The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
The Moment
by Vonya
I remember being on my baby tauren hunter, years ago, and our guild put together a raid and took me along to see the second half of Mauradon.
I was in absolute awe.
I remember the first time I saw a devilsaur. I also remember the first time I was eaten by a devilsaur, as one quickly led to the other.
I remember Aensu patiently taking me aside and telling me that if I ran away from him while I had a mob on me ever again, he was going to tan my hide.
I remember hearing Mr. Smite’s booming “You landlubbers are tougher than I thought. I’ll have to improvise!” and the chill it sent down my spine. I remember doing a /roll to see who got to be the one to use the cannon to blast open the doors.
I also remember the precise moment that I made a shift in the game and the way I played it.
The day that Kwane, Aensu, and myself sat down in Booty Bay and took an inventory. We wanted to run instances. We couldn’t do so with the characters we were playing at the time.
So we rolled new ones – the “ultimate” in tanking, healing, and dpsing at the time. From that moment onward, I started to take the game more seriously. Healing an instance was nothing like healing while we were out questing. I had to know what stats I needed, I had to research my gear, I had to learn my spells.
From that day forward, it is as though I have been playing a different game.
I changed as a player. Instead of just floating along in the Warcraft stream, I picked up a paddle and really put my back into getting my boat somewhere.
I took control.
It was a truly pivotal moment for me, as a player.
What about you? Have any of you experienced your own “moment”? A time when the game changed dramatically for you, and you started to view it differently?
March 24th, 2009
I was level 58 on my original char, a dorf shadow priest, and a friend of mine begged me to come heal Dire Maul tribute run because their original healer had bailed after a couple of wipes on the king. I was able to heal even though I was off specced and we one shotted that tubby son of a gun. When everyone complimented how awesome my heals were and how much the other healer sucked even though he was level 60, I knew what my destiny would be.
March 24th, 2009
My moment was Earthwarden. WoW was almost a single player game with smatterings of grouping for situational reasons. It wasn’t until I reached Shattrath (after almost 2yrs of playing mind you) that I saw a druid with Earthwarden. After a little chat with the owner of “zomg!? Where’d you get that?!” mace I was hooked. I spent day after day grinding for armaments until I had it and it was my pride and joy. You were no bear tank without Earthwarden.
I realized I could tank with my face and with my Earthwarden I was unstoppable. It carried me through Kara, TK and BT, a bit of SSC and Although I have Origins the Earthwarden still sits in my bank.
March 24th, 2009
[...] over at Egotistical Priest wrote a short post about a pivotal moment for her in the World of Warcraft, a moment when the game changed for her and she started taking it [...]
March 24th, 2009
Mine hit after hitting 70 on my hunter. I was under the firm belief that I was the be all of end all dps. After all I was tops in dps even against better geared peeps. I did a run with a well geared hunter and just got creamed. That taught me that I can always improve.
I still get that happening but now it’s more me learning something new than it is me being complacent.
March 24th, 2009
I was shadow up to 60, when I refused to buy Burning Crusade and so spent most of my time melting faces in battlegrounds. Then a friend bought BC for me. At 63 I turned into a Disc/Holy Divine Spirit / Improved Death hybrid, at the recommendation of that friend. I discovered healing, and to this day shadowform makes me feel dirty inside.
A few months later, a tank specifically sought me out to heal for him again. I’ve never looked back.
March 24th, 2009
When I decided to play it. Having played some everquest – I knew when I finally agreed to play with my buddy that it was for the long haul.
We were two instead of three, so we went healer and tank – the first decision – and so the ‘dynamic-duo’ was born. We have only belonged to one guild ever, went from being lowbie recruits to its leaders, taken it from having four level 70s when we finally dinged 70 to killing Prince in Kara, into ZA, into guild alliances for SSC and TK, post-nerf Hyjal and BT, and now independant 25 man raiding as a ‘hybrid guild’.
lol, sometimes I think it would be nice and easy to just join a higher ranked raiding guild and do the healing thing. But I doubt it would be as much fun.
