BBB: Am I Stuck on Pally Healing?

BBB asked the question Are you stuck on a particular class?

After that he rambled on about the olden days of EQ, the differences between it and WoW, and what brought him to WoW over EQ II. I was just thinking about my EQ days and how I made a ton of in game money (Platinum) because my class (enchanter) had one spell that everyone needed and wanted. It was called Crack or C2 then C3 then C4 (Clarity). It was the spell that regened your mana faster. In EQ you couldn’t eat and get mana back in less than 20 seconds. It took a couple min of just sitting down to get it back. PITA!

I would spam “C3ing for donations” in a central hub and make tons of Platinum/hour as the spell (at the time) did not have a level limit, leveling twinks would pay to get it every hour. I was wondering why WoW did not have any spells or classes that had one unique thing that they could just do, that people would pay for. Yeah mages can port, and people pay for that, but it’s not the cash cow that being a crack dealer was.  You can get almost any other buff you would want from scrolls or drums or something along those lines, so I guess technically you can make money from the spells, but again not even close.

Enough reminiscing there are lots of reasons why selling spells worked in EQ and would never work in WoW, to answer Bears question I had to dig back to my EQ days as an enchanter, hence the random memory sharing above.

Enchanters were the crowd control class of EQ, you HAD to have one in your group if you were going to do anything. Yep, imagine that an entire class that only did crowd control and almost every fight needed crowd control. They didn’t blow things up, they couldn’t heal, they just kept extra mobs busy so the rest of the group could do what they needed to do. Much like healing in WoW it was a thankless job and the only time someone notices/said something to you was if you messed up.

In addition to my enchanter I always liked wizards (my one and only atl in EQ was a Wiz) because they could port wherever they wanted to, I liked the freedom to roam quickly (no mounts you had to run everywhere) and the ability to blow things up! When I started with WoW I was looking for a class that was most like my enchanter, imagine my glee when (yes I said glee) I saw that the caster “crowd controlling, polymorphing, nuking mage” could PORT as well! I thought it would be a natural fit.

After starting a mage on multiple servers, I ended up with the alliance mage I have now. Then I discovered that the NEED for crowd control wasn’t there, I felt useless as a mage (too bad that was 80 levels later). I went pew pew and “holy crap ice block” and that was it. I couldn’t save a group from death by holding back 3 mobs indefinitely, I could freeze them but that only lasted a couple seconds and would not be off cool down before the mobs came and killed me. I could poly them but that would always get broken by some misplaced DPS. I could invis and run away, but that only saved me. I remember in UP you use to “sheep pull” the packs of trash so that the caster would be out of the game for a little bit and the tank would grab the agro on the rest right quick, but you didn’t have to have a mage to run that instance. There was no need for me other than to nuke things and burn faces off, and that is not how I enjoyed my play time.

Enter Vailladin:
I had rolled a pally at some point early in my WoW career, and hated it, I think I made it to a whopping level 6 and went back to leveling the mage. After hitting 80 and doing some end game on my mage, and getting frustrated with my lack of “need”, I tried the pally again. The thought was to play with my RL friend on his warrior and we would have a pre made group with him tanking and me healing. After 80 levels and many days at end game I finally realize why I love playing my holy paladin so much. I am back in the driver’s seat with my hero complex and saving the group from certain doom. I once again have the ability, albeit in a different manner to save the group from death and pull them thru the direst of fights. I have buffs that everyone wants/needs; too bad I can’t get people to pay for them. I get the same rush as I did in EQ when someone pulls more than we should be able to handle and we come out on top! I love the pressure and “holy shit did we really just pull that off” factor of playing this class.

Am I partial to pally healing? Sure I am, I love it, and can’t get enough, I have a baby druid, priest and shammy waiting to get some levels, if I could ever stop playing my healadin I could better experiences these other healing classes and let you know!

I hope in Cataclysm Bliz brings back the need to CC in group instances (you don’t even really need to do it in HoR anymore). I enjoy the content a lot more when I am thinking about what I am doing, keeping my eyes open, and being challenged by mobs.