I must have a screw loose or something.
Five years after I rolled my first paladin, and decided to make her holy, I rolled another one. Primarily, this is to help out those lovely people I talked about who are in Choice of Skywall. If they can’t have Madrana (and they can’t, because she’s with Apotheosis until death do they part), then why not attempt to clone myself? After all, it’s entry-level raid content that I know how to do, it’s just a matter of getting the toon to 85. Right?
After an initial burst to 22, I got to 24 in a week. Then to 26 in a week. And now, as I write this, I’ve gone from 26 to 43.
Even if Choice doesn’t need another paladin healer (they probably will, though, unless one of you fine people applies today!), it’s good blog fodder. Everything I knew about levelling a paladin is completely out of date.
– You don’t get Cleanse until 34! And even then, you need to hit at LEAST 39 in order to spec all the way down into Sacred Cleansing to allow your cleanses to cleanse magic. Crazy!
– With Holy Shock, Holy Light, Word of Glory and Flash of Light, healing is seriously boring. Two instants, one quick cast, one long cast. None of them hit particularly hard. (Except for Lay on Hands.) I keep reaching for my shift key, since Shift-Right-Click is my Clique bind for Divine Light. What’s that? No Divine Light? Nope. Not ’till 62.
– No Divine Shield! Seriously. Not until 48 do we get our much-adored bubble. I’ve been BOPping myself when I get in trouble or the tank is just that bad.
– I dinged 39 and was able to spec into Beacon of Light (I went for BoL before Sacred Cleansing) and was thoroughly amused that for the rest of that run, I kept catching BoL and refreshing it with about 15 seconds before it fell off. I have it showing up on Grid, of course, but I don’t have a duration there. My duration is usually shown to me by CLCBPT, at least on Madrana, but I hadn’t enabled it for the baby pally yet. Still, it appears that I’m able to time things pretty well even without my timers. I was very amused.
– Speaking of Beacon, wow, totally forgot how kind of lame it is when you can’t heal your Beacon target to get holy power. That’s right, no Tower of Radiance yet.
– No Hand of Sacrifice. Until level 80. Are you freaking kidding me?! LEVEL 80?! I use HoSac all the damn time at 85. And did so while levelling to 85. I can’t believe they couldn’t give me that at like, level 38 or something. Level 38 was lame. No talent point, no abilities to train. Nothing. Just “You have reached Level 38!” Well, thanks. What good is that to me?
– Glyphs. I’m limited to 3 glyphs ’till I hit 50, then I get another one of each. So strange to not have Glyph of Seal of Insight in use, but, in all honesty, I don’t really need it. I feel pretty overpowered.
The other thing I’m noticing is people don’t know the damn instances. Pretty much at all. We’re talking people don’t know where the deeds are in Scholo or even that Jandice and Rattlegore exist. People who have no idea what the pylons are in Dire Maul West. It just… makes me want to cry. I’ve been running these instances for five years. I know them all very, very well. Except Mara and Ulda. I get lost there. But hell, I’m not asking people to run BRD blindfolded or anything. Scholomance is relatively straightforward. How are people getting LOST there?
I would understand getting lost in Blackrock Spire too, but Scholo? Eh.
I’m very tempted to spec prot and queue specifically for the dungeons I know, over and over again, just to give people a good dungeon run. As it stands, the last Dire Maul West and Scholomance runs I did, I acted as the guide. “Stand here. Wait. Kill that. Go. Run. Over here!”
That said, I know very little about prot right now and, while it would be a great time to learn, I don’t have a pocket healer. Meanwhile, my brother’s warrior is 44, so I’m going to get him to tank for me, I think.
I tried questing a lot and knocked out a bunch of levels doing the Cape of Stranglethorn (I love all the Booty Bay/Bloodsail Bucs quests!) but ultimately, even though I like doing things on my own and at my own pace, I feel like it’s just faster to whip through the instances right now. Praise be to any god you believe in, I only got Gnomer twice. Woot! :D
So, yeah. Weird to not have bubble, HoSac or Tower of Radiance. Weirder still to be the only one who knows the instances in so many cases. I need to do those videos I was talking about ages ago, but I’ll hold off ’till my new computer shows up.
But seriously, go apply to Choice of Skywall if you’re a holy paladin who’s looking for a new home, so I don’t have to. ;D
tl;dr – QQQQQQ Choice of Skywall QQ.
Incidentally, I’m amazed you still let me comment here, Kurn. <3
X – Every comment is one comment closer to banning your ass. ;D
I started leveling a paladin myself a while ago, and enjoyed it so much I recommended my boyfriend to try it out. He got bored at level 40ish, because as you say, it’s really just two button spamming. I find it sad that they don’t give holydins any interesting tools until way up the levels, because holydin healing at 85 is loads of fun. I think what made me enjoy it even at low levels was that I often took on the role as tank-dps-healer where I just steamrolled through instances, healing, tanking and dpsing all at once. He on the other hand played with me as the tank, and if you limit yourself to healing at low levels (and why shouldn’t you, it’s a healer after all) you’ll be bored for sure.
I’ve noticed that about low level instances too. It always makes me chuckle when I see serious player who decide to level an alt through LFG for the first time and get so stressed out about min-maxing. They don’t believe me when I tell them that the dungeons are tuned to be too easy because the average person who runs them is very, very bad.
I kind of enjoy how bad the average low level dungeon runner is, though. I can figure out my class and work out spell combinations at my own pace and make adjustments on the fly without anyone noticing. There’s no stress.
Plus they spend the next hour or so singing my praise if I help them find their way or prevent a wipe after an oopsie. My ego likes that.
Which of the lower level instances you know varies a lot too… I know *I* know Mara and Uldaman inside and out (and Dire Maul West too) but I couldn’t name the bosses in Scholo. I just haven’t spent much time there. /shrug