Friday, April 16, 2010

Brieonna - Level 20 Holy Priest

I decided to roll a Priest and give healing a try, so I created Brieonna. I had a little opportunity to heal on my Shaman Breeonna on occasion and thought it might be something I liked. Whether or not I like it is still being decided... I started Brieonna Wednesday night and by tonight, Thursday night, I had her to level 20. I got her the 75 riding skill and got her a mount which is going to make leveling go even faster.

I have healed in a few instances so far and have not done too bad. Oh, there were some bad times, like in the Deadmines tonight when we had a tank that thought he was better than he really was. Actually that happened twice. They would pull way more than they could actually tank and hold aggro on which would cause mobs to break away from them and attack other players. One of them was so poorly geared, which caused his health to drop so fast, while he was making a pull of a dozen or so mobs (generally 8 or 9 more than he had to), that I had to spam him with full heals instead of HoT's (Heal over Time) and that was causing me to generate more threat than he was so half the mobs would break away and attack me. I couldn't heal him, or anyone else, while I was busy just trying to stay alive.

The majority of the groups I was in did have good tanks though and there was no problem at all. They did not pull more mobs than they could handle and I had no problem healing them and anyone else that needed it. People who wear cloth should not need much healing, they are not melee fighters. People who wear cloth are generally casters who stand back from the mobs and cast. With a good tank they can do that and not take any damage, or very little damage, if the tank is doing his job. If the tank is full of himself and wearing gear 10 or more levels below his level because "why upgrade gear when you level so fast?", and pulling way more mobs than he can hold aggro on, then you're gonna have a bad time.

So the jury is still out on whether or not I will stay Holy and heal or switch to Shadow and DPS.

Currently, in Holy spec, when I did DPS I was at the top of the damage list... I am wearing Heirloom gear, similar to what Breeonna is wearing, and it makes a huge difference. My Gearscore right now is around 1250. The Gearscore of most of the people I was in the dungeons with was in the 60-120 range. At level 1 I had a Gearscore of 1179. I am using 5 pieces of Heirloom gear, shoulders, chest, staff and two trinkets. It is called Heirloom gear because instead of being soulbound (bound to whatever character you equip it to) it is bound to your account. That means you can send it to any character on your account and keep passing it along after you reach 80 and don't need it anymore. As a matter of fact Brieonna and Breeonna are sharing the two trinkets because I couldn't see spending the emblems to get 2 sets of identical trinkets.

I will continue to heal and see if the majority of groups end up being better than some of the ones I was in tonight. I only healed for one night so it is too soon to make a decision.