Fairly obscure reference to a pretty old British TV advert for... I completely forget what, probably a bank or something equally dull. Anyway, just like that kid in his school play, I want to be a tree. I've had a druid sat at fairly high level (60+) for quite a while and every so often been tempted to go play him for a bit, but he never really captured my enthusiasm for long.
While I was playing Duffban I was never much into alts for anything more than mucking about on for a little while. A string of secret alts have been levelled to 10-20 in a couple of evenings of escapism but that was about it. I then powered Duffinci from the level 55 he reached under RaF to 80 and started raid healing with him but fell into the same routine, all other characters were forgotten while my new toy got pimped out good and proper. To be fair much the same thing is true of Duffinity the tank, I focussed all my energies on gearing him up to the exclusion of all other toons. However there were two things different with him. First off he was the first toon I felt comfortable dual speccing, sure the priest had a shadow spec for a while but I soon ended up changing it to holy. The pala started raiding as a healer and I was happy with the role but I loved the tanking. Secondly I could no longer deny I had a thing for playing multiple characters. Not at the same time, one tended to get all the love while others languished in obscurity, but I was enjoying having direct experience of different roles and classes.
What does all this have to do with trees? Well, for a long time healing was a dark-art for me. Full of mysteries and subtleties that I didn't really understand. As such I was hesitant to give healing assignments in raids and struggled to maximise healer potential within strategies. Both sitting next to Tiger with her resto shammy and my tour in ICC with a priest taught me a huge amount. It also gave me a lot of confidence to direct the healing team and know that they are supporting the raid as best they can. This was helped even more by playing a paladin healer though to be fair there isn't a massive amount to learn about the healing side of playing a paladin (lots of paladin stuff, but the actual healing is prety basic). This left a gap in my healing knowledge though, a tree-shaped gap.
Trees cast HoTs, right? Ok, so my knowledge of druid healing goes a little beyond that, but honestly not much. I couldn't tell you the difference between Nature's Gift and Natures Majesty or be sure if the Naturalist talent was why druids go around butt naked most of the time. More importantly my healing strategies for druids tended to be "you guys just fill in where you think it's required". That's some pretty weaksauce raid leading right there. So yeah, I decided to break out the old night elf and give it a go.
Obviously I had to splurge on dual spec. I'm keen to get as much time in dungeons as possible but I don't fancy doing those odd quests as a tree. Thankfully my last play about with this guy was as a chicken so the gear was pretty decent to make a start. I pestered Duffinci to wield his new sewing skills to make a few upgrades (cloth but meh). I bodged together a talent spec from looking at one of the guild trees and reading the WoW.com resto druid 101 and hammered in a few glyphs that seemed to be appropriate. I then sat for ages and tried to work out which abilities should go where on my action bar. I dunno about you but this part takes me ages. You're trying to figure out which spells you will be casting the most, which you need to have easiest access to on the move, which you rarely need but have to be quick to reach... it's a nightmare. Anyway, I got something settled and pestered a guildie to boost me in a couple of normal dungeons (only level 75 atm) so I could find my feet (<3 Arcane).
After that hurried setup I've jumped into a few random dungeons and it's not gone too bad so far. Last night was interesting when the tank showed up with less HP than the hunter and we wiped on the first pull of Gundrak, but other than that it's gone fairly smoothly. I'm finding that I can get through these places with mostly just a couple of HoTs (Renew and Lifebloom stacks) and some support from Wild Growth. I guess that'll change as I level and more direct heals will creep in but so far this tree lark is going ok. I still have a lot to learn but then that's the point of the exercise after all.
