I proudly play a Holy/Disc Priest on Smolderthorn-US.
I also proudly fly hercs as a pilot for the U.S. Air Force, currently deployed in Iraq.
About 4 months ago I decided to reinstall WoW, bought a copy of WotLK, and leveled a 70 priest up to 80. Almost immediately after the surprisingly quick grind, I deployed with my squadron to Iraq. For about 2 months, I did not even attempt to log on, because our internet source was unreliable, slow, and had extremely constricted bandwidth. After I stumbled on a "hotspot" that had a more bearable connection, I began playing again.
As I started entering 5 man instances as a priest, I immediately realized that the once familiar dynamics of healing had significantly changed. After resorting to shadow for latency reasons for about 3 weeks, I found a latency fix that allowed me to heal in instances. After wiping MANY groups on level 80 heroics, I began searching the internet for good resources on healing, gear and itemization advice, and consensus on specs and strategies.
I drudged through some of the WoW priest forums, unsatisfied. I tried to navigate Elitist Jerks but had trouble finding specific answers when I had a question. I tried to engage members of my old guild Sad Panda but theirs is not a very active forum or blogging player base.
Then I reluctantly started typing questions into google and, to my surprise, I found that bloggers, of all people, had the answers I had been looking for. The first expert I discovered was Miss Medicina. What a breath of fresh air! Intelligent, informed players apparently have started using blogs as a network to introduce relevant information to their respective communities!
So, after bouncing around a few blogs and thoroughly enjoying the topics and medium of communication, it dawned on me that I might have a unique perspective, as both a professional military aviator and an experienced (albeit novice in WotLK) dedicated healer.
(I will also comment on high latency/low bandwidth gameplay, gearing up without the option of raiding, and playing WoW while deployed.)
I found you through Miss M's Circle of Healers post and wandered over to have a read.
ReplyDeleteMy hubby is ex-AF and had returned from Iraq last year, and his issues with latency were the same as yours. We both ended up leveling and mucking around until he could return and we could hit raiding together. More power to you for being able to run heroics though!