spec. 

If the Hunter needs an item however, I will not need on it.  A Hunter needs the gear more then I do.  I can get instant queue times as a healer and have that option, the Hunter does not have that option.  A tank or healer that rolls on gear someone else needs is a jerk.  Plain and simple.  They get instant queue times and can come right back in and get it next time.

So the task at hand for me today is to learn how to heal as a Restoration Shaman.  When I go home tonight I will heal my first normal.  From what three friends of mine have told me healing as resto is so easy a caveman can do it.  Not to mention, from what they said, Shaman do not seem to be having as much of an issue with mana as the other healing classes are.  After healing on my Priest I can appreciate that. 

Speaking of running dungeons as your off spec for instant queue times I got one of those people in my heroic daily on my Hunter yesterday.  Unlike me, who collected gear to heal, this person did not collect gear to tank.  Good thing for him however that he was a Druid.  Feral gear for cat and bear is basically the same gear.  It is just a matter of how you gem, enchant and reforge it that makes it for a cat or for a bear.  Then it comes down to talents.

I am not about to enter a dungeon on my Shaman with my Enhancement spec and expect to heal so why is it okay for a Druid to enter a dungeon with a feral cat spec and think that just switching to bear makes him a tank?

Our tank, and I use the word tank loosely, had 127K hit points.  To put that in perspective my Hunter had 126K hit points.  They had nothing gemmed, enchanted, or reforged to seem as if they where trying to tank with that character and even worse, they did not have any bear talents chosen in their spec.  This was a clear cut case of someone that queued as a tank just for the instant queue and was hoping someone else would be able to tank once then entered the instance.  Not happening with a Hunter, Rogue, Mage and Priest there with them.

People like that are not only bad players but they are bad people.  They are selfish jerks that do not care about anyone but themselves.  There was one saving grace however.  There was me, a Hunter and another player, a Rogue, that made sure mister kitty cat in a bear costume kept aggro.  I still needed to FD all the time, we still wiped repeatedly on trash but we somehow made it through bosses no problem.

We must have wiped 18 times.  No kidding.  All on trash pulls.  With no bear talents the tank could not hold threat on anything and there was only so much me and the Rogue could do.  They also, with no bear talents, could not take the hits from multiple mobs like that.  Even with the Rogue sapping, me trapping and the Mage sheeping we still dropped left and right on trash mobs.

Why did I stick it out?  It was interesting.  It was a challenge.  I wanted to see if we could do it.  If we could basically carry the tank.  We never wiped on any bosses at all.  We went through healer after healer after healer of course because I know I would not stick around healing a non tank that thought they could tank.

We got to Rip and the tank had to leave to pick up his girlfriend, thank god I thought.  I was really worried about this fight with a tank that has the same amount of hit points as I did and basically no mitigation.  We got our replacement, killed rip, killed cookie and killed Vanessa. 

Well, they killed Vanessa, I sat by and watched.  Nope, I did not die but I did have a major Huntard moment.  See, Shift 1 is my Misdirect macro and Shift 2 is my Disengage macro.  After our first swing on the ropes when we landed I misdirected to the tank and started to shoot, but there was one problem.  I did not misdirect to the tank and start to fire.  I disengaged off the freaking boat and left a parting shot.

I tried to get back up to the boat but I could not figure out how to do it.  The only way would have been to run though a ton of fire and most likely die from it so I just stood there and waited for what I thought would be a wipe.  To my surprise, they downed her.  She is a really easy boss actually and I guess we all have those oh crap moments where we hit the wrong button.  I thought it was funny.  A fitting end to a Deadmines run that lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes and wiped more on trash then I've ever wiped on a raid boss.

Now to visit all my favorite sites to learn how to Resto.  Should not really be a problem.  Healing is a ton easier to learn then DPS is, at least in a normal dungeon environment.  The job of the healer is to keep the tank up in dungeons and occasionally offer some heals to the DPS. 

The hard part is on the shoulders of the DPS.  They need do the CC and be good enough to avoid damage and put out enough damage to kill things before the healer goes oom.  So healing is a hell of a lot less pressure then DPS while in the gearing up stage at least.  A healer has the perfect excuse if there is failure.  They ran out of mana.  What are the excuses the DPS might have?  They ran out of the ability to do damage?  The DPS can now thank me for healing for them by making my runs nice and easy.

Heck healing normals on my Priest is now like LK stuff.  I throw a heal here and there and just smite my way through the dungeon.  There is nothing for me to do most of the time unless I get stupid DPS that do not know how to get out of avoidable damage.  If I get that, then every pull is compete hell and I go oom at the drop of a hat.  Other wise, I put the tank on follow and occasionally click a heal once in a while.

Makes you wonder why there are not a lot more healers out there.