When I try something new and discover it’s something I really enjoy, I tend to get very excited and start rambling about it to anyone that will listen. Sometimes I don’t have actual people to ramble to, so I ramble to my pets, but as long as I express the excitement somehow, I’m good. My current excited rambling is about my blood elf priest Srirajah, who I am loving leveling and who I’m sure I will continue to love to play when Shadowlands releases.
When questing solo in Pandaria, I played Srirajah in shadow spec for a while, but I really wanted to try DPSing in discipline spec because I’d played shadow so much on my nightborne priest, Trehvos and got a bit tired of all the swirly whirly purple, especially after N’Zoth. Plus, I’d boosted Trehvos and thus hadn’t really learned priest as I leveled, so I’ve been doing that with Srirajah. A prime time to do it now that so much has changed with pre-patch. My experience on shadow taught me what spells like Mind Blast and Mind Sear did, so I’m happy to find them usable in disc spec.
Disc spec might not pack quite the same punch as shadow does but I like the way it works and looks and so I’m going to use it as much as possible. I’ve also been flexing my muscles a bit more in the holy spec thanks to my Warcraft fam who let me use them as test subjects when we quest together. I think I’m doing okay, but there’s still a lot to comprehend with all the healing spells in holy and learning which works best when.
Although I’m still nervous playing holy spec to heal friends, I keep trying it because I know I need to do that. If I stay forever in my comfort zone, I’ll never learn anything new and I’ll never test my limits. As I tend to underestimate myself and my abilities, I need to be pushed off a cliff now and then to see if I can fly, figuratively of course. Although priests have slow fall so as long as I remember to cast it, I’m good.
I have fumbled a lot while playing holy priest and have popped the spirit healer talent at the worst time and/or accidentally, ended up panicking, offing myself, and not helping my friends. But learning by making mistakes makes those lessons a whole lot more memorable and helps drive them into my overly active brain.
One thing I think I’m definitely getting better at while healing in holy is healing myself when needed. When I started out, I’d get so focused on healing others that I wouldn’t look at my own health bar and then I’d be very close to dead. I’ve also gotten better at using my attack spells when healing isn’t immediately necessary. I admit that it feels rather fierce striking a baddie with holy fire as a squishy priest.
By nature, I’m a person who wants to help others and I love being useful. Playing holy or disc priest really taps into that and makes me want to do better. Sometimes when questing with the Strawberries in a full group, we periodically get separated while fighting and I start to panic because someone’s health is going down and I’m out of range and can’t heal them. In the past, I might’ve just given up on my healing abilities, switched to shadow for DPS and let someone else worry about healing. But I don’t want to do that now. I want to keep playing in disc and holy because it’s fun, exciting, scary, interesting, and makes me happy.
I think of healing as sort of like falling off a horse. When you fall off a horse, you’re supposed to get right back on because if you don’t, then your fear will magnify and you’ll probably never get on a horse again. I rode horses from my teens into my early 20s and I got thrown and bucked off many times and was always scared to get back on. But I got back on anyway and I’m glad I did because I was able to overcome my fear and keep riding. With healing, I think of everyone wiping as falling off the horse and that me giving up is not getting back on that horse. I won’t let fear overpower my desire to be a good healer and I won’t let it scare me away from achieving my goals.
My hope and goal is still to someday be a healer for the Strawberries when we do raids and dungeons. I’ve already played healer in a few dungeons with them and it was scary but fun. There are other members of the group that have expressed interest in healing too, so I might not be needed in that capacity, but I’m going to stick with it. I just think it would be nice to be able to switch roles up so that maybe those who have healed but like playing other classes and specs can do so. I won’t deny that playing DPS is a lot less stressful than healing or tanking and I DPS a lot myself, but I’m eager to spread my wings and find new happiness in the bright, shiny, sparkly world of priest healing.
Srinity 