The Big Re-Roll
ByI played a mage in Burning Crusade. It was my first character and I loved playing it for a long time. My best friend and I both rolled characters on the same server to get started, a nice little low-population server called Anub’Arak where we were assured we wouldn’t be ganked.
I want to point something out before I go any further into this article. When I first started out, I didn’t know how to play and neither did anyone I played with. I didn’t know what talent points were or what was good to level with. I didn’t know what stats on gear did. I didn’t know how kiting worked. I had two points in impact and three points in improved fireball up until I respecced (so I could AOE grind!) at level 54.
Well, it took me a while, but by the time I was walking into Hyjal I’m pretty sure I had become a decent player.
Pictured: A Decent Player
Keep reading on after the split.
Along comes the expansion, and I realize that this character that I have worked so hard on, 50+ days played, is not the play-style or community I really want. Frost-Fire bolt, the so-called “new skill,” was just a recolor of Fireball. Lhivera, the mage I most respect, had been banned from the forums and publicly stated he was not going to come back for the expansion. I could hardly stand to visit the forums anymore.
So it was time for The Big Re-Roll. That’s capitalized for emphasis. The Big Re-Roll is not just starting a new character and leveling to the cap. I immersed myself in theorycrafting. I played a resto druid on the beta. I leveled up a priest, respecced my paladin to holy, and healed on both of those plus borrowing my brother’s shaman to heal with him.
Pictured: The Newer, Leafier Me
I became a healer as much as I possibly could, and it worked out ok. My guild takes me to every raid and we’re already all “Champion of the Frozen Wastes.” I hardly remember how it feels to DPS instead of heal, watching cooldowns and crits instead of mana and health bars. I log on to my mage and I can hardly remember my hotkeys.
But every once in a while, I sort of miss “Hand of A’dal,” competing on the DPS meters, Ice Block, and being able to solo things…
2 Comments
December 10th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Hopefully you won’t end up in the boat I did. I’ve played a druid and a mage also a warlock. And I loved healing but all the non-healing classes ie. dps had some idea on how my class should heal in a raid.
I was raid healer not a MT healer. I honestly believe MT healers have it easy they have no real on the fly decisions to make other then what spell is appropriate for the time. Being the raid healer I had to make the choice of who to invest my heals in to keep alive and why. I have two heal targets reaching 10% health. Before expansion druid heals could be really slow. And if my nature’s swiftness is not up I’m going to have to invest valuable time to keep 1 of the 2 alive. Usually a quick lifebloom on the one I was ready to let die then lifebloom regrowth swiftmend on the one that was going to live. Then returned to the one I hope wasn’t in the grave already.
It got tough. It became stressful. I re-rolled DK and enjoying every minute of it.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:02 am
I completely get this. I’ve never gotten to hyjal, but I’ve gotten pretty far in the scheme of things before, only to lose my motivation and feel better rerolling somewhere else with a new class, etc. This time around though, I finally feel “home” and in my own skin and it’s a wonderful feeling… even if I do have that yearning for toons past…
Deekow’s last blog post..Karma’s a Gnome