I wasn’t excited for Cataclysm. I was really (really) enjoying my raiding break after 6 months of feeling I had to make every raid (due to a lack of healers in the guild). I was really (really) enjoying leveling my hunter in the new world and taking it easy. I was even reading quest text! That hadn’t happened since my first char killed her first 10 kobolds! (Sorry Gerald.)

But Blizzard doesn’t care about my excitement or lack thereof, so launch day came and went, with its login server instability and giddiness in the guild. I’ve been panicking about the guild for months (too many healers, not enough tanks, a pregnancy – not mine -, not knowing who is coming back and in what roles, hoping some people don’t come back at all) and I kept doing it. But after disagreeing with Kurn about guild prepardeness, I did start making some plans, scaled to our 10-man pretty casual level (no spreadsheets :P).

One of the points is that the first raid is scheduled for sometime in January. I’m a slow leveler and it’s somewhat of a running joke in the guild, with people urging me on whenever I’m playing a new alt. This time, I decided to hell with it all. I had enough time until January to get to 85, I was expecting it to be slow, and I wanted to enjoy the ride. So I took it easy, I cleared zones even when I was supposed to start new ones, I barely dungeoned and… I still managed to ding 85 Sunday night. The only concession I made was moving to Twilight Highlands before I finished Uldum, since it was getting late and I had set a goal to be 85 before the new week.

Ding!

And now it’s time to panic again. After basically running with 2 healers in Wrath, now we have a ton. Inactive and social members came back and they all want to heal… which meant I boomkined a lot. The good part is that the new eclipse is really, really cool. My damage is still shit (my boomkin-main boyfriend facepalmed when he saw my numbers), but I am finally enjoying the spec. The bad part is that I am a healer and the future doesn’t look bright.

On the short term, I have to relearn healing and it looks scary as hell. I started playing my druid mid-Wrath, so I never ever used Lifebloom. I’ll probably need to make a big flashing Power Aura to remind me it exists. I don’t yet understand how all the spells work together. I feel my heals are horribly underpowered. And, since we only have 2-3 tanks in the guild (to 4-5 healers), it means I’ll get to pug a lot. I’m excited at getting to heal again, but judging by the tanks I’ve seen so far… it probably won’t be very fun. (Then again, I can’t wait to troll some idiots again! It gets my blood boiling when someone thinks s/he can boss me around and I love bitching back.) Right now, the one thing that makes me hopeful is the amazing blogosphere. There are so many good druid bloggers who can show me the light, thank Elune!

On the long term, we’ve got some raid balancing to think about. While I don’t hate moonkin anymore, DPS is not what I do, but with the amount of people wanting to heal this expansion… I might have to do it more than usual. We’ll see when we get there, but I really hope some of the would-be raiders will realize they don’t have enough time to dedicate to it… then we can split the healers between main and alt runs and everyone will be happy!

Poor camel…

Jen is not a very happy druid at the moment and the most annoying thing is that I can’t put my finger on the reason. But, since it’s Monday and I really, really don’t feel like working, I will try the solution that always works to cheer me up: planning gear upgrades! While she was a baby druid I had immense fun thinking of her future level 80 gear, and I hope this will work again for level 85. First thing: buy that goddamn Therazane rep and stop being stupid about my reps!

P.S. Blizzard, I am not Very Manly!