I’ve never been one of those hybrids who changes spec at the drop of a hat to meet the needs of a group; I change specs once every few months at most, agonising over the placement of every talent point. Regardless of my championing of the “hybrids should be able to perform all their roles”, that doesn’t mean I want to respec twice a week and go holy for raids, prot for 5-mans and ret for soloing.
But. After a fruitless day of searching for Magister’s Terrace PuGs, wherein it seemed I was competing with every healer on the server for a group spot, and there were about 3 tanks compared with the 789237852 DPSers and 11872735 healers looking for groups… I snapped.
And here I am, one Magister’s Terrace group later – still Prot-specced, with my new best friend Bernie, and a good chunk of Shattered Sun rep up my sleeve. I’m just happy my group was patient and understanding about my utter nubbyness.
Time to go back to Holy… although perhaps not before I see what the PuG scene looks like tomorrow.
Hehe..I pulled the trigger and went back to Prot spec about 2 weeks ago, after being holy and main guild healer for 6-7 months. I honestly have not looked back. I love tanking SOOO much better than healing.
Just wanted to let you know the date listed for this post is one day in the future.
You make it sound so easy! I can’t imagine just hopping from Resto to Feral on my druid and then jaunting through MgT like a walk in the park as the MT. :) They’re very different jobs, teh haelz and teh meatshield. I’m glad it went well for you and your group. Bernie is great. ^_^
Yours,
~Rhoe
Bunnyfer – hehe :) The world needs more Pally tanks! That said, I still prefer Holy and will be respeccing ASAP… I feel wrong as Prot!
Beelzebubb – welcome to the joy of time zones. I’m in Australia, and it is Thursday the 27th here. :)
Rhoe – I had a bit of an advantage in that I’ve done a bit of tanking while Holy spec for my guild’s raids. Having a pally tank makes such a difference on large AoE pulls (eg in Kara and ZA) that it’s more effective to have me throw on the tank gear and tank them as a Holy pally while the druid tank throws on their heal set and covers for me, than to get the regular tanks to tank ’em. And I’ve occasionally gone Prot for a night of OTing in ZA or wherever… but I am, indeed, generally fairly nubby at tanking. :)
After my first night of trying to heal MgT as a holy pally with my feral druid friend tanking, I am seriously considering a respec…
Its good to see holy pallys putting up the hammer and grabbin a sword…. you did have a high damage sword right =) i personally HATE healin 5 man’s was prot for so long that i cant manage to keep people alive. now i can top the charts and heal like a sob in kara and 25mans… but being all alone ARRRRGGGGG still stay on the dark side…. tank a bit. if nothing blessing of sanct is great
Nazaniel – I managed okay on the PTR as a holy pally healing a feral druid, but I’m fairly well-geared. The only place I had trouble was on the last boss, and that was solved by having the druid tank throw a barkskinned Tranquillity during phase 2 (when no tanking is required). That said, it’s not a particularly pally-friendly instance…
Tego – 5-man healing is tough as a pally sometimes – we’ve got the raw oomph, but the total lack of mass heals and AoEs is painful. And no, I didn’t have a sword – I use the Amani Punisher from ZA. High damage yes, but still a hammer. :)
I was about to post something just like this!
I haven’t made the change yet, though. I’m still Holy, but I will respec this weekend as soon as I’ve gotten a few enchants on my offspec tanking gear and hit exalted with Sha’tar (one more hMech run) for the shield.
Glad to see I’m not the only pally healer out there feeling the pain of Magister’s Terrace.
“That said, it’s not a particularly pally-friendly instance…”
After successfully healing Magister’s on Normal, I’m very hesitant to try and heal on Heroic. On our run we were overgeared for a normal 5-man, but we still had 1 full wipe, 2 partial wipes, and random single deaths (mostly the rogue).
Maybe I should get my tanking set built up again…
Glad to hear you bit the bullet for your group. Many of us still haven’t run MgT yet because nobody will tank the instance for us. Sigh…
Too many of us DPS characters out there, I suppose…