First Tastes Of Raid Healing

My new guild decided this week that it was time to try raiding Karazhan again. A few weeks ago, we had probably the most disastrous Kara run I’ve ever been in with the whole time allotted for the run spent wiping on Attumen the Hunstman several times before downing him eventually. Of course this was due to the fact that we asked a life time DPS warrior who happened to have decent tanking gear collected in his bank to respec Protection. He had the gear but his tanking experience just wasn’t there. He did the best he could considering the circumstances.

Due to the lack of healers, my kinda under geared holy paladin was asked to be the raid’s third healer in Karazhan two days in a row. The first day was a Monday night (in the US) which is the day before Kara resets. We did a freshly reset Kara again the next day (which was earlier for me). I have to say that even if I was just the third healer in the raid I gained a lot of valuable experience aside from the several pieces of healing gear (some plate, some mail and even cloth) the group let me take in those two runs. Healing in raids is something I’ve never done before this week and now that I’ve done it and got a lot of praise for the healing I’ve done, it’s a real boost for my confidence as a healer.

Another thing I’ve taken from the runs is an increased respect for my guild mates (current and former) who healed me and my group in our raids before. Having seen some of the encounters I’ve done on my mage but this time from a healer’s perspective, I saw that there are certain encounters that you just take for granted as a DPS class that could be quite a pain in the behind as a healer. The Maiden of Virtue and the Curator boss encounters are two examples I’ve seen in these two days that show that.

These experiences are what pushes me more and more to bring my holy pally to these raids. The experience I get is very valuable and the idea that I could get more and more gear upgrades is sweet. My goal after these runs is to be good enough to be the Main Tank healer as a holy pally should be instead of just the third healer assigned to healing the rest of the raid.