Druid vs. Rogue

Hiya! Phaelia invited me to post here and asked that I look after the place a bit in her absence.  So, I thought I might introduce myself. As some may know or have already surmised, I am also Valenna from Parry! Dodge! Spin! I started playing Korryna as Restoration only recently, about two months ago after a long absence.  I was looking for a change from doing damage.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I had access to Korryna that was leveled from 60 to 70 mostly as Feral and geared as such, not Restoration. Also, I had a level 70 Hunter that was very well geared pre-BC and still could produce adequate DPS via over enthusiastic play. However, I’ve been playing Valenna for since beta and although I love her dearly, I needed a break from DPS.  No, if you read PDS, I’m not going to stop posting, nor am I going to stop providing commentary on Rogues. However, at this time, I’m not primarily playing Valenna either.

I contemplated playing the Hunter, but doing DPS as another class didn’t really appeal to me. I wanted a change and healing would definitely be different from doing damage.  I also think I started playing Korryna to get a better understand of the other side of the fence.  Phaelia and I (and Mr. Phae and Mrs. Valenna) all started playing at the same time.  Three of us have stuck with the same character from the beginning.  Phaelia, Valenna and Khatrina (Mrs. Valenna) all began under three completely different names (having since transferred servers), but we all still play them today.  And since the beginning, it’s been fairly easy to get a grasp of the playstyle and challenges that Khatrina, a Warrior, faces.  However, it’s hard for a player who has only ever played a Rogue to grasp the challenges faced by a Druid healer.  Many interesting conversations resulted from this over the years and as time has moved on, I feel like I had gained a better understanding of Druids and their plights.  So, I finally decided to actually play one and see for myself.

I was somewhat lucky in that I have an awesome guild and friends that helped me gear up Korryna quickly with Restoration gear.  I also worked diligently myself running every quest I could, spending whatever gold required and running any instance with PUGs if necessary to work up my rep and get the drops I needed to start participating as a raider.  My first foray into Karazhan resulted in a windfall of upgrades.  And finally, working through SSO reputation and switching to Alchemy helped me acquire two easy upgrades to my neck and trinket.  At this time, Korryna is geared well enough to participate in the highest raids our guild runs.  I’ll have to admit having one of the most knowledgeable Restoration druid as a best friend I can bug ask her about strategies, abilities and gear certainly doesn’t hurt.

So, what I have I learned going from a Rogue to a Restoration Druid?

• Healers are fun, a completely different type of fun from doing damage.
• Health bars are your life.  You tend to ignore everything else.  Unless an encounter depends on it, you don’t worry about where you are standing or which direction you are facing.
• You have to make hard choices on who to heal and when it boils down to it you know that the order is tank, healer and then DPS.
• As a healer and someone with a battle rez, I’m even more concerned with the meters because I’m giving it my all to prove I should be there, I don’t want to resurrect or spend my emergency healing abilities on someone that isn’t giving it their all.
• Healers aren’t as rare or indispensable as tanks and good DPS is hard to find and greatly appreciated.
• Meters still matter.  It’s never about bragging about being on the top, but pushing to get there is what motivates me the most.
• Healing still requires you to understand the fights, but from a totally different angle.  You need to be able to anticipate when to use certain heals at certain times.  Using those abilities prematurely will leave you empty-handed moments later when you really needed them more.
• Healing is more stressful than DPS.  When someone dies, you feel bad even if you did everything you could do to save them.  You get more mad when someone else gets another character killed and doesn’t seem to care.
• If you talent and gear for Restoration, you can’t do much else except damage at the bottom of the damage meters with IS+MF,Wx6.  Unless you have a lot of time and a lot of money, Druids can’t do everything.
• As a Druid, you look after people a lot.  From healing to Gift of the Wild, it’s a large change from simply ensuring that my own buffs are up and ready.  Also, Brambles is something that Restoration Druids are expected to refresh.
• In a raid, you have no emergency abilities to escape death.  You can try to Barkskin, heal yourself or go to Dire Bear Form.  But if things look bad, suck it up and accept your fate.
• Out in the world, Druids are much tougher than they appear.  I can solo several 70s at the same time in my restoration gear, just by tab-targeting with Moonfire, Insect Swarm and healing myself.  And I can pull from ranged with Moonfire and tag mobs before other players can get them. Yeah, I hate when it happens to me as a Rogue, but I’m evil that way, perhaps it’s my Rogue ancestry. If things go bad, I use Barkskin, switch to Cat Form, Dash, and then fly away as soon as I can.
• Druid Flight Form is completely unfair and cheesy.  Don’t get me wrong. I love the ability, being able to instantly shift in and out even when falling.  But every time I play Valenna, I lament having to come to a complete stop and wait 3 seconds to be able to fly.
• Collecting three to four sets of gear is annoying and fun, but everyone seems to expect it of Druids.

Anyhow, when Phaelia gets back in a few days, she’ll still be making the majority of the posts, especially in regards to theorycrafting, but you’ll see me around posting as well.

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