“Because I am the tank, and I can do whatever I want, that’s what being the tank means.”

Further adventures of a very new healing paladin. The following day saw me visiting the Looking for Dungeon tool once more.

Deadmines
By this point I was about halfway through level 19 and I really wanted to hit 20 and get some horsepower. So off I go to another random instance, which turns out to be DM. Not before picking up a Glyph of Holy Light, though. Which is supremely awesome! I also got Glyph of Lay on Hands for my minor glyph. I should note, BTW, that I’m experiencing wait times of less than 5 mins, and usually more like about a minute or less. I zone into a fresh DM group that seems ready to go; a mage, two shaman, and a warrior tank. Even though I’ve respecced my meager holy spec to try and get more int I am still having some issues with mana so I’m struggling along behind the tank a bit as he rushes ahead.

Things get interesting when he starts bitching at the shaman “wth shammy, y u do that? don’t run ahead of me.” At this point I told him “Yeah, and don’t run ahead of ME because I’m trying to keep up but I need to stop and drink sometimes in-between pulls.” It gets ugly when there’s a pat that comes in on us from behind – oblivious, the ‘tank’ rushes on ahead to aggro the next group. I manage to get in-between the two fighting groups to keep him from dying and keep the squishier folks at the back alive but I’m pretty OOM by the end and I say, “WTH, why would you go and aggro another group when there are still mobs back here?”

His response: “Because I am the tank, and I can do whatever I want, that’s what being the tank means.”    Needless to say, it went downhill from there. We were at the point where you open the door and go down the spiral staircase to fight some goblins as the shaman were arguing with Mr. I’m The Tank, Foo- one of them said, “Well she’s heals, so she can just let you die, don’t heal him!” Of course I am going to keep healing him though because not healing him means we’ll probably die. But as soon as I can catch him in-between combat (apparently you can’t use Vote To Kick in combat) I vote to oust him and he’s gone. We go on to kill the next boss with the enh shammy tanking – she was tanking half the time anyhow, I figured she’d be fine for it, but after this it got a bit hairy. Enh shaman had to go, a new tank joined the group but he’s all the way back at the beginning and we’re already in combat. We start to go back to meet him but he’s already dead. He releases and runs back but doesn’t wait for us to reach him – gets killed again. At this point we’re all pretty fed up, and the tank ends up just quitting and the group falls apart. No Satchel of helpful goods for incomplete DM.

Wailing Caverns
I queued for another random awhile later hoping to get something short, but scored out with WC again. In this case the tank went one direction, two of the DPS went another… it was just the tank and I, I got put to sleep, he died, I died… Two of the DPS left, I sensed it was going to be an unenjoyable experience so I told them regrettably I’d have to go and didn’t have time to wait for more people.

That said, I’ve managed to get from about level 17-20 just with the above mentioned instances. I have a horse! And I learned Flash of Light. And put one point in Illumination, which is possibly a bad idea with the low levels of crit that I have, I’m not sure. I think that having a smaller, less mana-intensive heal will help me top people off a little bit and should help with my mana situation. I also learned Consecrate apparently. And Kings! Which is  really powerful at this level, I mean it’s great at every level, but it helps me squeeze a bit more out of my meagre stats. So that’s my pugging experience with my baby pally so far, we’ll see how it goes from here. If I wind up in a Gnomer pug at some point I may have to abandon the whole venture.

A pugging pally is born.

December 11th! The fateful day in which I roll up to the Create a New character screen and decide I’d like to make a paladin. I have a sort of kind of idea that I’d like to see how the Looking for Dungeon tool functions at lower levels, but no specific plans at this point. I clop happily through Azuremyst, bludgeoning moths and feeling guilty every time I don’t heal one of the injured Exodar survivors (“Ugh, it hurts! Help me, please!”)

As soon as I can reach a mailbox, I make sure my baby pally has plenty of bagspace and some shiny new heirloom items. Equipped with this BoA gear she goes about her merry way, to try and get to a level where she’s actually worthy to set hoof in an instance. I died only one time during actual questing/leveling – got a little too pull happy with some satyrs and paid the price.

A few days later I hit level… I think 17? I was playing around with a weird ret spec (all seven points!) and then I decided to just go Holy. It will be either a tanking or healing spec that I know will get me into groups quickly, and I’m more comfortable with healing – even though I have tanked a little before, with my warrior.

At this point, Vid’s wearing (for healing)
Mystical Pauldrons of Elements
Mystical Vest of Elements
Devout Aurastone Hammer
Discerning Eye of the Beast (x2)

Her other gear is pretty crappy but with that much inherited twink I figure it won’t matter for her.

Wailing Caverns

First pug instance! I’ll admit to cringing a little when the loading screen came up. My experiences going through here at higher levels have always been confused and loooong. Thankfully, my pug group was really quite pro. All of them were kitted out in BoA gear and knew their roles. More importantly, they knew which way to go in the instance.

The mobs here cast Sleep quite a bit. The priest in the group was not only dispelling it off me but actually apologized for being [i]too slow[/i] about doing so… I told him that dispelling at all means I’d never complain. We cleared this, I still have no idea what direction to go in it, but no wipes and no problems. Mana was kind of an issue, I went through so much water that I’d exhausted mine as well as the stuff the mage gave me. Mine was fancier, though, being Melon Juice and all.

Deadmines

Another group that really knew what they were doing, this only took us about a half hour. We just systematically went through and wiped the whole place out. My joking attempts to exhort people not to stand in the GIANT BURNING OMG FLAMESTRIKE aside, I had a good time. There was another pally along who said, “Heals what glyph would you recommend for a leveling pally” – at which point I realized that I didn’t HAVE a glyph. I didn’t complain about the Flamestrike so much after that. Also – people who call me ‘heals’ want to make sure they never have the opportunity to partake in those ‘heals’…. But the group was fine and I had fun. I’ve never actually taken damage from a parrot before.