In my 'career' of playing World of Warcraft, I've played tons of classes; and I mean all of them except for Death Knights. I couldn't really get the rotation on the runes for them if I tried. Even after playing the other roles like tanking and DPS for a decent amount of time; I still always ended up going back to being a healer. Hell even my elemental shaman sees more content right now pretending to be restoration.
It's not because I don't like other classes or roles (being a retadin is amazing), sometimes it's just easier not having to wait over an hour to get accepted into dungeons or if I want to do harder content all I have to say is, "Healer here, invite please." That may not be true in some cases because over the years people have lost interest in the fact that you may have already done the raid or content and can link achievement, instead they will now check your i-level the moment you talk to them. See when I started playing it was almost impossible to get into a raid unless you belonged to a guild.Since the beginning WoW healing has changed, each class that heals has changed, and even the spells have changed.
I remember playing my shaman years ago and spamming lesser healing wave rank 1 and it still healed as much as the greater ranks for almost no mana. That was changed rather quickly might I add.
In 'vanilla wow' I started off as a DPS warrior, undead and powerful, I killed Greater duskbats in Tristfal Glades because it just seemed like the right thing to do (also the person giving me the quest told me to). That did not last very long, because even before the expansion 'Burning Crusade,' came out I was already trying different classes.All in all when the next expansion pack dropped I ended up trying out a restoration druid, this was not only a character I had to learn, but it seemed the actual class was enough detail oriented to keep me interested. I took the time and made sure I had everything perfect from gems to enchants and rotations; I then pretty much lost all of my free time to raiding. I enjoyed the class and the fact that I was needed by pretty much everyone. People came to ask me questions about my build along with my guild who was now raiding every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night during Wrath of the Lich King.
I had really enjoyed healing, but it was a simpler time when all I had to do was stack three life-blooms and a rejuvenation and my target was fully healed.It pretty much stayed that way for awhile before I ended up hopping alliances and built myself a Draenei paladin. Who started her own guild as a tank before realizing that sure, I got to raid again, but this wasn't something I really felt connected with. Not long afterwards, my shaman hit the stage. Who, featured up in the introductory picture, was originally an alliance Draenei, but it's okay. I understand where my mistakes were.
Shaman healing was easy, way too easy for the expansion, all I had to do was hit 'brain heal' otherwise known as chain heal and keep an earth shield on the tanks. Not only did I keep topping the healing meters but was completely and utterly bored. It wasn't fun to sit and spam one button over and over again, some of the people I raided with offered to duo with me in arena's which they thought would challenge me. I literally only had to hit my earth shield on them once and maybe a quick lesser heal and the other team was dead, yawn.I normally don't do player vs. player, and it makes absolutely zero sense that I've always picked PVP servers, so the arena runs were cut short.
'Mists of Pandaria' came out and everyone wanted to level a monk, I decided to wait and picked up my druid again with a different group to see if I still had it. In the midst of leveling I took my druid feral and apparently, did some pretty decent DPS. So that plan kind of backfired.Eventually I did level a monk, and healing was undoubtedly one of the hardest things to do on them. I had to channel a healing spell while stacking a dot and NO ONE RAN OVER THE GREEN HEALING ORBS. A big part of monk healing is that while they are channeling their main heal green orbs that contain a percentage of healing spawn all around the group. No one ran over them, everyone ignored them, especially the tanks, they completely walked away from them and the concept was almost useless.
(Calms down)When the newest expansion hit the shelves, 'Warlords of Draenor', I found myself trying out a discipline priest. With the stat scale-back and the changes to make each class more user friendly I was pretty confident that I would be able to pick this style of healing up in seconds.
I was wrong. Dead Wrong. (Just like the groups I tried to heal!)
I was used to a style of healing that involved hots or heals over time, and disc priest healing had none of it. I tried instance after instance and found myself struggling more than I'd like to admit. After speaking with other priests it seemed like I was the only one. Until I hit the forums, where hundreds of people were screaming about how hard healing was.
It wasn't just priest healing either. At max level everyone was running out of mana way too quickly, paladins were upset from their word of glory nerf, shamans were spamming greater heal because it was the only thing they could do that didn't cause them to go out of mana in seconds. Each class had problems.
A little bit of tweaking through a couple days of maintenance seemed to fix almost all of the issues, and now I'm finally back to healing instances and raids again. Though I may not be topping the charts as a discipline priest, I am making sure damage is being soaked up by my bubbles.It seems that every MMORPG that has come out since 2007 I've attempted has always turned out the same, either I built the character to be a healer or ended up picking the healer class from the beginning, though none of them was able to keep my attention past the 30-day free trial or the start packs like World of Warcraft has.
I think I'll end this little tangent with a word of advice.
It may take years to actually find a character or class that you're actually comfortable with, but when you do don't over play it. Keep a variety because you'll end up getting frustrated and annoyed that all you do is heal or tank etc, I take my shaman heals just to avoid longer queues in the looking for instances/raids tool and I absolutely hate it. Play a character you want to play, and enjoy it.
All photos used were of my own characters.
