So, I like healing. My druid rocks, but there’s a problem – once she does the guild runs, she’s locked and can’t help out friends with their runs or just go wipe with a PuG, for fun.

To solve this, I decided that my pally tank should be holy offspec. Said and done, I grabbed some crafted gear, healed a couple of dungeons and heroics, even managed to get a decent collection of purples in the end. However, queuing as tank/healer means that 99% of runs I end up tanking, so my holy experience is limited.

Shinyhooves as Holy

When I changed my offspec, the friend I was leveling with told me I’ll enjoy holy so much I’ll never go back to my druid. She couldn’t have been more wrong. The longer I heal on my paladin, the more I love my druid. No, she’s not that good at tank healing, but I can run! And throw HoTs all over the place! And even a quick Nourish! Swiftmend myself while running instead of counting on the other healers!

This was never more obvious than last night. After a not-very-successful ICC25 plagued with lag and drama, we decided to get an alt run going to ICC10 for the weekly. Lots of tanks, not enough healers, so I reluctantly volunteered to do it. The final setup consisted of two good tanks, an assortment of decent to good DPS, a good healer (tree) and two mediocre ones (tree and my paladin). It didn’t bode well when I saw the second tree’s gear – no T9, some blues, decent for heroics but not much else. My gear’s in pretty much the same shape (ilvl 219 mostly), and ungemmed/unchanted to boot (it was too late to do anything about it).

Healing was hell. Oh, she’s amazing at tank healing, I won’t get those crits on my druid in a million years. I can’t run out of mana with Divine Plea. Beacon of Light is an amazing invention. …Until Marrowgar starts throwing blue flames at me and I need to move or die. Move or die. Never finish a cast. My Grid setup works fine for a druid, but it’s very well suited for a paladin. My healing technique isn’t well suited for a paladin either.

In short, I sucked. We didn’t down the boss. I shouldn’t have set foot in ICC with my gear and my experience. But I’m not giving up! Paladin Schmaladin and WoW.com have been helpful, and I’ve got a holy pally in the guild to bug. I bought a ilvl 245 helm after the raid (it’s even got a meta socket, unlike my former crappy blue) and I’ll invest all future emblems in holy gear. I’ll look for some Grid addons that display what I want to see. I still want to heal, so I’ll at least give it a decent shot before I give up.