March 24th, 2009
It was when I switched my main to a priest. I had been a warrior tank for a group of friends as we screwed around into the mid-50s. Then we went our separate ways, and I didn’t like the warrior class, and I wanted to try healing. So I rolled a priest class and went to work.
Funnily enough, I googled “Wow priest tips” or something similar and ran into this very blog. I think there were maybe a dozen posts up? No more than 20. But so much good advice, theory, analysis, and stories about badass healing. From here I found Matticus and Kestrel and Resto4Life and BRK and etc. But I shed my noobdom when I started reading blogs about the game (which is not to say that I still don’t often make noob mistakes – I’m still a terribad player, just not so noobish as I was).
March 24th, 2009
I just want to say – that was an excellent post.
I remember the first time my friends and I searched for how threat worked. Suddenly a whole lot of mob behaviour, (such as an add going straight for the healer), suddenly made sense.
March 24th, 2009
Understanding the way stats and itemisation work was a biggie. As was re-specing to ShadowBolt spam on my Warlock. Damn fun time.
March 24th, 2009
I moved to WoW after years of playing a warrior in EQ. Naturally, I rolled a warrior. I was around level 20 when a couple of the guys from work talked me into rolling a character on their server. Figuring I’d check out a different aspect of the game, I rolled a rogue (as a note, this was about a month after release and I had no idea how many people played rogues at the time) and went to town. The rogue was my alt, at first, visited only seldom when I wasn’t playing my warrior.
Then a perfectly normal and expected thing happened. I got my first opening move and used it in combat for the first time.
This completely changed the game for me as I realised, very suddenly, that a rogue was not just a warrior in leather, but a completely different and unique class, with it’s own playstyle and tactics.
Oh, and I loved it.
Soon enough, the rogue became the main and the warrior the increasingly less played alt. This throwaway character I created just to mess around with some of the guys from work was a lot of fun to play. From then on, I was hooked.
March 25th, 2009
The game-changing moment for me was when 3 of us were trying to get the paladin of the group his epic mount. I was playing a rogue, the other was a hunter. In Stratholme, we had to resort to suicide runs – hunter pulls mobs one way, rogue another, while the paladin tries to loot a crate or two for holy water before he dies. It took hours to get them all. Never mind the amount of time spent trying to kill the guy in the basement of the Scholomance. Nobody in our guild was playing a healer very seriously, but I realized we were really going to need one if we were ever going to get anywhere. I took my priest off bank-alt status, and very quickly learned to love healing.
Once I became a healer, I very quickly learned about threat. This was a concept that, when taught to the others (including our newly-respecced paladin tank), made things much easier and allowed us to get so much more accomplished. I’m not much of a theorycrafter, but I understand a heck of a lot more than I likely would have if I stuck with my rogue.
March 25th, 2009
My game changing moment, a couple of years ago, Uldaman. On my orc Shaman, back when only horde had Shaman, mounts came at L40 and you selected every flightpath along your destination instead of just the end one.
I was mainly into roleplaying and world-PvP at the time. I got invited to fill in a PUG for Uldaman by somebody I’d bounced some cool roleplaying stuff off of. I didn’t know that all of the other players were actually all sitting in the same room IRL. It was the most awesome experience ever. It was tough, none of us knew the instance, we didn’t have the most awesome gear, but we managed to survive every pull by the skin of our teeth. We broke out every single ability we could possibly use with our characters.
We pulled crazy stuff like letting the shaman tank while out of mana for a few moments while the tank got bandaged. We kited mobs between us by riding the aggro line as we desperately tried to heal party members on 10% health and almost no mana. We played by the seats of our pants and improvised every moment, it was glorious.
We went on to many other awesome
I’m still friends with those players even though they don’t even play on the same server anymore. I count them as some of the most awesome people I’ve ever met in this game. We still chat at least once a week online.
I’d say the game changed for me then, and since then I’ve been chasing that high of being part of a team like that one.
March 25th, 2009
Gah, WTB edit function.
Fourth paragraph should read: ‘We went on to many other awesome adventures since then.’
March 25th, 2009
(I actually kinda liked the statement “We went on to many other awesome.” The sentence gets the job done. We all know what you meant.)
