In Which Pilf Goes OOC (and remains there)

Being a rounded person (draenei?) is a good thing, they tell me. Therefore re-speccing to give Nip a taste for healing is also A Good Thing too, right? Of course it is - we want to raid and therefore we need another competent healer and the easiest way for Nip to get practice and confidence is if he heals for the usual suspects. Fine. Oh, except that will leave us a DPS slot unfilled because there's no point in having 2 healers, ok no-one should die but the fights might be a bit long... So the answer to the conundrum is whilst Nip respecs to resto I take Pilf off for a quick shadow respec. Simple as that.

You'd think wouldn't you? Except for the fact that Pilf has never, ever, ever been anything other than pure holy (except for about 20 minutes when I wanted to make levelling faster and she went shadow, then went eek, then went back to holy). So respeccing to shadow was A Big Thing for me but with my altruistic (carebear?) hat on off I went to Stormwind to do so. First problem: I know nothing, nothing about shadow specs. Ok not a problem as there is a HotGL dude who's got a shit hot spec so Nao wanders off to the The Armoury to look it up. Right respec done - now to sort out toolbars /sigh. And spells /sigh. And wait... now I have two castbars... ok... sort them out as well. And we're done. Nip meanwhile has respecced to resto and away we go. Something easy like UK would be a start so off we toodle. And aside with being unlucky with the frost tombs on the first boss it's fine. Nexus? Sure. Away we go. Again no problems at all - in fact, hang on, he makes this look easy... wtf???

The we went off to CoT -heh heh we haven't done this ever on HC this'll be harder (/smirk - see I'm not a nice person at all). But again - ez-mode. Nip is now well into the healing thing. Very happy. And me? Well herein lies a problem. I don't have DPS gear. My gear is 'chanted, gemmed and chosen for heals. Spirit, mp5, etc. DPS gear needs hit, crit, int... Oh fudge. But okay, it's good that Nip is liking the whole healing thang and I'm exalted with a few factions so I can buy more appropriate gear...and gem it with + hit, and enchant it with + hit and I can get some trinkets ... and hang on a minute... where did my gold go??? /big sigh. Oh and I forgot to mention glyphs. Yeah I needed to change them as well.

So now it's done. My gear, whilst not epic, has put my hit up to 251 (a long way off cap but still). Recount tells me that I'm hitting about 1.6k damage a second (admittedly from my uber AoE) on mobs. And yeah its ok. But I miss healing. I keep looking for buttons that just aren't there. When things get sticky I can remove shadowform and heal (using the word very loosely) with Flash Heal but it doesn't really work and my mana regen - now geared to Spirit Tap sucks. And, oh god, how precious does this sound... as DPS you're one of the crew, you don't have that special little niche that you have as a healer. And yes, I know... I did warn you - precious...

So I was feeling really, really crap and down and generally bleugh, then, and this will prove how shallow I am, Cat whispered me. She said that she'd gotten reports about my DPS from her mates (Noir and Mis) that I'd been partied with - I can't remember the exact phrasing, I now wish I'd screenshotted it, but it was along the lines of "if she pumps out that level of DPS when she's doing something she doesn't like, is new to and goes against her nature I don't want to be around when she really pulls out the stops" and I cried. See, shallow as a puddle! But you know how something can make you feel so much better - like 'ok, I'm not a complete fucktard, I could actually do this...' So I went off to teh interwebz and had a read... apparently as DPS I should have a rotation - oh ok, what's one of dem den? Hmmm... But I found one and I got better (pretty much level with Sem on DPS in the right circs) and I got better at looking around and learning fights and understanding that breaking CC is a bad thing (apparently...) and that ummm whilst this would be a good time to learn to Mind Control, staggeringly, it doesn't work when the target is freeze trapped /giggle.

And then last night Nip was feeling under the weather and there wasn't another healer around. And everyone wanted badges and shards. So I respecced back. And realised that I now defaulted to DPS and healing required thought. And respeccing costs gold. And I needed to find my healing gear... And what do I spend badges on: healing shinies or DPS shinies... And to be honest I want the dual spec thing to be here NOW. Because then, at least, the glyphs and the speccing won't be a drain on the bank. And who knows, maybe some day, switching between DPS and healing won't be something I pay much mind to - because, you know, I'll be pro at both...