Sunday, May 20, 2012

Project: Heal All The Things!

A change of pace from raiding things, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about being accepted into Apotheosis as a permanent raider- and now that we've officially cleared all heroic content for the current tier and are working on wrapping up our meta achievement, I'm looking to the future.

I have all four classes (and five specializations!) of healer at max level who have completed the current (normal mode) tier of raiding. I won't say I am exceptional as, say, a discipline priest- but I can at least carry my weight in a PuG group as any healing spec. This is intentional. I like to know how other healers heal, and I like the flexibility of being able to swap depending on what my raid needs. To be fair, I've never been asked by a raid group to swap- usually swapping is something I do when I go from one raid team to the next. But I like having the option.

I also feel that being a competent healer as any healing class gives me an edge; I have a feel for what my team-mates can do and I know better how to work with them. This is more useful from a ten-man perspective, where I will need to be more flexible about my co-healers' strengths and weaknesses; in twenty-fives, it seems like we've got everything already, and I can primarily focus on doing what I do best, as best as I can do it!

Even so, I'm faced with a dilemna: all of my healing toons except my shaman are on Wrymrest Accord. And worse, two of the three are commonly role played; the third is in a dedicated alt raid. Transferring them would not only be a monetary hardship, it would also be placing raiding above role play- and would make a statement to my friends on Wyrmrest that I am leaving them for good, which is not the case.

In addition, I haven't leveled a character since I finished leveling my much neglected warlock, whose biggest drawback was that I couldn't use her to heal, and thus only grudgingly play on ever these days. So this brings my to my new side project:

Project: Heal All The Things!

In prepping for mists, I will want to have the current four classes capable of healing at max level and ready to venture into the zones. In addition to this, I want to have each healer have one or two crafting trade skills each, without having any duplications in trade skills over all. This is also in accordance with Apotheosis' request that a raiding character have one non-gather skill, which I agree with as a common, good practice if you intend to raid.

This is made both easier and more challenging by the fact that I have a holy paladin at level 83 languishing back on Sisters of Elune, with Burning Crusade level engineering and almost maxxed mining. If I can successfully level a priest and a druid, I will bring my paladin over to Eldre'thalas and finish leveling her and her Engineering.

However, there's only three gathering skills, and there will be five classes of healer for Mists: how will I divide the tradeskills?

Here is my end goal for trade skill division:

Restoration Druid - Clementyne - Leatherworking and Skinning, worgen racial bonus to skinning speed

Discipline/Holy(Shadow) Priest - Vlixx - Tailoring and Herbalism

Holy Paladin - Ashlyra - Engineering and Mining, engineering bonus to mining

Restoration Shaman - Miurne - Jewelcrafting and Enchanting - Intended Main

Mistweaver Monk - ??? - Alchemy and Inscription

So What's The Plan?

I'm leveling these tradeskills in a somewhat unorthodox fashion, in the hopes that it'll make things easier later on.

Right now, I have Clementyne as a skinner and an herber, because, let's face it- druids are awesome for farming. I'm gathering the materials to make 'Tradeskill Kits', which is basically grabbing all the materials from a tradeskill leveling guide and storing them on a bank alt with a guild bank.

Clem is also saving all her cloth for when Vlixx comes ally-side. Oh yes, did I mention Vlixx is starting as a troll? I'll be leveling him (male trolls > lady trolls) with my fiancee, who has never managed to level a tanking druid- until now, of course! Vlixx will claim his leveling partner's cloth as well, hording it away in his bank until he can can become a lady gnome of the same name... muahahahaha!

Once Clem and Vlixx have reached max level and are ally-side once more, I will bring over Ashlyra from Sisters of Elune and max out her mining and engineering. That accomplished, I can then drop mining on Miurne and herbalism on Clem, and use all my horded materials to level Clem's leatherworking and Vlixx's tailoring.

The crafted goods I create from leatherworking and tailoring will then be sent to Miurne, who will use them to level enchanting- a pain in the ass, but a solid raiding profession to have. I will probably also supplement by buying pure enchanting mats off the auction house, and blowing up lowbie dungeons to obtain the mats I need; it's a good thing I'm comfortable with my elemental spec! This also gives an advantage to my intended main. After all, Apotheosis recruited me as a shaman, and, for the moment, shaman is my favorite healing class to play.

I'll be saving all those herbs for my Mistweaver; because I don't know how the different classes will feel to me come MoP, I wasn't sure which class to give the two-tradeskill advantage to. However, I anticipate that the leveling zones will be flooded with new monks when MoP drops, which means heavy node competition. I might as well give the toon I'll be leveling 'from scratch' the advantage so I don't have to compete for herbs or ore!

First Step!

So for now, I'm leveling my druid by herbing and killing things to skin them, while being queued as a healer. I'll probably be forced to actually quest in another ten or twenty levels, but for now, the levels fly by every time I do a dungeon- my herbalism and skinning are lagging behind my leveling.

I'll also need to obtain a bum-load of fancy bags for storing herbs and leather; I plan to keep the materials needed for Clem's Leatherworking in her own bank so I can dedicate my bank alt's bankspace for Vlixx's cloth and my mistweaver's many, many, MANY herbs.

My fiancee has promised me we can start leveling our duo toons ASAP, but he's notorious for his slow pace, so we'll see how that works out. He wants us to be horde because I've never quested on horde much, which means we'll be leveling by questing, not dungeons. My plan is to make my main spec discipline, and when I dual spec, go shadow; double healing specs can wait for max level.

I do worry that it's a little presumptuous to plan so extensively, when I am still in my trial period with Apotheosis... but at this point, if I am rejected, I could still scrap it and try it anew on whatever server I end up on. And, fingers crossed- I think they're going to keep me!

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