Change of Heart

A thought just dawned on me last week as I was being convinced to level a priest as an alt to accompany some of my guild mates as they level their lowbies. If you were to ask me in the Vanilla WoW days about playing a healer class, my response would be anywhere between “never!” and “probably not”. In those days, my mage was my main character and had a few now deleted alts that were also dps classes or hybrids that were sort of a dps spec. But since these alts were so low level, the spec didn’t really matter.

Past Me

In those days I really couldn’t see myself playing a healer. I did try to level a dwarf priest in the hope of probably getting to try it out but in those days my real intention of leveling that priest was the melt some face as a shadow priest. Well it didn’t work out and I eventually deleted that character. Things are different now. I played a Holy Paladin as a main for the latter half of the Burning Crusade expansion and I currently play a Restoration Druid, with my paladin still holy and somewhere between shelved and “played very sparingly”. I still plan to level that pally to 80 sometime though.

I now consider healing something I’m pretty comfortable with and it’s also a nice change of pace especially if you don’t want to worry about rotations, kill targets, dealing with adds or doing enough dps. In trash encounters, healing is actually quite relaxing. The thought I had last week was this. When I was being convinced to level a priest, I was actually choosing between a priest that I still had to make or a level 21 troll shaman that I had made and played to that level sometime before and shelved. I realized that no matter what I choose it would eventually be a healer if and when it got to level 80. In fact somehow deep inside I feel like leveling both and by doing that I would have all four healing classes that already are or should be healers.

This reminds of that quest Chromie gives to go to the Bronze Dragonshrine. If I could go back in time to the Vanilla WoW days and tell myself of my current situation favoring healers, I wonder if if Past Me would believe Current Me.