I was never under the impression that I would be anything more than an off-healer, which as a paladin is totally possible (and really fun) if you love spamming Flash of Light and Holy Shock on raid members, while keeping Beacon of Light up at all times on…you know, someone else, like the tank. It’s sort of like whack-a-mole. See someone dying? WHAM! Flash of Light! What? Stupid ret paladin keeps pulling aggro because they turned on Righteous Defense with Pally Power? BOOM! Holy Shock (yes, a crit!) Aw, poor mage has no stamina…KAPOW! Instant Flash of Light! And look, my tank is still alive–just how I like it.
Well, we decided to do a Naxx 10 run with a bunch of alts of guild members. Boy were we pleasantly surprised to find ourselves having a few problems…by wiping on Anub. Don’t laugh. Try as we might, we just couldn’t get past him. OF course, most of us needed to gear up in Naxx 10, so the first wipe wasn’t totally unexpected. The third…you know what? No comment.
Turns out Unholy DK’s just don’t quite have the damage mitigation needed for that fight as well as other classes…instead, every time Locus Swarm came out, Anub (>0< spider power!) would get really hungry and gobble up our tank for dinner. In 2 hits. Without giving me time to do more than Holy Shock and Flash of Light…once. So the ret pally switched to heals as well and had to crit our tank for like, 18k heals or something ridiculous so he could survive. Anyway, we made it through Anub…
To fight the poison bitch. And man, was she a bitch. Tonight was like something got stuck somewhere it shouldn’t and she was taking her rage out on us. It took our DPS DK (not the tank) bringing in his Warrior tank, our DK tank switching to DPS, and our warlock (who was rather undergeared, unfortunately) to bring in her Retadin (who did nice dps, but died easily >.<) for us to even contemplate surviving. But eventually, we made it through her…and then went on to Maexxna.
This fight was a lot smoother. In fact, we one shot her. I was standing there, Sacred Shielding the tank, keeping up Beacon of Light, and just healing my ass off generally. But I kept watching people get healed and thinking “Man, that other healer is outhealing me bad. I feel useless.” We lost two people due to being webbed on the wall, but it couldn’t be helped. I was out of range and I assumed the other healer was too.
Then someone posted the DPS charts. And I noticed that the “other healers” were in fact close to the top of the DPS charts. So I asked in vent “How the hell did you do so much dps while healing?” and they went “I wasn’t healing.” So I paused for a second and tried to figure it out–it was confuzzling. Well, the guild leader, Purgeron (a paladin who was building his tank set, but is holy and healing 25-man Ulduar) goes “Let me check the healing meters then.” I hear him click. I hear his mic go off, then back on. I hear him go “Well, this is surprising. Congrats, Ten. You just solo healed Maexx. Even I’ve never done that before.”
Lol wut?
I sat there, stupified, and checked my own meters. Sure, the ret pally had healed herself a ton during that fight with her and my judgements of light and keeping Seal of Light up (she knew she died easily) but that accounted for less than 20% of the healing. The rest were my pitiful Holy Shocks and Flash of Lights that I kept tossing around in a frenzy. I’m not a bragger, and I know that if I’d known I was the only healer, I’d *never* have been able to do it, but it was nice to know that, after needing a little help on Grand Widow and Anub, it wasn’t all totally my fault. I’m sure plenty of people have solo healed Maexx before. In mostly blues, a few greens, and the epic sword I picked up off of Grand Widow though? I dunno. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again. But for that one fight, man was that cool.
Now to fix my spec a bit (I don’t mind cookie cutter healing specs–if it helps people stay alive, I’m game) so I have more crit. And maybe one day I’ll be able to do it on my own, again. Maybe. For now? Back to the gear grind.
