Ding!

I love the smell of sleep deprivation in the mornings.

Well, I do when the sleep deprivation has a good enough reason, at least. Meet my latest level 80. (Yes, the pic is vintage 70, standing outside of Kara and all, but I didn't think about doing a screen shot at 1am when I hit level, and I've always liked this pic.) I stayed up LATE last night, because when we went off to Naxx last night I was over 75% of the way there. Every Thaddius wipe, I was thinking to myself, "Self, this is time you could be spending leveling Inara. So step up your game, and don't miss the platform again, noob!" Yes, Self, I know that, thank you....

So, here we get to a character that proves a sense of obligation can sometimes be more motivating than having fun. That's not to say I don't love my little priest to bits and pieces! It's just that I still don't know how she ended up my third 80. It might have something to do with wanting to get it over and done with as fast as I could. Or, it could just be that when I get stubborn, things get done.

I mentioned my first priest a while back. He was a night elf, and he was my first character, and he was made of fugly. Oh, and he got deleted at 20.

When I started playing, I was in The Browncoats. A few people had characters named for Firefly, and since the good names were taken I decided to mix up the last names with who they were obviously paired with. I had a dwarf paladin named Kayleetam, which got confusing since our guild leader was named Kayleefrye. Anyway, that's where Inara was born. Inararnolds. She was supposed to be Inarareynolds, but the name wouldn't fit. So, I ended up with this mishmash that people only get when they squint and look at it sideways long enough. I wasn't sure how I'd like having a priest again, even if this one was a lot nicer on the eyes than the last one, so I didn't mind the mangled name. I knew what it was, and that's what mattered.

At first.

That's what mattered at first.

You know. Before I started meeting new people, expanding my horizons, and caring about whether my name was memorable (or even pronounceable) to people who might think about inviting me to more than one group.

But I digress...

I was never sure about my priest. I threw jewelcrafting at her just because I needed a character to be a jewelcrafter. It also seemed vaguely in character, since the character she was named after was rather classy, and WoW doesn't have "companion" as a profession.

Ultimately, jewelcrafting is what kept me from deleting her in the mid-20s. It's such a gold sink that I felt too guilty to delete her when I'd put so much into her profession. I even had a friend provide me with mithril he wasn't using, and that cinched it. That was such a rare and precious commodity that I couldn't disgrace his generosity by getting rid of my priest. In fact, now I was obligated to level her!

I had a few priestly mentors, as well. People I could look up to. People I could be intimidated by. Most of all, people who could help me and sympathize with how difficult it is to level a priest. Over the course of 70 levels, I tried all three specs. Disc was fun, but it just didn't click with me for some reason. It's got great talents in it, but it wasn't my favorite for leveling. Holy was a LOT of fun, and I loved the dps I could get, but I hated how inefficient the mana of the damage spells were while I was trying to level. I was a bit hesitant about shadow, because that's what EVERYONE did for leveling, and I wanted to be able to heal an instance at the drop of a hat.

Now, I'd already leveled a shaman to 70 at that point, and most of that was resto. I had three heal buttons. A big heal, a little heal, and a chain heal. When I started taking my priest into dungeons to heal them, I was a little overwhelmed.

Strike that.

I was a LOT overwhelmed!

There were so many buttons to pick from! Big heals, little heals, HoTs, group heals, bouncing heals, medium heals, efficient heals, quick heals...HELP! Add to that all the talk about downranking at the time, and I just wanted to crawl into a corner and rock back and forth until all the heal buttons went away.

That, and an interesting Underbog run, left me with shadow. I'd tried it a few times, but it was always one of those things I flirted with and felt guilty about afterward. I didn't want to be "that" priest. The selfish one who won't heal when there's a healer shortage. The noob priest who specs shadow just to piss people off. You know. THAT priest.

By then, though, I'd started raiding on my shaman. Lo and behold, I learned that shadow priests weren't necessarily a parriah. A good shadow priest was a spell-slinger's best friend! Come here, little purple mana battery, let me drink of your manalicious returns.... So, bolstered by the opinions of my newest set of friends, I took Inara through the last few levels of Outlands as a shadow priest, and I haven't looked back. You can't get me to try holy now. Get thee behind me, buttons! You want heals? How 'bout a little vampiric embrace while I lay on the DPS? How's that for heals? Sure, she was an aggro magnet, but the warlocks loved me.

Shadow. It's what's for dinner.

~~~

As an aside, Naxx last night was interesting. We dropped down to two healers. My tree, and a paladin friend of mine. It was a bit stressy, especially since I'm the type of healer that takes every death personally. I was beating myself up all through Loatheb even though we didn't lose anyone. I think the only Naxx deaths I don't take personally are the Heigan dance deaths and lag frogger deaths. Nothing dropped for me (Loatheb hates me, the shoulders will never be mine), and we had two DKs come in.

At the end of the night, I was nearly in tears. I cried on my pally friend's shoulders after the raid, lamenting and ranting about my poor neglected DK. He's a young teen player, so he's all full of "I'll find a way to fix it!" Much as I'd love to see it fixed, I'm not sure there is a fix. It's a dumb situation, my DK is supposed to be my main, my druid isn't even in the guild, but it doesn't matter to our raid leader, and we've been over it and over it and I don't want him to know just how much it upsets me. Why? Because I love my raid leader to little bits and pieces. I don't want to put him in a bad spot.

And, after the pally logged off and said he'd think of something, my raid leader whispered me and made me feel all warm and squishy. He praised my healing, going on and on about how awesome we were, and I couldn't stay mad. I still want to raid on my DK, where there's not so much pressure. Where I don't have to be on my toes at all times or PEOPLE DIE. But, at the same time, DPS never gets that warm and fuzzy feeling of being needed and that sense of a job well done.

Nothings more rewarding than being told you're an awesome healer.

Nothing.