I’ve had several such moments, but I look back at them with ambivalent feelings. My first toon was a Tauren warrior. I figured warriors would be a good, easy intro to the game. I had no idea what I was doing, but I remember the thrill of running into the Barrens for the first time with all its homicidal creatures just waiting to eat my face – which they happily did – and I remember the real sense of adventure when I pounded the dirt to Orgrimmar to pick up weapons training and the spur-of-the-moment decision to zep to Undercity. I changed to a Belf priest, and the skirmishes he had with the wildlife of Eversong Woods and the various champions of the Dead Scar got my pulse up like few things would later do. Running into Ghostland was chillingly exciting. Once I got into a guild and started learning priest mechanics, talent builds and basic theorycrafting goodness, it became a different game for sure. Doing heroics at lvl 80 with a leader on vent going “okay, shackle moon, tank star, pick up cross off-tank and nuke skull. In 3, 2, 1 go,” and typing loot stats into a spreadsheet with stats weighs is very different experience than staring at Undercity for the first time thinking “I’ll NEVER find my way around here!” or running for your life the first time you run into Hillsbrad Foothills.
/end nostalgia
March 25th, 2009
Had to be my first time into Sunken Temple, tanking as a Warrior, years ago. It was a PUG and I was pretty green as a tank, but I was up to the challenge. I realized during that run that it was hard, very hard, to do it well. I started to figure out how threat generally goes (I had no addons) and saw patterns in that if the DPS hit ‘em too soon I’d be chasing them down to taunt ‘em back. It was a high-energy run culminating in a mind blowing fight against Shade of Eranikus (remember, my first time – and the first time I’d fought a dragon so large) which we ended up winning through, what felt like, a truly epic fight. I won the shield (back when it was fairly decent for a Warrior) and left with a glow, knowing that I had a lot of work to do online to figure out the ins and outs of tanking, mechanics, etc. That was my moment and it definitely locked me in for the long run.
March 25th, 2009
I’d played many mpgs, but never a ‘massive’ one and never a graphical one. I had been running up and down that long long long road in Darkshore for eternity as I levelled into the teens. One day I was sent south into Ashenvale. When I hit the border, the music changed, the trees changed…..it was wonderful. I looked at my map and saw I had less than 3 areas colored in. I though to myself, “This game is HUGE!”.
Shortly after, I was standing peering into stone hole in the ground. Some nice people asked me to join them down there. I had never seen an instance or a dungeon, but when we hit the hydra at the end of blackfathoms deep I knew I was really going to like this game.
March 25th, 2009
My first MC raid as a new 60. I had leveled my hunter pretty much solo. My few instance attempts were nightmarish, and I hated running with my aunt (who got me INTO the game) because things always seemed to go wrong with her. So the guild friends had pulled me into needed DPS for Ragnaros and I was the only free 60 on at the time. Took the high elf portal in and stared in awe at the opening cavern, totally lost. On vent everyone was all “Hurry up, the way is clear!” and for anyone who’s done MC before, its not exactly obvious how to find Rags. They finally got tired of waiting and just summoned me and started the fight. I had NO clue what I was doing, why I got knocked back, nothing. Then and there I decided:
1) Raiding is a rush. MUST do more.
2) Never again would I not at least know boss strategies. And I’m insane about looking around so I won’t get lost, even in a new instance. I can USUALLY find my way to a given boss after just one or two trips.
3) Being at the low end of DPS sucks, learn to play your class better, since there’s a huge difference between solo questing and raiding.
In BC I added healing into the “Learn Your Class Better” category, and now I can’t decide what I like more. >.> I have a disc priest, a resto druid, a hunter and an elemental shaman.
March 25th, 2009
[...] Random) A couple of posts I’ve read recently brought the nostalgia back this week, namely over at Ego where Vonya mentioned her moment of revelation and at Aspect of the Hare with Pike’s memory of being young. It got me thinking – how and why [...]
