Self Discipline: Movin’ On Up

The unthinkable has happened.

Last night, after three years of ups and downs and ins and outs and togetherness, I left my guild.

It was a far greater wrench than I’d thought it would be, but after it was done I realized that the excellent Guardians of Azeroth had been my guild without a break since the very day I started playing WoW! Luckily my impoverished alts are all still members, and I have a standing order to come back and heal through fire whenever needed.

It’s something of a complete culture shock to move from a tra-la leveling guild to a srs bzns progression raiding one- sort of the mental equivalent of going from picking wildflowers on a sunny hillside to aerially fire-bombing a small village.

Our new guild spent the evening leisurely pwning Icecrown Citadel. It was a thing of beauty.

As someone who has only ever run PUG raids and the occasional standby “our guildie, who we like better than you, may or may not be able to come tomorrow so you get all ready and perhaps we’ll let you mop the sweat off our brow” runs, it was as though the lights of the heavens shone down and a heavenly choir burst into ‘Stayin’ Alive’.

The Lower Spire went down like buttah. Marrowgar? Bam! Deathwhisper? See ya! The Gunship Battle, Lord Saurufang-  down without a whimper. We hit the Plagueworks and kept rolling. We made Festergut cry.

Finally, we wiped- a few times- at Rotface, and called the raid on account of the lateness of the hour. But in my grimy paws I now finally have my first Ashen Band, a number of abyss crystals (no new cloth, sadly), and a renewed enthusiasm for healing.

As disc priests, we’ll never top the healing meters. All of our damage mitigation means that we make everyone else’s job easier while simultaneously making them look better on the raw number meter. And while everyone has Recount, very few raiders really get into the whys and wherefores of each healing class enough to know why different healers do differently on the boards. And, of course, why should they?

It’s not their job to understand healing, it’s ours. But it can get disheartening, especially when you’re grouped with undergeared raiders- or, worse- very slightly undergeared raiders. It’s very difficult not to question yourself over raid failure when you see those numbers and that result. And hey, why not? Everyone else gets to secretly obsess over their DPS or threat- we want feedback too! We’re just human, after all (albeit far, far closer to deification than most).

If you’re using Recount and you’re really feeling low, try just comparing your Uptime to other healers; that’s the sheer volume of spells and activity you’re putting out. And if you’d like to take it to the next level and really wallow in how disc priests are just single-handed heal-monkeys, check out World of Logs after your next fight.

As a final note, we ran ICC with a well-geared group and three healers: myself on tanks, with a shaman and a druid on raid heals, but it would’ve worked just as well with a Holy priest on tank heals, a good shaman or druid for raid heals, and my disc priest focused solely on bubbling the raid.