Lately I’ve been spending more time on my alts. I am specifically avoiding anything that resembles a rogue playstyle, so no melee toons for me. I only have two alts that I play regularly, so I am far from being an alt-oholic..
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My priest has been level 80 for a while. I’ve talked in the past about the troubles I’ve had with healing in Discipline spec. I’m improving, but still have a lot to learn. I’m at the point now where I can heal any heroic 5-mans except heroic ToC. I can tank-heal in Naxx or Ulduar 10, but still have trouble raid healing if there is a lot of raid damage going around. I have yet to try healing as holy spec, because… well… I hate giving up.
I’d like to get him better gear to overcome my personal defiencies, and we have a lot of good healers in the guild so I don’t get into many runs. I got him a shadow spec to allow me to run as dps. This has been an interesting experience. I find that my AoE dps with Mind Sear is fine. However, my single-target dps is… meh. I can generally do 2500 dps on a heroic 5-man boss, which is just OK.
Actually, its a lot like playing an assassination rogue. When I play my rogue, I have a build-up time while I get SnD up, get a bleed going, get HfB up, and build up a poison stack. Once that’s going, I don’t have any cooldowns to use for a boost so its all sustained damage and time on target.
As a shadow priest, I have the same attack structure. I have to get a Vampiric Embrace cast, get Devouring Plague up, get SW:Pain on, and then I can start with Mind Flay and Mind Blast and SW:D. There are no cooldowns I can use to boost the damage, so its all about keeping DoTs up and time on target.
I’d rather be healing, but having the dual spec gets me into more runs.
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My paladin is at level 77. I am really enjoying playing him as a shockadin. Its a shame I won’t be able to keep that at level 80.
The shockadin build gets most of its damage from Holy Shock and Exorcism. With Seal of Light and Replenishment, I am constantly regaining both health and mana, so I can typically finish a fight at >90% of both, and have minimial downtime. I can easily take on large groups of mobs, especially undead, so questing is a breeze.
The only downside is that my damage is mediocre. At level 76 I’m doing about 800 dps. Sure, it will go up as I get closer to level 80 and get better gear, but I don’t see this being a spec that I can bring into instances or raids. It is fun to play, though. Its like a mage with armor.
When I get him to 80 I’ll get a Protection dual spec and give tanking another shot. I tried tanking back in Karazhan at levle 70 and didn’t like it. Maybe its changed since WotLK came out. In any case, it will be nice to have another tank in the guild to step in when we lose people to boredom.