March 26th, 2009
The first person I rolled was a human rouge. I didn’t like it. I got to level 25, then stopped for about a month or two. I tried again later, I rolled a Blood Elf Rogue. I still didn’t like it, and quit for another month or so. I then rolled a human warrior. I kind of liked him, but then I was questing in Westfall when I met a paladin. I quote: “They are like warriors that can heal themselves”. I was hooked. I rolled a Blood Elf paladin. I got to level 63 and loved it, but then I got bored of outland. To me, the exp required to level was astronomical. I quit for a good half year. I then rolled a blood elf warlock. He got to around level 25, but then I got bored and sick of being reliant of my minion. Once on my warlock, I saw an alliance Draenai (Spelling?) priest sitting in shadowform on a Tiger, ganking people in Hillsbrad Foothills. My eyes got wide. I rolled an undead priest and got it to level 6 before I decided that I didn’t like being undead. I rolled various other level 6 mages, and other classes among all the races. I really didn’t like any of them. I quit WoW for about half a year, figuring that the game wasn’t right for me. Thats when I met my blood elf priest… He worked his way through the ghostlands, and onto Tarren Mill, healing RFC and SFK like to other, though he was shadow specced. My moment came when I was in Shadowfang Keep, and I had just barely healed the tank in a fight with Arugal. (Did you hear? Another fell!) Anyway, since then I have been healing in instances. I am shadow specced, but I have no desire to DPS.
I got to level 70 just as the expansion came out. (Seriously, THE DAY AFTER). I never had a chance to get geared at level 70, so I set out to Northrend undergeared. I am now sitting in Dalaran on my 80 BE Priest in shadowform levitating. (Thanks for the reminder to get the levitate glyph). I am pitifully undergeared, but who cares? I look cool no matter what I’m wearing thanks to Shadowform)
March 26th, 2009
like no** other. I WTB an edit tool too.
March 26th, 2009
Everything I ever do I do to the best of my ability. I started playing the game. That was the moment, dove in head first made one toon after another to find what fit best and to learn all the game mechanics. I now have 3 80’s a low 70 and still a bunch of alts. This game is so vast I think I will never see it all. Though so help me I will try it all for sure.
March 26th, 2009
I have loved the game since I first started to play. I was happy just spodding around on my hunter with my pet for a long time, not really paying attention to much, except that someone had told me once that hunters needed agility on their gear, and not strength.
One game-changing moment was the time on my warlock when someone said, can you send your pet in there and then we’ll go. I was like.. what? I had spent months on my hunter shooting stuff and handling it in melee range with my pet helping. To find that I could actually make my pet go out there first.. I was astounded.
The second was in BC, when I saw my first WWS report, and the very poor showing I made on it. I’d gotten along with some whacked-out handmade BM spec, had no clue about shot rotations or anything, and assumed I was fine, because nobody ever said anything to the contrary. Not long after, I found BRK, and my entire perspective on the game changed, starting with a point-by-point list of WTF is wrong with you that he emailed me. I’m still no expert, but I have a much better idea of what I -should- be doing as a hunter now.
March 26th, 2009
During the european open beta, I played a warrior to level 8 or something. I rather liked it, but thought it would be nice to be able to heal myself.
So I rolled a druid on the day World of Warcraft was released in europe. I had no clue of stats and whatever. I remember attacking those neutral owls just outside the initial starting area. The totally owned me.
I somehow got to level 10 and was quite confused upon looking all the new features that came with the talent trees.
I leveled to 60 without putting a single point into anything but the restoration tree.
A few weeks/months later I was finally able to set my foot into the Molten Core. Our guild had previously downed Luzifron and Magmadar and were making progress on Gehennas. Seeing all those 39 other people scrambling about, doing their best to survive and manage the fight was a very thrilling experience. Very different from running Dire Maul to say the least.
I suppose I got hooked during that raid.
Looking back, I have to say that healing as a druid during Vanilla WoW had been rather boring.
I really started to like the priest class. And spending all of the BC Era healing as a deep holy priest was a really fun and rewarding experience. (I even “own” *cough* a sticky about the 5 second rule over at the priest forums at wowhead ;-P)
March 26th, 2009
This is a funny thing to say, but “the moment” for me was the first time i ended on that very blog. I followed a link to a post i re-read once in a while about how some peoples can be useless, not learning their classes at all, and ending killing all the groups they’re in. At that point i realized i was not alone to think that. I stopped playing a couple of months ago but now i’m just waiting for my new laptop to reinstall the game and dive in WotLK. Are you looking for new guild members ?
Sincerely,
March 26th, 2009
[...] it. I know I am.Vonya over at The Egotistical Priest is enjoying the game, too, and I’m kidnapping her question for this morning. She relates how WoW just suddenly became more than just a game to her while [...]
March 26th, 2009
[...] it. I know I am.Vonya over at The Egotistical Priest is enjoying the game, too, and I’m kidnapping her question for this morning. She relates how WoW just suddenly became more than just a game to her while [...]
March 26th, 2009
My pivitol moment was when my guild was short on healers and I leveled a shaman to be resto at 70. Healing became my calling. I’ve played a resto shaman, a resto druid and even though I’ve gone back to dps on my priest, I’ve healed on her as well when the guild is short on healers. I really miss it sometimes. My druid is 80 and resto atm as a backup healer though so I still get my fix from time to time.
March 26th, 2009
My moment was healing WC for the first time. It was a long time coming:
Back when my husband and I started dating, WoW had just come out a few months prior, and he somehow got me into it. I resisted, because I had loved Warcraft III and felt that without RTS, that universe wasn’t worth my time. I was so wrong.
My first toon was a gnome warlock, and I got her to 17 with my husband playing a gnome mage. After that, I tried every different class on every Alliance race, and nothing really sang out to me. After several months, I got bored and stopped playing. My husband kept going.
When BC came out, I started playing again, and made a Draenei shaman. I picked that because it was a new race and a new class to me, and apparently that was enough. I loved my shammy so much that I got her to 62, without being in a guild. My husband leveled a dwarf hunter at the same time, and got to 70. It was his first endgame toon. I got frustrated with not being 70, not being in endgame content, and got bored and quit again.
Months later, my husband finds out that some old gaming buddies from a few years back are playing WOW. They had a horde guild on a different server, so we abandoned all our Alliance toons (which was all we had, really) and rolled toons in their guild.
I had watched my husband play his hunter in heroics and raids countless times, and I knew without a doubt that I wanted an endgame healer. I rolled a BE priest, and my husband rolled a druid with the intention of speccing for a tank role. It was a great leveling team. All of a sudden I was talking on Vent to people that my husband had actually met in RL, people I started to befriend and care about.
At level 21 the guildies (all had 70’s) ran WC with us on their alts. It was my first time healing an instance. I was so nervous about doing well to impress these new friends that I learned then and there to instantly react to different healing situations—when to AoE heal, when to Flash Heal, etc. I loved the challenge. I loved healing people I actually cared about. I loved filling that role of “group support.”
I walked out of that instance a different player. Griet then became my “main,” a term I had never used before since I really didn’t care before. Healing WC was the most fun I’d ever had in WoW up to that point, and I knew I would be a healer forever. Needless to say, Griet was my first 70, and my first 80.
April 2nd, 2009
My “Moment” was actually when I realized that no matter what class I played I would be better at the game than almost everyone around me. I realized that this was true because people just don’t put effort into the game any more. Why would they? You can practically sleep through it.
Back when I made my first character, a priest, I was part of a team of five RL friends. We learned, we grew as players, we kicked ass and we died together (Except the rogue who just vanished.)
The game was hard the first time up but I realize now, I’m not even sure why I still play. I have a 75 warlock, a 74 mage, my priest is 72, my rogue is 73, I have all these and more but none of them are really all that fun outside of PVP.
In the beginning there was WOW! WOW was good! Now.. now there is just World of Warcraft. It makes me sad.
April 4th, 2009
Were two years ago, in me 46th season, standing on a sand dune in Tanaris, farming Breaths of Wind. Needed them fer ta make me a Truesilver Champion sword. Spent a whole day out there. For the first time, I were making an investment in meself, not just rambling along and making do with whatever came me way.
And nothing were the same, after that.
April 4th, 2009
[...] feels like a mellow day for me, a rather nostalgic day if you will. I’m going to steal a question from a fellow blogger (whose blog rocks, by the way) and talk about “that moment.” The moment when this [...]